A grandmother's defense of Milo
First, let me say that I often find recently ousted Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, as a person, to be outrageous and extreme – pretty much the bad boy! But in firing Milo from his job and cheering his demise, why are we conservatives suddenly engaging in the same behavior we find so offensive in liberals? Granted, we didn't burn down buildings or riot in the street, but the end result was the same – we shut down a person's speech because he does not completely share all of our beliefs and moral codes. How does that make conservatives at all different from the liberals we despise?
And since I have yet to find any noteworthy conservative come to Milo's defense, I guess that leaves it to me, a lowly homemaker and grandmother, to step into the fray. Hopefully, I won't be slut-shamed or worse on this wonderful new social media we have for doing so.
This is a very personal topic for me. Ten years ago, I discovered that one of my sons was sexually abused as a child, from the ages of 10 to 16. All of a sudden, his train wreck of a life, abuse of drugs, etc. made sense. My son dealt with his trauma very badly, and for a very long time. Abusing drugs was my son's way of coping, and while I don't presume to have any insight into Milo's psyche, outrageous behavior appears to be his. The bottom line, though, is, who are we to judge?
It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that I, the mother of an abused child, am condoning child abuse. But neither am I accusing Milo of condoning it. He says he does not and that, having been a victim of child abuse, he has license to speak flippantly about it, as part of his shtick. Having no proof to the contrary, I am taking him at his word. As far as I can determine, he is guilty of nothing more than bad taste. Otherwise, he espouses many of the same principles we conservatives hold dear, such as freedom of speech and protecting the unborn. He even supports Donald Trump (calling him "daddy"), which is more than one can say for much of the GOP.