Sonny Bunch:
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the most amusing aspect of the whole #GamerGate phenomenon (background here and here and here) has been the angry progressive media types confusedly looking around trying to figure out how we got to a point where they would be targeted for boycotts and the like for casual comments they have made. As Varad Mehta noted,
@SonnyBunch It's as though politicizing everything will come back and bite you in the ass. My mind's blown, man.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) October 22, 2014
Crazy, right? They don’t quite understand the world they’ve created. They think it’s the worst thing in the whole world for Internet Tough Guys to make death and rape threats* and also that it’s cool tojoke about Bristol Palin actually being physically assaulted by a man. Because stoopid Rethuglicans, you know? Most amusingly, they don’t even seem to understand the contradiction. So they get really butthurt when someone else whips up an Internet rage mob against them. “Don’t you understand?” they seem to be crying. “We’re the good guys here! We only take on bad people! Those Other people. That aren’t good. Like us!”
This is how you get to a place where Gawker Media is forced to talk out of both sides of its mouth, on the one hand callowly apologizing to readers (and, let’s be honest, advertisers) for one of its writers launching a disgusting pro-bullying attack on a marginalized group while simultaneously apologizing for the apology and denouncing anti-Gawker campaigns as little better than “fascism” in order to maintain their street cred with their bros. It’s a genius move, in a way, one that allows Gawker to tell the companies it relies on for revenue that it’s really and truly sorry while also doing nothing to alienate its core readership of angry progressive know-nothings.
But I can remember a time when Gawker Media was perfectly happy to take part in “fascist” campaigns to ruin the lives of those they disagreed with—or just, like, made a joke they didn’t like.
1. Valleywag Didn’t Like Justine Sacco’s Joke
Remember #HasJustineLandedYet? It was a really hilarious story about a woman who made a bad joke about AIDS and was soon inundated with rape threats and death threats and told that she should catch AIDS and die. Gross, right? Well, people sometimes forget that Gawker’s Valleywag was the blog that got that lynch mob rolling. Good job, Sam Biddle!
2. Gawker Wanted to Bankrupt Chick Fil A Over Charitable Donations
The New York City website was really super serial in its campaign to cause the destruction of the southern fast food chain, which would have led to tens of thousands of people losing their jobs (and deprived the rest of us of delicious chicken nuggets). Why? Because they didn’t like charitable donations made by the company’s executives. Yikes. That’s not fascist at all!
3. Valleywag Delighted in the Ouster of Mozilla’s CEO for Donating to a Political Campaign
Oh that Sam Biddle. When he’s not viciously attacking marginalized communities and calling for people to mercilessly bully them, he’s taking glee in watching people he disagrees with suffer. For instance, here he is celebrating the ouster of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after it was discovered that Eich, gasp, donated to a ballot initiative that Biddle didn’t like.
Have you seen recent photos of the closet gay slut hillary. She went under the knife again. If one looks closely at the photos, fine scare lies behind the ears and a very fine scar in the left upper forehead. America really has to ask what did she did for fours years as secretary of slut-state? As an alleged senator from new York, she bankrupted the state and city. But, NYC deserves everything that it gets. The socialist mayor is a prime example of dirt.
Did one ever think that Gawker’s Valleywag are true socialist and communists ?
Thanks to the idiot pres, holder, brenner, clapper, hagel, kerry, the media and the congress, liberals, communists, and socialist are not responsible for either their actions or words.