Fifteen is exactly the right amount of time for minutes of fame and for Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech at Berkeley yesterday, which apparently no one could hear anyway, and which cost UC Berkeley $800,000 for security. It’s a metaphor for his career, I guess: an overpriced flash of incoherent bullshit, soon gone and forgotten, except for the slimy stain he leaves behind.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
If there’s anything that has me worn so damn thin with the freeze peachers, it’s that not a single one of them will give a fuck about the 11 anti-Milo protesters who were arrested, four of whom were specifically arrested for “wearing black.” There’s a reason the peach crowd is characterized as fascist enablers–they only care about liberties when it’s fascists who have them.
Siobhan,
And in their next breath they’re calling for NFL players to be fired and for fans to boycott the league for kneeling during the national unsingable song. Which is fine–that’s what freedom of expression is all about–unless you’re doing it in your capacity as an employee of the government. Such as, say, the President.
He and his chums should pay the $800k. And speaking of wearing black, why wasn’t he arrested for wearing an American flag shirt that may be in violation of the US Flag Code?
According to the BerkeleySide report, several people were detained but only 1 was arrested at the mid-day Milo event. The eleven were arrested at a later demonstration off campus staged by Amber Cummings, an interesting local person. The cops story is the arrests were for illegal weapons (sticks, lighter fluid in plastic bottles, knives, mace, a stun gun) and wearing masks. Halloween will be no fun in Berkeley this year because it’s illegal to wear a mask.
Gotta love this: “Around 1 p.m. a number of protesters on both sides marched — oddly side by side, but yelling at one another — on Telegraph and Durant avenues. Police closed off some of the surrounding streets.”
@3 robro
One thing to keep in mind is that the actual ban was on “anything that could be used as a weapon.” I’ll bet my left boot a cop didn’t like someone and decided their housekeys constituted a weapon. Wearing a belt? Potential weapon. Water battle? Could use it as a club, or throw it. Multi-tool? The fascist talk puppets called the press were calling that a weapon when writing about Scout Schultz, so that’s on the list. Cops had a blank cheque from Berkeley to arrest who they wanted, so there’s good reason to take any statements from the cops with a grain of salt.
He also evidently colluded with fellow Mercer operative Steve Bannon during the campaign to infiltrate Facebook.
Siobhan — And I would bet my right boot that you’re right. At a recent Berkeley event, one woman was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly throwing a cup of ice at a cop and/or doing something with her dog that the cops took as attacking them. Note that the arrests made at the Amber Cummings event seem to be Berkeley cops. I don’t recall exactly, but I may have heard they are aggressive compared to UC cops. Still, UC had a small, diverse army including UCPD, Berkeley and Oakland police, California State University police, California Highway Patrol and the Alameda County sheriff’s office…I have no reason to expect any, much less all of them to be nice guys.
I’m not sure BerkeleySide qualifies as “fascist talk puppets” press. I could be wrong, but I’m fairly sure the one person I’ve met that writes for them would not be interested in such a thing, but it’s difficult to know and I don’t know her that well.
@6 robro
I remember that arrest. The dog was a service dog, for visual impairment, and the accused is partially blind. Those critters have aggression drilled out of them to a degree I would consider impressive, so it’s certainly another wonderful demonstration of taking police statements with salt.
@robro #3: The supreme court struck down the flag code, or at least having violations of it be a crime in 1989 (Texas v Johnson). So, you can make and/or wear any article of clothing out of the US Flag with no legal consequences. Of note, Scalia voted for it.
You think he’s gone and forgotten, but you should see what he’s been saying over on his twitter about it all – https://twitter.com/nero
@leskimopie
Lol well done.
drken — From my quick read, Texas vs Johnson was for burning the flag, not wearing it. Burning the flag constitutes “expressive conduct.” Everything else I’m finding says SCOTUS has affirmed restrictions on wearing the flag. I actually thought the question had been settled to allow wearing back in when Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin wore one, but I couldn’t find that.
What I find most bizaare about all this USA rhetoric and freeze peach is that Milo isn’t even an American. He is British.
It’s almost as if he is a professional troll doing it on purpose….
@11 robro
You want to arrest someone for wearing a flag shirt?
It doesn’t appear to be illegal. But would you want to arrest everyone else who violates the etiquette of the Flag Code?
And Wikipedia agrees in other words.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/gentleman_scholar/2014/07/is_it_against_the_law_to_wear_flags_on_clothing.html
Marc Leepson, the author of Flag: An American Biography, explained as much in a Washington Post piece about the strange status and vague phrasing of the U.S. Flag Code:
It has been part of the U.S. Code … since 1942. But the Flag Code is not enforced, and it’s not enforceable. It’s simply a set of guidelines that carries no penalties for noncompliance; it doesn’t even have enforcement provisions. Think of it as a sort of federally mandated Miss Manners manifesto.
nope. just Milo.
in fact, there should be a law against the level of trolling this asshat represents.
it’s demonstrably damaging.
seriously.
Is #13 by any chance a long banned troll?