Alex Stein and the Punkification of Conservative Media
From Bill Buckley, Rush Limbaugh, and Human Events to....this.
Over the weekend, righty social media lit up with chatter about yet another example of the decline of conservative media. This one involved BlazeTV personality, self-styled “professional troll,” and apparent 9/11 Truther Alex Stein, who blew up at a pair of female staffers outside a Nikki Haley event after he was apparently deined entry. From the only conservative outlet I’ve seen cover the incident so far, BizPac Review:
To one female Haley staffer, Stein proclaimed that “all the hoes know” who he is.
As the woman tried her best to get away from him, he called a male staffer who wouldn’t let him into Nikki Haley’s event “a little p*ssy boy.” He then focused his unwanted attention on another female staffer.
“Do you have an OnlyFans?” he asked, referring to an online subscription service that is used primarily by sex workers.
“Nikki sucks!” he exclaimed, tearing up one of her campaign stickers in front of the woman.
“I would like for you to please leave me alone,” she finally told him.
“Oh my gosh!” he cried. “You’re all such wimps here!”
The clip also caught the notice of one of the only non-disgraceful members of Congress, Chip Roy:
I debate elevating this behavior, but it must be called out. I have no problem with out-of-the-box efforts to challenge the status quo. But attacking a young, particularly female, campaign staffer or volunteer like this deserves blunt repudiation. Be better, @BlazeTV.
Stein first broadcast the clip last Thursday; it went viral over the weekend, and Roy tweeted about it on Sunday. In all that time, not a word about it was publicly uttered by Blaze owner Glenn Beck, president Gaston Mooney, CEO Tyler Cardon, or editor-in-chief Matthew Peterson. With the exceptions of Roy, BizPac, and Hudson Institute foreign policy analyst Rebecca Heinrichs, condemnation from the Right was all independent Twitter users, not professional big names.
Stein did get some dubious defenders, however. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes absurdly suggested Stein was only taking heat “because conservatives are sexist,” and the staffers were fair game because they were “representing an amoral c*** who is hurting the right,” and taunting them about OnlyFans was “contextualized” by the allegations that Haley cheated on her husband. Which I trust means Gavin would be totally fine with harping on Donald Trump’s sexual history...right?
Actor Nick Searcy replied to yours truly that it was “appropriate” because Stein “trolls the Left” and Haley “is a leftist posing as a Republican” (no more so than Nick’s candidate, but hey, details). Hilariously, when someone pointed out that Haley wasn’t the one Stein said this crap to, Searcy offered a qualifier before tapping out of the conversation: “OK. I didn’t see it. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But anybody who trolls Nikki Haley is an ally. If he wasn’t trolling Nikki Haley, then maybe I would feel differently.”
On Tuesday, Stein devoted the first portion of his show to an apology—sort of:
I have to apologize. Not to Nikki Haley personally, not to her necessarily because she is trying to get me fired from my job. But I do need to apologize to the young ladies that I insinuated that are hos. They’re not hos. They’re nice young ladies, trying to work on a campaign, probably, you know, doing their best to try to make the world a better place to live in. And I was a little out of bounds. I was a little out of line. I insinuated that they had an OnlyFans. Not true. Probably shouldn’t have said that. Insinuated that all the hos know me. Lotta people know me, but not all the hos. And they’re not hos. So I wanna start off by being sincere when I say I’m sorry to those young ladies, and I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.
So far, his words contained the essential elements of an apology, although if you can suffer through the actual video it’s almost worth seeing the gritted-teeth fake smile accompanying the last bit, which was more over-the-top than anything I’ve seen outside the movies. Alas, it didn’t end there:
Even though, even though it did go mega-viral, and oftentimes, on Prime Time Alex Stein, I love going viral, I love getting clicks, I love when I get millions of hits on the internet, this was a bad thing to go viral for. A thing that almost got me fired from my job. That’s right: this close. And if a sitting Congressman, Chip Roy, had it his way, I’d be gone. I’d be unemployed. But that’s one thing that we all need to be careful for, and that I learned, cancel culture exists on both sides. Because there’s a lot of people on the conservative side that say they’re against cancel culture that wanted to see me get canceled. But guys, I didn’t get canceled. But you know what? I get a second chance at life. And before we get into all that, I just want to say I’m sorry.
[...]
I am sincerely sorry to those two women. I’m sorry to Chip Roy. I know that the border is flooded with fentanyl and I know that inflation here in America is absolutely terrible, the middle class, no young people can afford to buy a house, you look at the wars in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, I’m just happy that I have a congressman named Chip Roy that’s willing to forget about all that stuff temporarily and focus on me. So thank you, Chip, for giving me the lecturing that I needed. So I learned a lot from this. Especially from you, Chip.
Once someone invokes the often-misused “cancel culture” label to preen about themselves being a victim, it’s appropriate to start questioning the authenticity of the apology. Particularly absurd is the Tuckeresque swipe at Roy, as if taking a couple minutes to tweet about the incident on a weekend takes anything away from his official duties. It’s a dodge as common as it is stupid: I’m mad that you criticized me but I don’t have a good reason for why you shouldn’t have, so I’m going to play dumb about time management.
Indeed, Stein went on to try to put a noble spin on his antics as “put[ting] myself on the line” and “tak[ing] such big risks that I could potentially lose my job,” doubling down that “it was funny” while still wrong, and proceeding to launch into a “comedic” bit where his producer subjected him to a sensitivity training course, casting doubt on whether his Blaze superiors took his behavior all that seriously after all.
Highlights included Stein expressing umbrage at never being able to “say ho” because “I’m a pimp” and wondering how he’s supposed to find women’s OnlyFans pages if he can’t ask them about them, and a correct answer to what BlazeTV hosts shouldn’t do being “Embarrass themselves, colleagues, and janitorial staff at the network, and make Nikki Haley appear like a sympathetic figure rather than a military industrial complex plant that wants to send all our money to Ukraine.”
Conservative media, ladies and gentlemen!
Of course, it cannot be ignored that this isn’t an isolated incident: juvenility, thuggery, and all-around garbage behavior have become exponentially more acceptable on the Right over the past year than they were in the preceding decades, from Candace Owens at the Daily Wire to Turning Point USA’s anti-Semite problem to Tucker Carlson’s, well, everything to the Republican Party giving the kingdom keys to the legions of scum and villainy that dominate MAGA. Nor is this anything new for Stein himself, whose claim to fame is hounding politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Eric Swalwell, and Dan Crenshaw so childishly as to accomplish nothing other than generating sympathy for them while amusing bottom-feeders who share his arrested development.
Sure, the conservative movement may be hurtling toward complete collapse with the fate of history’s greatest nation in the balance. But at least Glenn and company are keeping the cash flowing. And isn’t that what really matters?