-By Warner Todd Huston
The journalist Buzzfeed assigned to cover Barack Obama for this campaign season, Michael Hastings, recently took to his Twitter account to claim that “neocons” are gay. I guess accusing people of being homosexual is what passes for serious journalism these days.
Hastings was responding to a Tweet by Richard Grenell, who was taunting the Buzzfeed journo. You may recall that Grenell is an openly gay Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration and for a time was on Mitt Romney’s advisory team.
In his Tweet, Grenell said, “Aren’t u covering Obama for BuzzFeed? Put your big boy pants on & get to work. MT @mmhastings: a “duck call” for trolls.”
In reply, Hastings went for the very name calling tactic that liberals say should never be used: he called Grenell and “neocons” gay.
@RichardGrenell ric, your tweets often appear to reveal insecurities about your own masculinity. is that a neocon thing?
Hastings’ Tweet has caused eyebrows to raise.
Also on Twitter, Stephen Gutowski then asked Buzzfeed’s chief, Ben Smith, for his reaction to this outrageous Tweet made by his “reporter.”
It seems that Ben Smith just blew it off as a joke.
Now, the left has made whole campaigns out of warning people not to call others gay or use homosexuality as a jab, a slam, or a joke. But here is the Buzzfeed team calling people gay or questioning their masculinity and no one is at all upset by it?
But, I suppose we can’t expect the left to criticize Obamaist Hastings on his violation of the Don’t-say-gay rule. Hastings is well known as one of those delusional “crease in his pants” or “thrill up my leg” supporters of President Obama, so he is likely to be given a pass because of his devotion to The One.
For instance, back in March, Hastings was on CNN gushing at how impressed he is by The One and he’s a repeat guest on unseen, left-wing shows on Current TV touting the wonderfulness of Obama.
Of course, that slavish love for Obama doesn’t make him much of an unbiased “journalist,” but it will give him a pass for using homosexuality as a pejorative.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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