Are you provoked yet?
Both James Bennet and Fred Hiatt have been asked to hold David Bradley’s beer:
Hey remember when @TheAtlantic’s new political writer said women who have abortions should be executed by hanging? I SURE DO https://t.co/sac87zso1E
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 23, 2018
There are a few lines in here that a good editor would cut but could be waved off as unwitting bad judgment — the Heart of Darkness reference, three fifths, making fun of the hair. But when the writer also decides the best comparison for a young black kid’s behavior is a monkey and to gratuitously question his parentage, there’s really not much question, is there?
There’s also the unstated humor of Williamson describing his subject as “racially aggrieved,” as if the description does not apply to Williamson himself, or as if the kid’s aggrievedness is not, in this case, warranted.
Now try to imagine the editor of a major publication thinking their audience needed to be PROVOKED by being exposed to the DIVERSE VIEWPOINT of a standard-issue advocate of Scandinavian social democracy, let alone whatever the left-wing equivalent of climate trooferism or making obtaining an abortion a capital offense would be. Nothing but a loud buzzing noise, right? It’s a one-way ratchet.