Well, at least partially, regarding Erik Loomis, the University of Rhode Island assistant history professor who tweeted a crazy tirade of invective against the NRA culminating in his wish for Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick. When people objected, Loomis clarified that life in prison would suffice.
A variety of academics and left-wing bloggers at Crooked Timber erroneously jumped to Loomis’ defense by treating his “head on a stick” tweet in isolation, not as part of the larger unhinged and bizarre stream of tweets. Completely ignored was that Loomis sought to deprive LaPierre and the NRA of the very speech rights the people defending Loomis championed.
Glenn Greenwald, certainly no right winger, took the position that Loomis was a hack blogger at a hack blog, but not a hack who should be fired for his tweets:
Stacy McCain shares Greenwald’s view, at least on the hackery point, noting that Loomis’ tweet stream (now “deleted“) included a fairly consistent stream of profanity and craziness, The Vocabulary of Professor Erik Loomis: ‘Motherf–ing F–kheads F–king F–k’, including this gem:
Look at McCain’s post for more of the “deleted” tweet stream.
See, the thinking left and thinking right can get along.
Only an unthinking “brain-dead hack” would still think Loomis was a hero.
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