Yesterday I told you that Breitbart editor, gay white supremacist and hate monger Milo Yiannopolous had sold a book of his horrid ideas to Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions. That’s their conservative imprint.
Swiftly, the Chicago Review of Books announced on fAcebook that it won’t review any more books from Simon & Schuster. Their statement: “In response to this disgusting validation of hate, we will not cover a single Simon & Schuster book in 2017.”
So far the New York Times and other popular media publications have not picked up on this scandal. Only right wing websites have passed along the word. They’re horrified. I am, too, and I’m a liberal.
Look, you can’t yell at Ivanka Trump in a public place. And you can’t punish all the writers from Simon & Schuster because they’ve chosen to publish ideas you don’t like from one author. They already publish Trump, and the Cheneys, and other people we don’t like. No harm has come to anyone.
I’d rather S&S didn’t publish Yiannopolous (simply because his name is hard to type over and over) but it’s the right of a free press. Indeed, the other conservative publisher in town was called The Free Press. They were also distributed by S&S and died in 2012.
I doubt other publications will join the Chicago Review of Books in a boycott of all S&S authors. I’d actually like to see them review Yiannopolous’s book, tear it shreds, whatever. Blacklisting of any kind is wrong. Silence is wrong. That’s how we got in this mess. Listening to these people and knowing what they are saying when our backs are turned is the only way to overcome them. Ignoring them is admitting defeat.
