The Atlantic's New Hire Catches Left by Surprise
The Atlantic magazine hired conservative columnist Kevin Williamson as a contributor March 22. Liberal outlets are already calling for his firing.
Williamson is a veteran columnist from National Review. He’s one of four people The Atlantic tapped to head up its new “Ideas” section wherein writers discuss the political philosophies of the day.
It doesn’t matter to the writers at Slate and The New Republic that liberals outnumber Williamson on the page three to one — even a single conservative is too many.
They call Williamson a radical because, in 2014, he used racially charged language to describe an Illinois ghetto.
Also, he tweeted women who get abortions should be eligible for the death penalty
Kevin Williamson’s work crosses from provocation into “genuine extremism,” The New Republic’s Sarah Jones said in her piece.
The problem is she’s moving her goal post for “genuine extremism.”
Williamson’s presence shouldn’t taint world-class writers at The Atlantic, Jones claimed.
She offered up Ta-Nehisi Coates as an example of one of these writers — the same guy who justified violent riots in Baltimore and claimed President Donald Trump is a product of dangerous whiteness.
Is that not genuine extremism? Or is it just the sort of genuine extremism Jones happens to like?
Her reaction is representative of mainstream media majority. A similar thing happened when The New York Times hired Conservative Bret Stephens as an opinion columnist.
The internet exploded with calls for his firing because he was too radical.
Since joining The Times, Stephens has called for repealing the 2nd Amendment — twice.
If that’s now called genuine conservative extremism, it’s no wonder why conservatives are feeling less and less welcome in public discourse on the internet, on campuses and on T.V.
A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.
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