These three things can be true at the same time:
- Milo Yiannopoulos is a glib, disgusting, provocateur.
- Milo Yiannopoulos provided a valuable counterpoint to the forces of political correctness.
- Milo Yiannopoulos overplayed his hand, went outside the realm of political correctness, into the realm of promoting criminal conduct, and deserves everything that happened to him.
Yesterday was not a good day for Milo.
On Monday, the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference rescinded their invitation for him to speak this week. Simon & Schuster said it was canceling publication of “Dangerous” after standing by him through weeks of criticism of the deal. And Breitbart itself was reportedly reconsidering his role amid calls online for it to sever ties with him.
As Icarus learned, fly too high and bad things happen. Milo was soaring.
Mr. Yiannopoulos was just getting a foothold in the media. He recently appeared on the comedian Bill Maher’s HBO talk show, and aggressively taunted liberals without much pushback from the host. His book “Dangerous,” a free-speech manifesto and memoir that he sold in December to Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint within Simon & Schuster, had shot to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list, based on advance orders.
It wasn’t all bad.
The author Roxane Gay withdrew from her contract for a book with a Simon & Schuster imprint in protest.
But it wasn’t all good, either.
Milo Yiannopoulos, a polemical Breitbart editor and unapologetic defender of the alt-right, tested the limits of how far his provocations could go after the publication of a video in which he condones sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and laughs off the seriousness of pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests.
This is a not-unsurprising conflation of a few things, as there is no inherent connection between challenging political correctness, the alt-right and, most obviously, pedophilia. Milo saw no problem with pedos? That’s on him. The poster boy for fabulous and dangerous gay conservatives suddenly got outed for also being a twisted pedo.
Having defended Milo’s right to free speech, without knowing or caring much about Milo himself, just as I would defend Roxane Gay’s right to free speech because this is America and she’s entitled to be as stupid as she wants to be, his fall from “grace” doesn’t trouble me in the least. He was glib, shallow and insufferable. Having watched some of his videos briefly, not being able to watch for any length of time because he was such a vacuous ass, I appreciated one thing about Milo from what I saw: he challenged the teacups and snowflakes, and willingly took the heat and hatred of the SJWs for doing so.
Was Milo the right poster boy for the forces of sanity? Not before, and clearly not now. But for whatever reason, he ended up on the soapbox. There were other, far smarter, far more substantive voices that decried the evils of political correctness, such as Christina Hoff Sommers, but Milo captured people’s imaginations. Maybe it was the pearls? Maybe it was his outrageousness? Whatever.
As news broke of the disinvitation from CPAC, and on its heels the cancellation of his book contract, the social justice warriors went crazy. It wasn’t just that their most hated gay man fell hard, but it opened the door to their larger argument. While Milo’s crash came from his promotion of criminal sexual conduct, albeit of the type that somewhat progressive Salon had been quietly trying to normalize as well, but magically disappeared yesterday a month ago when it was forced to choose between love and hate, the blame was spread across all Milo’s evils:
ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum pointed out, for example, that despite CPAC’s claim that it invited Yiannopoulos to defend his free speech rights, they disinvited him when his speech went too far for them. The racism, sexism, and other offensive remarks were apparently fine, but it was the support for child molestation that apparently crossed a line.
Legum, ironically, reflects the brutal death of thought on the opposite side, rallying the deeply passionate troops to conflate his special brand of racism and sexism with pedophilia. But for efforts by people like Legum, there would be no soapbox for Milo. They’re bookends.
There was no First Amendment right involved in CPAC’s decision to disinvite Milo from speaking. There is some serious question about what they were thinking in inviting him in the first place, but that’s a different issue. CPAC gets to decide who speaks at its party, and if it decides that it doesn’t want Milo, then he doesn’t get to speak. There might be criticism of the decision under other circumstances, but given that it appears directly related to Milo’s promotion of pedophilia, there seems to be a damn good reason for the disinvitation.
Same with the book deal cancellation. A publisher gets to decide what to publish and what not to publish. It’s a private entity. It can make its own calls, and unmake them, as it deems fit.
This is entirely different than Milo being invited to speak at Berkeley, notwithstanding Legum’s childish effort at selling his troops a strawman, and then allowing anarchy to shut him down so those who chose to listen to Milo couldn’t do so.
Will we miss Milo? Not likely, as there are other, smarter, voices who will be able to fill the void his fall from “grace” leaves behind. He was never a good choice for poster boy, and was just as much of an embarrassment to thoughtfulness as Legum. If his 15 minutes of fame are over, no tears should be shed. That we need someone to provoke thought isn’t in question. It just doesn’t have to be Milo.
Minor correction — turns out Salon actually took down those pedophile articles over a month ago (Jan. 11).
Otherwise, great piece.
Thanks for the correction.
Seems ironic that an abuser can win an Oscar, but a victim can’t even get a book published.
Don’t be them. It’s not ironic to play that game.
Another small correction – it is not pedophilia that he seemed to support in his video, but pederasty.
I’m not defending Milo, but pointing out that what he was discussing was sex between “sexually mature” boys and older men. I think that if word are to continue to have meaning, we need to at least recognize the difference.
As for his behavior, I find it ironic that he is condemned by the Left when the Left simultaneously sings the praise of Lena Dunham (who admitted to molesting her 1-year old sister) and Roman Polanski (who drugged and raped a 13-year old girl).
All Milo did was talk.
I frankly didn’t want to get this deep into the weeds of Milo (I’m just not that into him) or the tit-for-tat with Lena Dunham, which may be hypocritical but changes nothing as to Milo.
I detest Lena Dunham, but claiming that a 7-year-old girl touching her 1-year-old’s sister’s vagina amounts to “molesting” is ludicrous.
Announcement of Milo’s media death could well be premature. Contrary to the saying that there aren’t, there are second acts in America; it’s just hard to predict whether they will be on a par with the first act or a parody of it. In Milo’s case, his first act was a novelty, so I don’t know whether we’ll be able to tell.
You may be right. I hope not, but who knows these days.
This is definitely a mixed feelings moment. While I am happy to see a vile person lose his megaphone, I am concerned about this advancing the cause of censorship as the sjw crowd flexes the heckler’s veto.
The perpetual problem, of all the bad things, which will prove worse.
Existential crisis averted. Concerned that shouting racism, sexism, homophobia, and bigotry had lost its effectiveness, social justice warriors can breathe a sigh of relief that shouting “pedophile!” still has its intended affect.
I just don’t know if it will have the same impact. It’s a bit more, ahem, specific. Maybe if they can successfully untether it from all definitions as they’ve done successfully with racism, etc., it can be the new ad hominem?
Not as long as your names are George Takei or Marion Zimmer Bradley, then you’re excused.
Milo is out of Breitbart, out a book deal, and out of inflammatory boundaries to push. Like I said, Free Speech ≠ consequence free speech. Sometimes it’s a riot, sometimes it’s a punch in the face. Sometimes, it’s a punch in the bag that hurts Westerners most: The moneybag.
We can all pretend that a defense of Milo is a principled stand for free speech but then again, so would a defense for Black Lives Matter protesters.
I know you mean well, but you keep saying things that make people stupider. You don’t have the slightest grasp of free speech and confuse what is and isn’t. That may be acceptable among the deeply passionate morons, but not here. Stop making people stupider.
There, you see? I made a sincere comment you don’t like and you called it stupid. Speech/Consequence.
The problem is, you’re moving the chains in the comments section. Your OP is not about any law abridging Milo’s right to free speech (where you may have the advantage), it is about practical consequences of free speech. When it comes to the practicality of speech and consequences I have all the experience I need, and the scars to prove it.
Oh, Jake. The problem has nothing to do with whether I “like” your comment, but that it’s substantively wrong. It’s just wrong. It doesn’t become right because you really, really feel it should be. I appreciate that you’re not a lawyer and have no functional grasp of law (and in fact, a remarkably poor grasp of law), but that doesn’t mean you get to pull shit out of your ass and pretend it’s real. Sorry, but wrong is wrong, and that’s why it’s stupid. Nothing more.
As not a real fan of Milo, but a fan of the Drunken Peasants, the show in which he uttered the offending comments, and having watched the show when they were originally uttered, I’d like to note a couple of things for posterity that the general media ha been missing out on.
1. Not that this excuses anything, but the comments were made in the midst of a 3+ hour livestream/interview in which both hosts and gusts consumed copious amounts of beverages, as the title of the show would suggest.
2. The more important part (which has been edited out in all the media reports), one of the hosts called him on those comments and he responded by saying that he wouldn’t change age of consent laws, and that they are “about right” in his own worlds.
3. The context of the conversation was about his own molestation at the hands of an older person.
Now, I still don’t support what he said, and despite fully being behind his right to speak, I also find him to be an incorrigible shit slinging troll. However it seems that the media is being overly harsh on an offhand comment made hours into an interview while being at least buzzed if not outright intoxicated, and he has not repeated this sentiment elsewhere to the best of my knowledge (if he is a general pedophile apologist and I simply missed the other sources, I immediately take back this entire statement, as that is disgusting and unforgiveable).
Now this doesn’t excuse him if he is a pedophile apologist, but it does strike me as a tad biased that one offhand half drunken remark is jumped on by every media source when similar remarks (or outright pedophilic acts) by other celebrities, made in thought out and produced books , interviews etc are glossed over so long as their politics are left enough.
Two things to bear in mind. This isn’t really about Milo. He set himself up as the poster boy, and that’s the price one pays to be outrageous. You fly too high and that’s what happens. Celebrity isn’t fair.
There’s also, “live by the sword, die by the sword,” but that’s such a trite platitude.
Fair point, though I wonder who it was who thought fame and celebrity was fair before this.
It’s all great until it’s not.
The blogger Tim Newman has an interesting take on this. He argues that the outrageousness served Milo well, initially, in that it created a platform for him, but that Milo then erred in failing to pivot to a more serious stance, once he had his platform.
Instead, he doubled down on the outrageousness and it was, as you say, Icarus all over again. Incidentally, Iron Maiden’s “Flight of Icarus” was a fine example of that band’s ability to turn the classics into serviceable heavy metal songs.
I have no clue who Tim Newman is (nor do I care, so don’t tell me) or why you felt the need to introduce him into this discussion rather than just raise the idea. It’s mildly interesting, even if tangential to this post. As for Iron Maiden, it’s not even mildly interesting.
It didn’t seem right to appropriate his idea without attribution, is all. I was counting on it being just interesting enough to outweigh its tangentialness.
I am disappointed that you have no love for the Maiden, however. I guess NWOBHM was one of those things that you had to be there for.