"If conservatives don't get high profile gigs, racism and misogyny may be marginalized in our discourse. A true dystopia opens before us."
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) March 28, 2018
The GOP has spent the last 30 years at least doubling down on racism, homophobia, sexism, and authoritarianism. Conservativsm is bankrupt, and its proponents in the US today are at best dupes for, but mostly apologists for, bigotry and bile.
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) March 28, 2018
But instead of having a moment where we actually rethink the worth and virtue of conservatism, Trump has been a moment where everyone is suddenly like, "whoa, those leftist are super intolerant! Why aren't they open to our ideas which gave us the fascist?"
— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) March 28, 2018
The Atlantic has hired Kevin Williamson away from the National Review, in further display of how Trumpism has exposed the bone-deep corruption of “conservative thinking” just as Trump has exposed the rot of modern Republicanism. For all his swashbuckling words, Williamson would never personally lynch a woman who’d had an abortion (or even her doctor) — for one thing, he hasn’t the ability even if he had the guts — but he’s diligently polished his persona as A Thinker Who Is Willing to Make the Bold Arguments…
Rob Beschizza, at BoingBoing:
… I had a hunch: I thought (and said as much) that Williamson was hired explicitly because of what he had written about women, black kids and the poor. To well-off center-leaning liberals,[*] Williamson is the perfect post-Trump conservative: superficially literary, ostentatiously nasty, profoundly disgusted by the weak, yet (and this is super-duper important) opposed to the current president.
Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg explained… why he hired Williamson. Nailed it! Not only was Goldberg and The Atlantic aware of Williamson’s writing, they love it: “I recognized the power, contrariness, wit, and smart construction of many of his pieces. I also found him to be ideologically interesting”. Moreover, Goldberg was party to Williamson deleting his Twitter account, to ease his transition from the reactionary right to columnist at a liberal-ish magazine.
Goldberg’s rationale also makes clear something else, though: they (rather sanctimoniously) think that Williamson has “grown” beyond his National Review persona, and that his willingless to do so is part of why they hired him…
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