By David French
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
If there’s one thing we can absolutely count on in our
post-ethical partisan era, it’s that for every scandal, there is, in short
order, a similar — sometimes astoundingly similar — scandal on the other side.
Sometimes, the comparisons are just so on-the-nose that you have a hard time
believing they’re real. Remember when Virginia’s Democratic lieutenant governor
hired Brett Kavanaugh’s lawyers to defend him from allegations of sexual
assault? Remember when his accuser hired Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys?
Remember when the leader of a #MeToo organization called Time’s Up resigned to
. . . vigorously defend
her son against allegations of sexual misconduct?
Well, here we are again, and this one is a doozy. It
turns out that Google works for conservative organizations as well, and Daily
Caller News Foundation reporter Peter Hasson found out that the president of
Media Matters has his own checkered online past. Here’s Peter:
But Carusone has his own track
record of inflammatory statements. Carusone’s now-defunct blog included
degrading references to “trannies,” “jewry” and Bangladeshis.
For example, here’s a summary of a particularly insulting
post called “Tranny Paradise”:
Carusone posted a lengthy diatribe
in November 2005 about a Bangladeshi man who was robbed by “a gang of
transvestites,” as Carusone described it. Carusone was offended that the gang
was described as “attractive” in an article.
“Did you notice the word
attractive? What the f**k is that doing in there? Is the write[r] a tranny
lover too? Or, perhaps he’s trying to justify how these trannies tricked this
Bangladeshi in the first place? Look man, we don’t need to know whether or not
they were attractive. The f**king guy was Bangladeshi,” Carusone wrote. “And
while we’re out, what the hell was he doing with $7,300 worth of stuff. The
guy’s Banladeshi! [sic]”
Carusone also chided police for not
advising the public to “stay away from tranny bars, stay away from places [sic]
where Eddie Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. have/are visiting, don’t f**king kiss
a transvestite, don’t bring a group of transvestites back to your room, etc…”
And that’s just one post. Read Peter’s entire report to
get the full flavor of Carusone’s scintillating insights about “Japs” and Jews.
People are still spitting mad at me on Twitter for
pointing out that much of the outrage directed at Tucker Carlson is fake. That
doesn’t mean Tucker’s comments were in any way decent, responsible, or right.
He said terrible things, and I haven’t seen a single person defend the
substance of his remarks. But the bottom line is that for most of the online
world, revelations of past offensive comments aren’t causes of true anguish but
rather instruments of vengeance. They’re weapons to wield against people you already despise. How do we know?
Because the double standards abound. There is immense grace for allies and no
mercy for enemies.
It will be fascinating to see the response to Carusone’s
remarks. I expect they’ll be largely ignored. After all, one way to hide your
hypocrisy is to minimize the significance of damning reports and hope no one
notices. To the extent they’re not ignored, we’ll see some interesting mental
gymnastics. “He’s learned. He’s grown. Tucker hasn’t.”
A consistent free-speech stance has multiple virtues. For
one, it preserves a culture of free expression that has helped build the
world’s greatest republic and made it a beacon of liberty for people of every
faith and creed. For another, you get to opt out of the ridiculous gotcha game
that has nothing to do with real debate, is completely divorced from meaningful
principles, and is all about vengeance and punishment. Men who live in glass
houses pelt each other with stones. They shatter our political culture. Only
hypocrisy endures.
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