Milo who?: An appeal to the right
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
By Alex Romano, Opinions Editor
Cat Stevens had it right the whole time. It truly is a wild world in which we live. So wild that all of a sudden, otherwise indistinguishable right-wing news agencies like Breitbart can become relevant.
Until admittedly very recently, I never paid the conservative online magazine much attention. It always seemed to me to be a typical, run-of-the-mill Internet info pool, with bases and undertones as slanted as the Crooked House in Idlewild Park’s Storybook Forest and as red as an undercooked steak.
In researching the day’s news, I intentionally glanced over the website whenever it popped up as a search result. Needless to say, I was also unfamiliar with any of the characters responsible for the magazine’s continued publication. So then who was this Brit whose face was being broadcast on live national television on Monday night?
Former Breitbart News Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, whose name would have had me believe that he was Greek, has as of late been taking a career-ending degree of heat for some off-putting comments he made regarding pedophilia. In an uncovered video interview, Yiannopulos (I had never heard of him before either) defends sex between adults and minors.
And when one listener objects to his decisively non-mainstream views and compares his example of sexual relationships between teachers and students in schools and universities to “Catholic priest molestation”, Yiannopoulos wryly answers: “And I sincerely thank Father Michael. I wouldn’t be able to give such good head if it wasn’t for him.”
It goes without mentioning that that kind of insensitive joking, especially coming from a political news journalist, is disgusting and indefensible. But I’ll mention it anyway, because this distinctively alt-right brand of ignorance is the prime motivator for the liberal left to talk down to and attack Republicans for being bigots and creeps in their opinions on such matters as race, sex, gender, sexual identity, and, most relative to this instance, sexual relationships and consent.
Every time a crass, boorish rabble-rouser like Yiannopoulos says something as vile as what he did in the aforementioned interview, the PC Movement’s stock launches 25%, while the mainstream Republicans’ stock spikes downwards to a new low. This pattern repeats itself every time, and will indefinitely.
But, beyond simply what he said that got him canned, Yiannopoulos had been walking on thin ice for a long time, doing more harm than good to his own party with blanket upon blanket of controversial actions and remarks meant to do no more than irritate and upset his opponents.
His goal was never to inform the public, nor was it to prove any points. He was never interested in bettering the conditions of the world around him. Heck, he never even seemed too concerned with the state of his own party, only making it harder for Republicans to defend their ideas and themselves with every verbal clock on the jaw.
Instead, Yiannopoulos only meant to inflame people’s emotions, to get the better of them in his own twisted way. Republicans never cared a whole lot for his stances on taxes, abortion, infrastructure, or any other major policy question, they just liked his personality, as it fit the standard bill of every major conservative personality from the eighties onwards.
Is Yiannopoulos sincere? Is Yiannopoulos a team player? We don’t know, but he can exaggerate like Hannity and rant like Jeanine, so who cares?
Fellow Republicans, this is what people see when they look at us: an angry, spiteful, out-of-touch, and repressive assortment of loudmouths and stiffs looking for fights wherever we go and egging one on when there are none to be found. We have become members of a party that appears to be more focused with ticking others off and freaking people out than with working towards any solid goal.
So do we have it in our hearts to change our ways and leave the dark alt-right swamp behind, and do all of the centrists, traditionalists, and moderates have the courage to exit the closet and confront the arch-conservatives at present dominating the discourse, or should we all, as Milo Whatshisname suggests to homosexuals, just turn right around and “get back in the closet?”
