In “The Free Speech Grifters --Why are some of the biggest public intellectuals so fixated with a small minority of liberal college students?” GQ writer Mari Uyehara downplayed the ongoing attacks on free speech by radical left-wing groups against conservative campus speakers (and um, the ACLU?).
The real enemy: Those cynical conservatives who evidently enjoy being silenced on campus and aren’t really victims, anyway.
She began with Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time. Maher commiserated with recently-appointed New York Times editorialist Bari Weiss, who has already run afoul of the intolerant left:
....Weiss sidestepped measured criticisms and mild mockery so that she could claim that she was crucified because she "departs from woke orthodoxy." It was a sleight of hand. And it wouldn't be the first time.
(Actually, Weiss received death wishes and got called a racist, amid demands that she be fired.)
Another alleged “Free Speech Grifter” is conservative author and speaker Christina Hoff Sommers, recently de-platformed by a mob at Lewis & Clark law school. Of course, she gave no sympathy to Sommers:
Among the Free Speech Grifters, Sommers has perfected the art. She likes to call herself a feminist, specifically a "factual" one....she's been silent on harassment of women in tech and finance. And she's been outspoken about the due-process rights of men accused of rape on college campuses....
Uyehara suggested Sommers actually enjoyed the threatening atmosphere, as if being called a fascist by a guy is just so much fun:
At Lewis & Clark Law School, Sommers found what seems to be her favorite kind of audience: a disruptive one. Prior to the speech, activists handed out flyers labeling her "a fascist," among other hyperbolic charges familiar to anyone who has spent time on a college campus. When she attempted to give her talk, a handful of students, led by a blonde ringleader in a black "Stay Woke" jacket, disrupted it with chanting about comrades while holding up a cardboard sign that read "No Platform for Fascists." It was a Ben Shapiro wet dream. As the ringleader yelled, "Black lives matter," Sommers turned to the camera euphorically grinning from ear to ear. Here it was: the money shot.
She desperately discouraged journalists from making such a big deal out of de-platforming conservatives, in favor of focusing on a grab-bag of other issues she calls even greater threats to free speech (they’re not). Uyehara even whined that a rare case of left-wing civility wasn’t trumpeted by the “Grifters.” Talk about grading on a curve:
....The Free Speech Grifters were silent when Maya Wiley, the Social Justice SVP at the New School, made news for the humanity she showed toward Sam Nunberg during his six-hour media meltdown over an FBI subpoena....
If "offense is being weaponized," as Weiss said on Real Time, you wouldn't know it from the marketplace. Netflix just paid $60 million to Dave Chappelle for two specials, during which he angered some in the trans community....[Bill] Maher didn't lose his show over that remark (although his old show, Politically Incorrect, was nixed for dissenting with the state over 9/11—not, mind you, angering leftists).
Maher did more than that, calling the 9-11 terrorists brave and the U.S. cowardly.
Reason’s Robby Soave delved into some of the gory details of the campus left she omitted, “who forced Heather MacDonald to flee, who responded to Yiannopoulos by smashing windows and setting fires, who shouted down Christina Hoff Sommers, who no-platformed the American Civil Liberties Union, who invaded Suzanne Goldberg's classroom.”
