Editor,
The politically lame at the Washington Post and Salon, and their friends here at UNM, have recently took to expressing their best virtue signaling yet over a deceptively-edited video clip of Milo Yiannopoulos sharing his relationship views. I want to address Milo’s statements head-on, because the implications are serious. The excerpts come from an hours-long Internet livestream, which is over a year old, but recently resurfaced in the form of an edited clip from the faceless political group “Reagan Battalion.” In the original context, Milo talked about “multi-generational” relationships occurring in the gay community, noted his own experiences as a guidance-needy teen with an older man, and said a repeated caveat that he agreed with the current age of consent.
He also made a distasteful Catholic clergy joke. Milo’s mother is Jewish, but he was raised a Catholic and experienced clergy abuse at a young age, which he later states can explain his joke as “gallows humor.” The edited clip of Milo’s words was put out by an ambiguous political entity whose only discernible ties right now are to Evan McMullin, a (former) CIA operative and anti-Trump 2016 Presidential Candidate.
Many viewing it, and not the far less eventful original context, were left with the impression that Milo condoned particularly vile sex abuse. This could not be further from the truth, and the original video shows this. Now, we’re left with Milo creating his own media outlet and going his own way after leaving Breitbart in response to the controversy. He sincerely apologized for the flippant joke he made in what he called “the first time I’ve ever apologized.”
Meanwhile, video is surfacing on the Internet of Bill Maher condoning relations between a 35-year old woman and a 12-year old student. In the video, his remarks are akin to those of the edited Milo video. Will the media seek to defame and ruin his career in kind? Unlike Milo’s political opponents, I don’t want Maher’s career to be attacked before getting all the facts. Maher recently spoke at UNM, too.
When we’re in this political climate driven to emotion from one side - and to think these are the same people who saw problems with the Tea Party’s emotionality. It is fatal to free expression for people to be so quick to skipping the facts.
Brian Macklin
Daily Lobo reader
