THE JUNIOR ANTI-SEX LEAGUE IS BACK IN BUSINESS.
Between the fallout from the fall of Milo Yiannopoulos and Attorney General Boss Hogg's rescission of transgender students' bathroom protections, conservatives are really letting their freak flag fly. There are no pale pastels in their sexual politics now. The betrayal of their former sassy gay friend Milo has sent them fleeing back to the snuggly safety of their old bigotries, and the power play against trans kids has reaffirmed them in their new ones. It's like they can at last be free of even the feeblest pretense at toleration.
(Not so Rod Dreher who, while kvelling over the bathroom ban -- and casting Betsy DeVos, for her brief bullshit feint at protecting trans students, as part of a treasonously tolerant tradition that "surrendered intellectually and in terms of authentic discipleship one or two generations ago" -- yet protests for thousands of words because an Atlantic writer noticed he's obsessed with gays; heavens, no, he doesn't hate them, he says, he just considers them an abomination and an existential threat -- why, he says, "one of my oldest and dearest friends is gay." I wonder if the guy's parents know.) (Which reminds me: There's a Lenny Bruce bit that's apparently not online in which he talks about a friend who's "so queer he's a truck driver"; when Bruce goes to see his clueless yiddishe momme and she says "you wouldn't believe about my son," as Bruce is bracing for it, she says, wonderingly, "he didn't get married yet." Lenny Bruce was the greatest.)
I'll keep my powder dry for the Village Voice column. Suffice to say every wingnut in Christendom is harrumphing like David French does today at National Review: "Not long ago, if school policies purposefully exposed girls to male genitals, they’d be subject to a backbreaking sexual harassment lawsuit," blah blah, as if 1.) a scared trans pre-teen who's bucking several century-tons of social prejudice to be whom she believes herself to be is the same thing as a grownup child molester, and 2.) the ladies room were some sort of open-air genital display area.
I find it hard to believe even the dimmest gomer in Fritters, Alabama thinks that's how it is, let alone a fucking Ivy League White Working Class Whisperer like French. Yet still he pretends. Jesus Christ, sometimes I want to just grab these people and tell them what Chris in All My Sons tells his father: Don't you live in the world? What the hell are you? You're not even an animal, no animal kills his own, what are you?
But for now, let's go back to Milo, and not even the Milo-deniers whose sudden knee-weakness is so gutless and amusing, but to D.C. McAllister, one of the dimmer bulbs at The Federalist, whose pro-Milo column actually begins with "Editor’s note: This article contains graphic descriptions of sex crimes."
OK, thinks I -- I'm not a reactionary, I know Yiannopoulos does not admit to molesting children and claims he was abused as a boy, and I'm open to counterpoint. Alas, McAllister is not interested in defending Milo as a human being, but only as a cudgel to beat liberals:
Yes, he’s provocative, contrarian, outlandish, and offensive, poking his finger in the eye of just about everyone around him. But he also conveys a message that the Left finds unacceptable. His attacks on feminism and identity politics, his fierce defense of free speech on college campuses and freedom of personal choice without being policed by those who are politically correct—all of these ideas offend the Left...
[The Left's] outrage is what it has always been—hatred for anyone who opposes them. And Milo certainly opposes them, often and with flair.
The Left is so bad, I'll even back a flairy against them! But worse is yet to come: McAllister gets into the Liberal Hypocrisy shtick and, after shaking a fist over Roman Polanski -- whose exoneration on rape charges was, I believe, part of the 2016 National Democratic platform -- takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque:
It seems our culture is more apt to defend the sexually immoral than to scorn them—unless they’re outside the liberal cabal, of course. Except that’s not always the case either, something that should make Republicans who are also attacking Milo stop and reflect. Libertarian Camille Paglia often speaks on college campuses, writes for magazines, is often quoted favorably by conservatives, and sells books—all of which Milo has now been denied in one form another. Yet, Paglia unapologetically supports pedophilia.
Wow, okay, I thought at first, good for her, she's willing to own up to Paglia, whose long status as a rightwing nutjob I've written about at length. Little did I know that, after listing a bunch of Paglia's man-boy-love encomiums, McAllister would come to this:
Paglia has given us more than anything Milo has said on the topic, yet he’s run out on the rails. Why? For one thing, Paglia has been around awhile and has cred with many liberals.
??????
As they have always done, they not only ignored her deviant views but embraced them. However, if she were an avid Trump supporter in the same vein as Milo, opposing liberals at every turn and writing those things in this climate, you can be sure the torches would be lit up for her as well. She would be facing opposition greater than any outcry she experienced in the past, which came mostly from conservatives on truly moral grounds.
Wait -- you mean the Camille Paglia of "Feminist Camille Paglia slams ‘disaster’ Hillary Clinton: ‘She is a woman without accomplishment’"? The Camille Paglia of "I was wrong about Donald Trump: Camille Paglia on the GOP front-runner’s refreshing candor (and his impetuousness, too)"? The Camille Paglia of "Camille Paglia: PC feminists misfire again, as fearful elite media can’t touch Donald Trump"? She's getting dissed because she's a liberal?
Sometimes I think I should just show a picture of a florid wingnut and a projector every day and just leave it at that.