In case you missed this week’s episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, Milo Yiannopoulos is all the internet’s worst attributes made flesh, formed from the dregs of discarded Monster Energy drinks and conjured into existence by the low rumbling of a million “U mad, bros?” In other words, he’s a Breitbart editor. This yawning moral void in Ray-Bans thinks he’s outsmarted the PC police by being gay and an unrepentant nihilistic jagoff, but his “edgy” humor has now come back to bite him as Mediaite reports that Yiannopoulos has been disinvited from his speaking gig at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. for his comments on gay men and pedophilia. Here’s the statement from American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp:
A little context: Over the years, Yiannopoulos has made comments both oblique and overt on the topic of teenage boys having sexual relationships with older men, implying that this is common practice in the gay community and that it’s a good thing for all involved. His dismissal from the conference was specifically prompted by a damning bit of video that circulated on Twitter over the weekend, in which he appears to speak in approving terms of relationships between 13-year-olds and adults, and credits the priest who molested him as a teenager (he was 17 at the time) with improving his sexual prowess. Here’s an excerpt:
In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationship — those relationships in which those older men help those young boys discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable, sort of rock, where they can’t speak to their parents.
To give Yiannopoulos the benefit of the doubt, he did categorically denounce accusations that he supports pedophilia in a lengthy Facebook post over the weekend, in which he pointed out that he’s personally outed three pedophiles in his career. But he’s still Milo, and upon learning of his ouster as a keynote speaker at the CPAC he tried to backpedal, saying that the jokes are his way of dealing with his own experience of abuse, he misspoke in the clip because he was spitballing and it was late, and that maybe his humor is just too dry and British for this world. In other words, he did it for the lulz. You can read his whole Facebook post below.
UPDATE: Adam Rothberg, head of corporate communications for Simon & Schuster, just tweeted out that, “after careful consideration,” the company has decided to cancel the publication of Yiannopoulos’ upcoming book, Dangerous. This comes nearly a month after author Roxane Gay cut ties with the publisher for supporting Yiannopoulos back in January.
Similarly, Washingtonian reports that “at least a half-dozen” staffers at Breitbart have threatened to walk out if Yiannopoulos is not fired. “The fact of the matter is that there’s been so many things that have been objectionable about Milo over the last couple of years, quite frankly. This is something far more sinister,” an anonymous senior editor says, adding, “There are rules, there is ideology, and there is philosophy in conservatism. If nothing comes of this, we’ve broken all of them.” One could argue that Yiannopoulos had given his Breitbart colleagues ample opportunity to discover their conservative morals long before today’s events, but hey. We’ll take what we can get.