JavaScript is not available.

Official

3. An example: Williamson writes: "I didn’t call an African-American child a 'monkey,'" That is narrowly true but Williams did in fact write that black child was a primate, a three-fifths-scale Snoop Dogg & had questionable parentage

585

Official

4. So to summarize. Williamson: black child is "primate" etc. Other people: WTF dude! Williamson: Hey I didn't call him a "monkey"! Stop being a twitter mob lynching my free speech.

610

Official

5. The same disingenuousness characterizes Williamson's views (if we want to call it that) on punishing abortion. According to Williamson whole controversy hangs on "a six-word, four-year-old tweet" & one podcast.

450

Official

6. Here's what Williamson's account leaves out. After his first tweet, he was repeatedly challenged on twitter & he stuck fast to his position that abortion was an offence worthy of execution. storify.com/AngryBlackLady

515

Official

7. Moreover, by Jeffrey Goldberg's account, when he first discussed abortion tweet with Williamson he was told it was a one off but subsequently (upon listening to podcast & talking to Williamson) concluded this was Williamson's view.

420

Official

8. Goldberg's account (which Williamson neither addresses nor refutes) makes clear that the cause for firing was wrong impression created that tweet was merely "an impulsive, decontextualized, heat-of-the-moment post, as Kevin had explained it." I.e. lying.

440

Official

9. Williamson is also very mad that people wrote articles criticizing him without interviewing him. I find this a baffling objection.

443

Official

10. Williamson is a public writer, so people can reasonable judge him by his wriitng. It's normal to judge writers, even controversial ones (say Ta-Nehisi Coates or Noam Chomsky) based on their writing without interviewing them.

606

Official

11. Even a lesser light like myself gets criticized (as it happens in the pages of Williamson's old magazine National Review) without anyone bothering to interview me. Which is ok. It's fair to judge me by my words. Williamson as well.

472

Official

12. But, as it happens, after Williamson was fired from Atlantic (and hence newsworthy) I wrote to him and asked for a Q&A in New Republic to discuss his view. He rejected me in vehement terms, insulting both me & TNR.

590

Official

13. My favorite part of the exchange where I politely offered a Q&A where Williamson could explain his views at length in TNR is when he called me and the magazine "mosquitos"

420

Kevin Williamson Won’t Say What Abortion Sanctions He Favors

Official

14. As it happens, the stout-hearted

@ed_kilgore

was able to interview Williamson for New York, but not with fruitful results:

nymag.com

After complaining no one will just ask him, I did. Williamson won’t answer plain questions.

343

Official

15.

@ed_kilgore

repeatedly asks Williamson a simple & fair question: what do you think punishment for abortion should be. Williamson repeatedly refuses to answer. That's very strange from a man who also has talked about hanging as a fit punishment for abortion

471

Official

16. To recap. Williamson: women who have abortions should be hanged. Sane people: WTF dude. W: It was just a provocation. SP. Um, ok. W on friendly podcast: Yeah, hanging is just logical but I don't like capital punishment SP: What should punishment be? W: I won't say.

500

Official

17. It's very strange. Williamson actually says abortion is "in some ways it's worse than your typical murder." If so, shouldn't he be willing to spell out (not just as a "trollish and hostile" tweet) how something worse than murder should be punished.

406

Official

18. Williamson says his suggestion of hanging not "a public-policy recommendation." That's true. It's not an idea or a policy, but an expression of an emotion and not a credible one: a desire to punish women.

490

Official

19. Cards on the table: I am strongly pro-choice. But I accept that many anti-abortion people are motivated by a genuine concern for fetal personhood & rights. Not Williamson, though. Something else is at work.

467

Official

20. If you go by Williamson's writings on abortion in National Review & words of his friends, this is a personal issue because Williamson sees himself as abortion survivor:

Quote Tweet

Dan McLaughlin

@baseballcrank

Apr 5, 2018

This is precisely why this is asymmetrical. Kevin feels especially strongly about this issue b/c he's the sort of person who could - maybe would - have been aborted after 1973. They extend no similar empathy to how this affects *him* personally. twitter.com/robbysoave/sta

Show this thread

269

Official

21. Here's the basic argument from Williamson's friends: Williamson is a former fetus & abortion survivor so he feels passionate about issue. It's self-defence! That's why he talks about hanging women.

302

Official

22. I have to confess, I find the argument about being an abortion survivor puzzling on a metaphysical level. It doesn't account for the radical contingency of being.

447

Official

23. I mean anyone who understands biology should realize that the fact that any of us are here is a immense miracle.We all survived abortion, or miscarriage or premature ejaculation. Why get mad at hypotheticals?

536

Official

24. It's true that if Kevin Williamson's mom had aborted him he wouldn't exist. Also true that if his dad had prematurely ejaculated he wouldn't exist. Should we hang men who prematurely ejaculate? Where does this anger come from?

595

Official

25. To clarify My point is that if Williamson's dad had prematurely ejaculated another sperm, not Williamson-homunculi, have impregnated egg. twitter.com/JohnnyDramamin

This Tweet is unavailable.

250

Official

26. I mentioned this before but Williamson's anger at his mom (who, for the record, did NOT abort him) often calls to mind Jack Kirby's weirdest creation, Paranex, The Fighting Fetus.

302

Official

27. The point of all this is that, as he admits, Williamson doesn't have a "public policy" position on abortion. He has a visceral feeling: that women need to be punished. That's psychologically interesting but something that Atlantic was rightly wary of.

512

Official

28. One last thing: in keeping with Trollish Three-step, whenever Williamson is in safe-space of right-wing media, he reverts to fantasizing about hanging women:

Quote Tweet

Philip N Cohen

@familyunequal