When I was very young, I truly believed conservatives were a minority often shunned for their beliefs. My father, a conservative columnist, talked about it frequently, and I observed how unpopular his ideas were at my parents’ dinner parties. It hadn’t yet dawned on me that because these were dinner parties in Manhattan with their friends who were writers, artists, filmmakers, and publishers that perhaps this reaction was not typical.
By high school, I caught that this was not the widespread problem it was made out to be. But to look at Twitter yesterday, after The Atlantic “parted ways” with Kevin Williamson, an opinion writer hired and fired in a matter of weeks over comments he made about hanging women who have abortions; it seemed like others have not. For all the navel-gazing and self-flagellation liberals engaged in after they failed to predict Trump’s win, the discussion of ideological bubbles seemed to skip those it affects most: Conservatives who live in liberal worlds.
The myth that conservatives are a marginalized group has been around for decades, but never has it seemed so odd as now when they control all branches of government; have huge sway of local and national news; have more than their share of votes and representation in government; have won on the financial front with labor unions declining in both size and power, and have ensured regulations take a back seat to business. Corporations are now people and people at corporations are rarely held to account for their actions. Hell, Hillbilly Elegy is a best seller, and “Roseanne” is a hit show — what more could they possibly want?
Apparently, they want equal representation everywhere — a somewhat ironic request given that these folks claim to believe in a free market, except when the market rejects them. Take Antonio Sabato. Jr. who claims Hollywood has “blacklisted” him after he spoke out in support of Trump. For the last ten years, he has appeared in guest spots on TV shows (Bart in one episode of “Femmes Fatales”) and played supporting roles in made-for TV movies (Paul in “Inspired to Kill.”) There is no evidence his career has changed in the past eighteen months. Similarly, Tim Allen claims with no evidence at all that his ABC show, “Last Man Standing,” was canceled because of his support for Trump. This seems even harder to swallow now that Channing Dungey at ABC (the same person who oversaw the canceling of “Last Man Standing”) had actively pushed “Roseanne” to represent “diverse views” for the network.
The same laments persist in opinion writing. In this bubble, where upper-middle-class liberals in media mix with upper-middle-class conservatives in media, “ideological diversity” has come to mean spanning all the way from centrist Democrat who hates Trump to centrist Republican who hates Trump. Enter Kevin Williamson, a churlish never-Trumper with misanthropic tendencies. Williamson was hired away from his home at National Review to write for The Atlantic, an outlet where never-Trumper David Frum already enjoys a large following.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg explained why he hired a man credibly accused of misogyny, racism, and classism when he said, “He’s an excellent reporter who covers parts of the country, and aspects of American life, that we don’t yet cover comprehensively.” This stuck out as Williamson covers a lot of the same ground as his Never-Trump brethren: Public art, far-right media, Trump’s lies = bad; mocking The New York Times, free trade, Mitt Romney = good. As for under-represented or under-covered communities, Williamson doesn’t seem a good fit for that job. He wrote of white working-class towns:
“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.”
On the face of it, Williamson is less likely to bring underrepresented ideas to public discourse and more likely to act like a typical conservative hire brought on to add a little danger and fun to the mostly centrist-Democratic soup The Atlantic serves. The problem is his misanthropy is easily applied in heinous ways, not simply acerbic ones. In addition to believing poor folks deserve what they get, he compared a black child to a primate (and threw in a 3/5ths reference for good measure), and, as mentioned earlier, called for women who have abortions to be hanged.
This latter argument lead to his downfall, but in the persecution industry that is conservative opinion writing, Williamson was not fired for saying 25% of the female population should be legally hung, it was because he was anti-abortion. This dishonesty, as with the dishonesty from Tim Allen and Sabato Jr, is easy to see through. George Will, who calls Planned Parenthood a “federally subsidized meat market,” was hired by NBC News one year ago with little fanfare, Michael Gerson, and Liz Bruenig at The Washington Post chug along as anti-abortionists who don’t elicit boycotts, and so on.
Each person, company, and publication has lines it will not cross. Greg Sargent points out that Erick Erickson, who is very upset about Williamson’s ouster, rescinded an invitation for Trump to speak at an event after he made uncouth remarks about Megyn Kelly. Apparently, advocating for hanging women is ok, but talking about a Fox News anchor’s period is a bridge too far.
Conservatives are currently bathing in their victimhood, claiming once again that public outcry is endangering their very common and expressed-in-every-mainstream-publication ideas. They refuse to admit, as Goldberg does as well, that (save for his more overtly racist and sexist pieces) Williamson’s ideas are already well represented.
When Bret Stephens was hired by the New York Times opinion section, liberals were irked because he is a climate change denier, but the real knock against the move was the claim it was for “Ideological diversity.” Saying Bret Stephens, David Brooks, Bari Weiss, and Ross Douthat represent ideological diversity is either an intentional lie or indicates living in a bubble so small that protests on college campuses are the most pressing issue of the day. If editorial page editor James Bennet simply said, “Hey, we think centrism is the path forward for America and our choices in columnists reflect that,” it would be far more honest.
As Goldberg said when he hired Williamson:
“Diversity in all its forms makes us better journalists; it also opens us up to new audiences. I would love to have an Ideas section filled with libertarians, socialists, anarcho-pacifists, and theocons, in addition to mainstream liberals and conservatives, all arguing with each other.”
So prove it.
