Justice in 2016 looks like a $250,000 book deal for an avowed “supervillain” and pal of white supremacists.
We’ve written before about the person in question, an editor at Breitbart, whose aggressive harassment of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones led to his Twitter suspension, as reported by the Washington Post. The now-banned user “started making fun of Jones, particularly her response to the racist abuse she was getting. ‘EVERYONE GETS HATE MAIL FFS,’ one tweet read. Another called Jones ‘barely literate.’ Later, he shared faked screenshots that made it appear as if Jones were making profane and offensive postings.”
The book deal was perhaps inevitable — it’s a rarely-discussed fact that politically conservative books do gangbusters sales — but what rankles is the way it feels like such a blatant reward for truly appalling, beyond-the-pale bad behavior. And given the arguments we’re now seeing about slippery slopes and normalization of racist and dangerous viewpoints, the book deal is part of a disturbing trend. Already, articles about the deal are quoting him extensively and calling him a “provocateur” rather than a troll.
We’re headed into some dark times. Online, people are making their displeasure felt. We urge you instead to buy one of these or these (or even these) books, especially the books from small houses.
Note: To illustrate this post, we have decided to post an image of a book — an object which is generally a good thing with some notable exceptions — rather than the face of a notorious attention-seeker.