Over the weekend, Mr. Milo Yiannopoulos drew some negative attention. Not much new there. This time, however, Milo finally found that line he’d been searching for. The one that creeps up on perpetual fiends and natural born liars.
After appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, footage of Milo warbling on Joe Rogan’s podcast surfaced late on Sunday. While in conversation with Rogan, Milo seemed to let slip that around the age of 14 he’d engaged in sexual activity with an educators of his: a parish priest called Father Michael, and an English teacher.
However, let’s back up from all the palaver around this for just a moment. I would first like to address what happened on Real Time before Milo put his controversy in all the wrong places.
Milo is not new to me and is certainly not fresh to anyone around the web. He has made his name from the UK to the US by being an overly glorified attention fiend. From GamerGate to Leslie Jones to Lena Dunham to Donald J. Trump, Yianopoulos has not stalked the parapets of their spotlight, he has thrown himself in front of it. From rags to blogs to Brietbart, Milo has scrawled infantile prose across pixels in an effort to PLEASE GOD BE RELEVANT! From homosexuality to transgender pronouns to Islam, this Based Faggot (as he would like to be dubbed), has taken whatever stance will garner him the most attention. Side note, it is kind of tragic but not at all surprising, that someone who has such a lust for the limelight would coin their own nickname and then launch a national college tour around it…
The long and the short of Milo’s story is that he is rarely right and rarely quiet. He literally makes an effort to not be politically correct, and in this effort he just ends up not being correct.
While being interviewed alone by Maher on Friday, Milo came across gregarious, provocative and vapid. His insights were vacuous as he mumbled his way through stale talking points. That being said, I have not seen such a soft ball interview by Maher since he got near Obama last year. They came together on their stance of free speech and humour, while Maher seemed off his game when attempting to cross examine any of Milo’s loosely held opinions. And this is where it begins. Being aware of Milo over the last while has basically consisted of seeing articles he shares online with a witless quip attached as a Facebook post. Something to poach likes, reactions and clicks. After watching several interviews and talks with him, it transpires that this is all there is. Quips and jibes. He’s the Floyd Mayweather Jnr. of opinions: a dreadful misogynist, dancing around his topic only to duck in with a quick jab to score points from his bought-and-paid-for judges.
Yet Milo is not that fast, as was discovered on the Overtime panel at the end of Real Time. Uncharacteristically, Maher lost almost complete control of the panel as Larry Wilmore took over (somewhat attention starved possibly, after losing his excellent show). If you watch the 13 minute video, you will discover that Milo was engaged quite quickly on the topic of his war on gender pronouns. Wilmore actually makes a polite effort to debate him as well, something I am sure will be vehemently denied by Milo’s Yiannopoulites. Around 4 minutes into the segment, however, Milo looks to Bill and tells him he needs to bring on more intelligent people, guests with a higher IQ, while gesturing towards Wilmore and the other panelists. Wilmore then proceeds to interrupt, “Wait, hold on Bill. [to Milo] You can go fuck yourself.”
Well done sir. You did it the right way Larry. You tried, you got no substance of debate. You got insulted. You responded calmly and briefly….then proceeded to eviscerate Milo on various other things he has said that he can go fuck himself for. Not least of all the fact that mere minutes earlier, while Wilmore was trying to calmly engage debate (something oft preached about but rather superfluously held by Milo), Milo staunchly claimed that transgender people are disproportionately embroiled in sexual crimes. Implying of course, for the sake of his argument, that they are the perpetrators of such crimes. However, the statistic as he stated, is true, just without his implication. They are disproportionately the victims of sexual violence. Milo is a purveyor of the fakest of news, twisted little balls of statistics thrown around with heavy implication and no elaboration. Wilmore had merely had enough of trying to be reasonable.
The proof of Milo’s character, however, is in his digestion and reaction to how things had taken a turn. Rather than debate, confront, contradict or defend himself, he resorts to dismantling any semblance of participation and demanding that the third guest, Former Republican Congressman Jack Kingston (Georgia) tell Milo to go fuck himself. This was of course after intelligence specialist Malcolm Nance had had enough of being insulted and told the ill prepared Milo to go fuck himself.
Milo had no rebuttal. He had no leg to stand on. He went for a cheap gag – acting like he was some kind of Sith Lord; that their hate feeds him, when really, he just could not compete at this level. At any level really, considering he does most of his lambasting from a solo pulpit. He’s that bully from school that loses power in sixth year when everyone else realises that saying random shit for attention is just kind of weak and pointless.
However, the nail in his coffin was just about to be shown to him.
Maher tries to cease Milo’s yammering, telling him to “Shut up for one fucking second,” so he can deliver some sage advice to the comparatively young contrarian. “This is the beginning of your career, people are only starting to hate you…”
To which Milo interjects gleefully, “I’ve got so many more years of this!”
You might not though Milo. As Trump supporting user fultzsie11 commented on Reddit last night, “Live by the sword, die by the sword. If you make a career out of pushing the line, don’t be surprised when you cross it.” Original? No. Clichéd? Yes. But clichés are so for a reason. Milo has made a career of vapidity from stoking the fires of controversy wherever he can find them. He has never once had substance and has only ever sought attention. He didn’t care whether what he got was fame or infamy. It was all attention to him.
Reaping what he sows on the Joe Rogan podcast, Milo ended up getting caught in an expertly woven web of his own inconsistencies when host Rogan confronted him regarding lazy accusations made by Milo regarding a sexual relationship he may have had with a one Father Michael, and perhaps an English teacher as well. Rogan lets it slide, preferring instead to let the banter roll, only to return to the point later, using Milo’s own arguments against him – illustrating how he was withholding information regarding a child molester, how Milo had forgotten what age he was when this happened within the space of two minutes (allegedly 14), and how Milo continued to hide names of potential child abusers as he haphazardly waffled about Brian Singer-esque parties he had attended on boats and in houses around Hollywood where he witnessed boys of a very young age engaged in sexual acts with older men.
Milo has defended himself over a number of Facebook posts, detailing how he is not protecting child abusers because he has ousted others in the past. However, the problem I have is twofold:
- If Yiannopoulos was involved in a sexual relationship with an older parish priest when he was 14, whether it was consensual or not, the fact remains that such a priest would be likely to have done this to other boys who may not have consented. Such a priest would have to be investigated as a predator. You were probably not the first Milo. And,
- What if Milo is exaggerating for effect? Something he has definitely being guilty of before. What if Milo has brought a huge amount of attention to a conversational topic that he thought he could get away with flippantly?
Indeed, if you watch the footage of Milo on Rogan, you will notice that when directly confronted, Milo shies away very quickly from the topic. He tries to deflect like a child that has been called out on a lie by a parent. He forgets the name of the priest and then won’t say it again. He forgets at what age he was allegedly abused, then alters it when Rogan confronts him with what he had said not two minutes earlier. He knows he has done something wrong because he distances himself from it with speed and awkward mumbling – ironically, launching into the story of in-the-know bravado around knowing some Hollywood A-listers engaged in these practices that he won’t name. The whole segment wreaks of Milo knowing that he has gone too far.
I am genuinely not saying that Milo made this shit up. I am honestly positing the two possible scenarios that surround Milo’s comments on Rogan’s podcast. Either way, he is in a whole world of professional and personal trouble. Simon and Schuster, the publishing house that were set to release Milo’s book Dangerous this June (nastily to coincide with another Roxane Gay’s book release who dropped S&S over their signing of Milo), dropped the book amid the PR disaster that has attached itself to their would-be author. This is even after they have already paid him a $250,000 advance. A quick aside here, this will be the third book that Milo has toured for that has never appeared. Additionally, Republicans around the US are demanding that Milo be dropped from his significant speaking slot at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) which starts tomorrow in the Gaylord Convention Centre (I’ll just leave that there).
EDIT: At time of editing, it has been confirmed that CPAC has, in fact, dropped Milo Yiannopolous.
Can Milo survive this? Maybe. He is after all a hollow weasel that lusts from celebrity. People like him have been around for a long time. Granted they have been far more talented than him, especially at this level. Joan Rivers and Gore Vidal made whole careers out of being nasty little ironies – perpetually bitching about everyone around them while gleefully basking in the glow of their gossip. It doesn’t matter whether you’re politics or comedy or Hollywood, if you attempt to make your path by being a poster child for controversy while simultaneously courting celebrity and attention like a dog in heat, no one is ever really going to take you that seriously. Yet, Milo is a poor man’s Vidal, who had the prose and wit to weather his own personality. Milo is a lame duck Rivers, who had the tenacity and surgery to hide her withering sadness from us all. Milo has neither their wit nor capability and I don’t think he’s up to the task of saving himself from himself.
In Milo’s case, he has gotten his start by being a sinister conservative for attention. He was the epitome of the attitude that states, “Because I am/like/fuck/know [insert minority/disenfranchised group here] I can therefore say derogatory things about them.” Just because he is gay does not mean it’s fabulous to ridicule the LGBTQ community, just because he’s Jewish does not mean it’s kosher to court Neo Nazis and the Alt Right, and just because you fucked a Muslim guy and then a black guy does not make it alright for you to insight virulent Islamophobia or dismiss the Black Lives Matter movement as not caring for black lives.
Milo is juvenile. He can’t express or defend his opinions under fire. He uses his identity as a bargaining chip with tastelessness and bigotry. Sure he can say whatever he likes, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. He has made a career out of “triggering” people by saying offensive or inflammatory things. If his reaction to his withered publishing deal and talk cancellations is anything to go by, it looks like his inane rambling may have finally triggered himself.
-J. O’Brien
21/02/2017
jcobbryan 