In Trump’s America, Triad City Beat Editor-in-Chief Brian Clarey and others have observed, the news cycle has accelerated into overdrive. By the same law of physics, careers seem be soaring and imploding in the blink of an eye.
It’s safe to say that outside of the alt-right, if most people knew anything about media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, it’s probably that he was banned from Twitter for participating in a vile campaign of harassment against Ghostbusters star and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Leslie Jones.
But the Breitbart News senior editor suddenly became someone people paid attention to when Donald Trump took office and the chairman of the right-wing propaganda site was appointed chief strategist to the president. If anything made Yiannopoulos famous, it was the University of Berkeley canceling his appearance on campus as protesters reportedly set fires, tore down barricades and destroyed a construction site. The president himself gave Yiannopoulos the seal of approval, tweeting, “If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — no federal funds?”
Bill Maher seemed to be on the verge of legitimizing Yiannopoulos with a slot on his show on Feb. 18. Attempting flattery as tack to rein in Yiannopoulos’ insults against the show’s other guests, Maher said, “You remind me of a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens.” He reminds me a lot more of Michael Alig, the enfant terrible party promoter in the 1990s New York City club scene who eventually murdered a fellow party kid and drug dealer.
When Yiannopoulos insisted that transgenderism is a psychiatric disorder and tried to brush aside comedian Larry Wilmore’s reasoned arguments to the contrary, Wilmore finally let him have it, saying, “You can go f*** yourself, all right?”
Only three days after Yiannopoulos argued on Maher’s show that women and children need to be protected from trans women, amid outrage over recordings of the media provocateur seeming to endorse pedophilia, Simon & Schuster yanked plans to release Yiannopoulos’ book. And by Tuesday afternoon, Breitbart had forced out its conservative flamethrower.
Ain’t karma sweet!
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