In 2015, Salon, the hard-left on-line magazine, published a piece by writer Todd Nickerson, who argued for a compassionate view of pedophiles, like him. Then much-reviled alt-right-troll Milo Yiannopoulos was found to have made comments that seemed to endorse pederasty and child rape, and Salon wanted to jump on the “Let’s declare Milo a monster and be rid of him” bandwagon. And Salon did just that, with three posts so far, and counting.
Inconveniently, one of their writers had found a forum in Salon to make the case that pedophiles were not monsters. See?
What did Salon do? Did it ask Nickerson to defend Milo? Did it try to thread the needle and argue the distinction between pederasty ( adult sex with boys) and pedophilia (sexual attraction to children?). Or stay the progressive “it’s just sex, and sex is good” course, even if it let an intractable foe of THE TRUE WAY like Yiannopoulos off the hook?
Noooooooo.
It just took down all of Todd Dickerson’s articles!
Articles defending pedophiles?
What articles accusing pedophiles?
It’s still a Jumbo, Salon, you hypocritical, cowardly, dishonest morons. Even if you make the elephant disappear, like Houdini, if everyone saw it, you can’t claim it was never there.
_____________________
Pointer: Twitchy
Ethics Alarms 
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Did you read the article, Jack? It specifically says that acting on pedophilic urges is wrong and harmful, and should never be encouraged. The piece is about ensuring people like Nickerson get the mental help they need. It never says pedophilia is normal or that it should be encouraged.
Milo, on the other hand, said that there’s nothing wrong with acting on pedophilia and that it can actually help young gay kids.
Even if you find Nickerson’s position disgusting, it is not the same position as Milo’s, meaning that Salon may have been wrong to publish the piece, but condemning Milo is not hypocrisy. The position is not the same.
I think Jack concern is with the outright deletion of the article as a response to this.
I’m not sure your objections undermine his concerns.
I’m all for finding compassion for people with mental illnesses, but I’m not sure that de-stigmatizing this particular one is the way to go. Too many would probably take it as tacit approval, and cross the threshold into action.
Irrelevant. They deleted the article. They did it because they didn’t want to have to deal with charges of hypocrisy, or to have to temper their anti-Milo efforts prompted by his comments. Milo also, you will note, says he’s anti-pedophilia.
I can’t imagine why you think the content of Nickerson’s piece matters.(I assume Salon mostly wanted to disappear the Headline.) Salon deleted the article. Cowardice, deception, hypocrisy, unethical journalism. What would be your rationalization?
I totally missed the part where it was deleted. My failure to read is at fault here. Yes, THAT is cowardice.
Got it. That would be a bad detail to miss! Misfire explained. Onward!
Chris, I think Milo’s position is more nuanced.
He tried to make a distinction between pedophilia a pederasty. Not sure he succeeded but I wish the topic were more seriously addressed. On the one hand we’ve got victims of molestation struggling for the rest of their lives, and sometimes ending them. On the other hand, we’ve got young gay people killing themselves because they struggle with being gay. I don’t know the answer, but I wish we could talk about it.
Well, I’ve never seen “nuanced” and “Milo” in the same sentence before.
I’m not sure why you see those two problems as being “on the other hand” from each other. You’re right that both problems need to be addressed, but Milo clearly isn’t the person to address them. He routinely throws the LGBT community under the bus, and has gone as far as outing trans students. He mostly uses his sexuality as a shield for why he can’t possibly be a bigot, much as he uses his love of “black dick” to argue that he can’t possibly be racist, despite his leadership of the racist harassment campaign of Leslie Jones. And his fans, many of whom are much more brazenly racist than he is, use this as a shield as well–“See, we have a gay friend!”
He also hasn’t quite pushed for more acceptance of homosexuality as much as he has passed it off as some kind of wicked indulgence that makes him bizarre and deviant–it’s all part of the “Look at me, aren’t I so provocative?” image he’s created.
His position was even more nuanced than you think.
Milo’s first recorded position on what we’re calling paedophilia was actually on a Podcast called The Drunken Peasants, which is produced by TJ Kirk, also known as The Amazing Atheist. back then, as he was being grilled by the hosts on his views, Milo tried to thread a needle and differentiate paedophilia and hebephilia. To be fair to Milo, he’s right… ‘Paedophilia’ is one of the words whose meaning has slowly eroded as the culture war, originally meant to describe the sexual attraction to a *prepubescent* child, but slowly prodded into meaning anything between the classical definition of paedophilia and a 19 year old fooling around with someone on the wrong side of a calendar year. On the other hand… Who the hell wants to make that argument… And what does it proves?
Whew! We thought you were dead!
Only on the inside. (I kid)
I don’t think Milo’s position is more nuanced. Why is there a nuanced distinction between pedophilia and pederasty, as they both involve sexual activities with persons under the age of consent. Is it because society is more horrified with sexual molestation of young children as opposed to teenagers?
jvb.
Well technically pedophilia doesn’t require conduct, just sexual attraction.
It would seem that the elephant disappeared leaving only the smell.
I think there is an angle on what Milo was saying that the left would normally explore (and I think is worth exploring), but isn’t in this case. Milo’s comments that are being attacked were all engineered to defend his abusers. It seems to me like Milo could very well have a case of Stockholm syndrome (or something similar, I’m not a psychiatrist), which has caused him to carve out an exception to what he generally perceives as wrong (pedophilia) which just happens to track perfectly with his perceptions of his own (what most would call, but what he doesn’t) sexual exploitation. His comments on this matter could easily be a coping mechanism for deep-seated issues stemming from his abuse, yet the possibility that his victimhood could explain his perceptions on sexual exploitation is being completely ignored by people who commonly go out of their way to excuse conduct rooted in prior misfortunes.
In (minor) defense of Salon, one is illegal while the other is not. Although, that still does nothing to explain the attempted cover-up.
Right—and the Salon story was about the LEGAL one. Making the removal stupid as well as cowardly.
I think that actually speaks to the level of distrust between Salon and their readership: Salon doesn’t trust their readers to be able to make that differentiation, and to be completely frank, I think they’re right and the average person reading Salon as their primary news source (I just gagged a little) probably isn’t discerning enough to make that differentiation… But you’d think that Salon would be invested in their readership to at least make the attempt at defending themselves before throwing themselves at the mercy of the Streisand Effect.
Two good points. Yes, it courted (and got) the SE, and yes, it was really an insult to its readers.
Yes, there was no reason to remove the story.
I think they all should have their eyes taped open and be forced to watch “Spotlight” 50 times, then memorize the literally hundred of Roman Catholic dioceses around the world (see credits at the end of the film) that have had priest pedophile scandals. You see, the Church hierarchy sees pedophilia as a disease and purports to treats its priestly victims, but then it also protects its pederasts, allowing them to “act out” their “disease” over and over again. Salon and its ethical lapse is a fine topic of discussion, but this fine-tuning of definitions is the very way the RC Church has enabled the lives of thousands of trusting children and families to be ruined.
What’s wrong with pedophilia? The left just adored “The Vagina Monologues,” in which the feminist protagonist gleefully discusses molesting an underage girl.
Art.
Decadence is okay if it’s conveyed in an artistic medium? I’ve never bought in to that. “Art” can be very corrosive. I avoid Quentin Tarrantino like the plague. Sure, he can make his millions, but he can do it without me.