photo taken in 2013; credit: Wikipedia
So, back last March when I first became interested in the current political scene (only a year ago! It seems like a decade), I went onto the Breitbart News website, since I vaguely knew that they were right-wing, or alt-right, or some such. There on the home page was a video embed for something called “The Milo Yiannopoulos Show.” The picture looked sorta . . . campy, like he’d just put on a fresh coat of lipgloss. Who on earth is that? I wondered. Why is he on this self-proclaimedly-conservative (whatever that may mean any more) website? His vibe seemed totally at variance with what I thought Breitbart was all about.
So I did some clicking around, more about of curiosity than anything else, and did I get an earful! So this guy’s persona (and I use that word advisedly, because I think at least part of this is an act) was that of a flamboyantly gay, anti-woman, anti-any-kind-of-discretion, in-your-face, you’d-better-not-badmouth-me-on-Twitter-or-I’ll-troll-you-unmercifully (that last true until he was banned from Twitter, which takes some doing) man who absolutely dee-lighted in scandalizing people. Oh, and he was a great fan of Donald Trump, who, for some reason best known only to him, he calls “Daddy.” (May I just say, “Yee-uck”?)
My thought, one that has become increasingly common over the past few months:
W-h-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-t?
Before going any further with this post, I will point out that the best way to deal with such people who are clearly doing and saying what they do or say only for the attention is to not pay them any attention, at which point they will wither and die. But my little bit of attention isn’t going to make any difference now, and I feel compelled to put my oar in.
It’s come to this: the supposed right, supposed conservatism, is now so enamored of so-called “political incorrectness” that they’ll embrace anyone who makes the left (whoever they are) mad. (If you’re reading this on my Facebook page, be sure to scroll down and read Ben Shapiro’s excellent article posted earlier today; if you’re on my website, go here.) The fact that Yiannopoulos is totally and completely obnoxious and obscene didn’t stop CPAC from inviting him as their keynote speaker for this week’s conference. (CPAC—Conservative Political Action Conference—puts the con in conservative, I guess.) But hey! They’ve had Ann Coulter as a speaker. (Tidbit of the day: Donald Trump was supposed to speak at last year’s conference but canceled at the last minute. The excuse given was that he was too busy with his primary campaigning, but the real reason probably had more to do with the fact that a number of attendees were going to walk out if he spoke. Sigh. I don’t think that’s going to happen this year, when he’s once again on the speaker list.) CPAC disinvited Yiannopoulos only when further material surfaced from him, this time promoting sexual relations with underage boys, and the outcry became too intense to ignore.
What was the CPAC speakers’ committee smoking?
As I keep on a-sayin: We’re going to have to start a new, untainted, truly conservative political party. Who’s with me on that?