Thank you David Horowitz for bouncing your anti-reparations ball of controversy pleasantly around the nation, forking over $700-plus per campus gazette full-page ad and asking for nothing in exchange but exposure. Even if the papers didn’t run the ad, they still forked over the exposure as Horowitz asks, “What about free speech?” and the issue is amplified and perpetuated, and, hey, Horowitz gets to keep his $700.
This is how campus papers, uncomfortable with Horowitz’s sentiment, unwittingly took the spotlight off of his mean-spirited rhetoric, and placed it — armed with a newer, more pleasant bulb — on Horowitz himself as a victim.
People love irony — it’s really fun to make that “oooo, I gotcha” sound and point out the hypocrisy of others. So it’s no big surprise that the ever-right Right points to the civil right Left’s censorship of Horowitzian logic and screams foul and kicks and bites and generally has a fit. Then Horowitz is left as the blubbering victim who has been wronged and expurgated and, like, McCarthyized to some degree.
So papers failing to print Horowitz’s ad are suddenly left-wing zealot rags that subvert every poor, oppressed right-wing wisdom cookie that crumbles their way. Papers, despite their individual motives and sets of rationale, are lumped together as “those that refused the ad” and are the Duraflame log of political action in the right’s lovingly stoked fire. Horowitz dons the constitutional cape and plays First Amendment hero, crushing the despotism of the Left with his fist of glory, filling the movie screens of young Republicans, and the comic books of really young Republicans.
He couldn’t have written it better. By specifically targeting a college audience for his anti-reparations ad, Horowitz bet the Vegas odds and counted on easy controversy. He won. Comp that man a cocktail and a buffet pass. Horowitz sees today’s university-fiery red on the Right’s danger screen, hotbed of liberal yelping and hacky-sacking as a chance to assemble the pieces of his mail-order, do-it-yourself Trojan Horse Kit of zippy controversy.
Hey kids, it’s an anti-reparations ad. It’s a First Amendment issue, and it’s food for thought for a couple of white-guy teens out there who had nothing to do with slavery so why should they pay their three personal cents to any descendants of slaves.
Why even consider the fact that America today is continually effected and tainted by the blood of slavery? Even though those teens may not be responsible for slavery, they still live in perpetual benefit from the fact they were not the arbitrarily-selected race of people enslaved, loathed and exploited for culture, art, science and entertainment (but we can’t move next to or hire them because, hey, they’re inferior, right?).
His ad gets printed, and he wins. His ad gets rejected, and he still wins.
The college media scene was a beyond perfect target for Horowitz. The instant editors opened his request to run the ad, their actions and choices — and metaphysical ability to make decisions — were stripped, and in their place was left a lose-lose situation.
Papers who ran the ad, like The Daily Free Press, are met with scorn. After The Brown Daily Herald printed the ad, Lefty students confiscated nearly every copy of the paper in protest. Boom — Captain Constitution to the rescue — Horowitz is a victim of prior restraint from hippie, button-wearing student activists who probably smoke marijuana while exchanging socialist rhetoric in their free time. They are quite definitely a plague on this society. Aren’t we grateful to Horowitz for being such a martyr against the tyranny of social activism?
The world loves looking into the college cages to see what the animal is up to, how it is reacting to this Horowitzian controversy. Nationwide debates are held, the stakes are high, and every truth speaks to one greater, right? The spotlight widens, glares and Horowitz soars higher and is read by people who two days earlier would have said “David who?” But now, they say “Ugh,” or “Oh,” or whatever because it doesn’t matter what they say so long as they say it, right? That’s how you win, so screw whatever the point was, eh, what was it?
Horowitz is now an issue beyond his point. He is a self-fabricated entity who recognized, quite well, that he could count on the power of a few well-directed ad placements and a lot of collegiate Leftism and then again, a lot of Rightism too, so hey — a little something for everyone. Love him or hate him, you can do him no harm.
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