The Other McCain

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Totalitarian @GayWonk Is Attempting to Silence Conservative @SCrowder

Posted on | June 3, 2019 | Comments Off on Totalitarian @GayWonk Is Attempting to Silence Conservative @SCrowder

Carlos Maza (left); Steven Crowder (right).

Carlos Maza’s Twitter handle is @gaywonk, which would seem to imply that homosexuality is not only the basis of his personal identity, but also defines his expertise as a “wonk” (i.e., a public policy analyst). For nearly six years, Maza worked for Media Matters, specializing in — what else? — LGBT issues. Then in January 2017, Maza was hired by Vox-dot-com to produce a series of videos called Strikethrough, more or less exclusively devoted to Maza’s dual obsessions, Donald Trump and Fox News.

The Trump-Fox & Friends feedback loop, explained
— Feb. 9, 2018

Fox News keeps breaking its own rules
— Nov. 26, 2018

Fox News keeps forcing Trump into shutdowns
— Feb. 14, 2019

Why Tucker Carlson pretends to hate elites
— April 3, 2019

You get the idea. Maza’s attacks on Fox News are arguably unethical, because he fails to disclose that Vox is substantially owned by Comcast/NBC Universal, a business competitor of Fox. But in terms of pure politics, Maza’s prominence as a left-wing pundit (many of his videos have gotten more than 1 million views on YouTube) makes him a fair target of criticism by conservatives. Steven Crowder, who has nearly 4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, has been providing this criticism, which is to say he’s made a lot of jokes at Maza’s expense.

So, last week, Carlos Maza published a lengthy Twitter thread claiming to be a victim of “harassment” because Crowder has made jokes about him. Of course, liberal media are amplifying his claim:

Vox Journalist Opens Up
About Homophobic Mob Harassment
He Endures On YouTube
— Huffington Post

Vox Reporter Carlos Maza Breaks Silence
About Steven Crowder Harassment
— Newsweek

YouTube Investigating Right-Wing
Commentator Steven Crowder
— Daily Beast

Jessica Chastain Urges YouTube
to Take Action Against Targeted Harassment
of the LGBTQ Community
— Just Jared

Of course, all these stories just assume the validity of Maza’s claim, that there is a “homophobic mob” who have been incited by Steven Crowder to engage in “harassment.” This assumption ignores the fact that Maza has made himself obnoxious by his repeated attacks on Fox News, and that all Crowder has done is to call Maza’s videos to the attention of a conservative audience that resents such attacks. Most of what Maza calls “harassment” is merely people expressing (however rudely) their objections to Maza’s obnoxious behavior. It may help to compare this to something completely outside the world of politics.

Think about this year’s NFC championship game, in which the referees missed a pass-interference call that cheated the New Orleans Saints out of a Super Bowl appearance. Now, it is an unfortunate reality that football fans are not apt to express their anger politely, and Saints fans probably said some very crude things about the referees in that game. Whose fault is that? Are the TV game announcers, who called attention to the missed call — replaying it over and over in slow-motion — guilty of inciting “harassment” against the referees? If the referees got death threats from angry New Orleans fans, should this be blamed on the broadcasters and sports writers who criticized the missed call? No, of course not.

Likewise, in the world of political commentary, a partisan pundit who makes himself obnoxious by his commentary is apt to provoke hostile reactions and this is not the fault of any critic who calls attention to the pundit’s commentary. Like the refs in the New Orleans game, Carlos Maza has endeavored to deserve the contempt of a rather large number of people, namely everyone who watches Fox News (the highest-rated cable news network, with more than 3 million views). It is not Steven Crowder’s fault that people are angry at Carlos Maza, and if some of these people have expressed their anger in behavior that could be called “harassment,” these people are responsible for their own misconduct. It’s wrong for Maza to blame Crowder for this, in the same way it would be wrong for bad NFL referees to blame their unpopularity on the broadcasters who call attention to their erroneous judgments.

 

Here is a simple statement: Carlos Maza is a bad person.

Evidence of his bad character can be shown by the fact that Maza is now attempting to get Steven Crowder banned from YouTube. This is an effort to suppress free speech, and shows that Carlos Maza is a totalitarian, for only a totalitarian seeks to “win” an argument by silencing opposition.



 

Category: Gays

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