Milo Yiannopoulous, the pitifully preening thin-skinned neurotic meerkat that has self-styled himself as the Liberace of the Alt Right Movement Dedicated to Preserving the Right for Pathetic Manchildren To Be Abusive Shitheads in between bouts of acting as the Pied Piper of the #GamerGate movement, managed to worm his way into the White House Briefing Room today, where he managed to ask a question.

We live in perilous times.  The economy is being buffeted by Asia, ISIS is still dangerous, and both political parties are in chaos due to unlikely primary challenges.  So what does Milo want to talk about?  Apparently, he is still butthurt about losing his blue checkmark due to his self-admitted, utterly despicable habit of being generally a terrible person to anyone who dares to recognize his awesome brilliance.

Anyway, he just happened to wander into the White House Briefing Room, where he asked a question about how him losing his checkmark showed how conservative free speech rights are UNDER ATTACK!  The clip is amusing partially because the White House Spokesperson clearly thinks its about the stupidest question that’s been asked of him in his tenure herding these cats.

There are, of course, a few observations to make here.

  1. If you ask the leader of the federal government to Orwellianly stop a private company from policing their userbase to their likelihood, then your small government/libertarian credentials are about as authentic as a super secret circle that tells you to drink your Ovaltine.
  2. If you can still post on Twitter, you still have plenty of free speech.  The fact that Milo’s patented brand of abuse of the Twitter platform (and, frankly, of the concept of ethics in journalism entirely) has only cost him this vanity adornment and not gotten him removed from the platform so far is, frankly, a testament to both Twitter’s leniency – or stupidity, if you ask me.
  3. Complaining you lack free speech after having managed to sneak into one of the most exclusive media invites in America, and being able to ask the spokes of the opposition party – when you work for a media outlet who despises this president and virtually everything he stands for – is pretty much the height of being so self-absorbedly out of touch with how your so-called issues conflict with actual reality, it’s a wonder you haven’t taken over a Bird Sanctuary somewhere.

This sort of shit has been flowing fast and fierce from those who have tried to turn Online Abuse into a cause for cultural revolution.  A year after the CEO of Twitter noted that they suck at  dealing with abusive shitheads, Twitter has since gotten more aggressive about banning abusive trolls and obnoxious shithead Neonazis, with said trolls and shitheads insisting that this was about the silencing of the conservative worldview, despite the fact that millions of conservatives can and still post on Twitter.  It turns out the common thread is being a troll or shithead, particularly one that engages in doxing, dogpiling or direct threats.  In short, Twitter is following the most basic rule of community management: people who cost them more money or eyeballs than they grant them are, frankly, bad for business, and Twitter is under no obligation to support the fetid swamp feces that they claim is discourse.

But do go ahead and sue Twitter, Milo.  Because I could sorely use the material.