It’s come to this: “Even Keith Olbermann is Blasting the HuffPo for Hiring the DUI-Killing, 9/11-Truth-Peddling Donte’ Stallworth as a, Get This, ‘National Security Fellow,” Ace of Spades writes.
If you’ve missed the back story on this, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: Earlier this week, the Huffington Post announced that they hired Donte Stallworth, (no relation to the former Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame wide receiver with the same last name), who has had a middling career as an NFL player, bouncing around from the Eagles, Patriots, Browns, Ravens, and Redskins, in-between pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter.
For reasons known only to themselves, the HuffPo named Stallworth their newest hire as a “National Security Fellow.” And, to borrow the catch phrase in Ace’s headline above, get this: He’s a 9/11 “Truther:”
Hot Air covered this, noting his long history of pushing 9/11 Truth claims, such as his belief that the planes which hit the buildings that day had actually been diverted and replaced by radio-controlled drones.
This isn’t ancient history; his last tweet advancing 9/11 “Truth” conspiracy theories dates from last year.
Byers noted that some of Stallworth’s comments are well outside the mainstream:
“NO WAY 9/11 was carried out by ‘dying’ Bin Laden, 19 men who couldn’t fly a damn kite. STILL have NO EVIDENCE Osama was connected, like Iraq,” Stallworth tweeted in 2009. Stallworth also doubted tweeted, “Gggrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ ppl who actually believe a plane hit the pentagon on 9/11… hole woulda been ASTRONOMICALLY bigger, God bless lost lives.”
The former football player’s most recent tweet questioning the nature of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 was sent out less than a year ago, on November 24, 2013.
He should not have this job. Let me distinguish this situation from my normal take on these cases where there is a call for someone’s firing based upon unpopular statements they’ve made:
Donte Stallworth is not being hired as just an aggregator or the like. He’s being hired specifically as a National Security “fellow.”
I think it is an undebatable proposition that HuffPo would not hire someone pushing the Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory as the “Barack Obama Biographical Fellow.”
You cannot hire a Fake Moon Landing Conspiracist as your “Space News Correspondent.” Right? I’m not saying a Fake Moon Landing Conspiracist shouldn’t be permitted to work in the media, necessarily.
But… let’s keep him away from any story involving astronauts, mm-kay? (Or, as Nina Van Horne would call them: “Actor-nauts.”)
And as Andrew Johnson notes at the Corner today, Olbermann, “the ESPN-turned-MSNBC-turned-Current-turned-ESPN host,” decided to call out his fellow far left compatriots last night on his latest cable show:
After running through Stallworth’s multiple 9/11 truther quotes from five years ago, Olbermann pointed out that Stallworth those theories only after “Huffington’s publicly stated policy of refusing to promulgate conspiracy theories, especially about 9/11, came to his attention.” Meanwhile, Stallworth didn’t just tweet about conspiracy theories 5 years ago — he did so less than a year ago.
“Your supposed news website just hired to cover national security a still theoretically active NFL player with no journalism experience who’s a 9/11 truther, supposedly reformed about being a 9/11 truther, but lying about when he reformed, and, oh by the way, pleaded guilty to killing a man with a car during a DUI five years ago,” he said. “Maybe Donté should have taken this in easier stages.”
Note this wasn’t a hiring misfire by an over-enthusiastic low-level HuffPo staffer; Arianna herself tweeted her blessings to the venture:
.@dontestallworth Welcome aboard! We’re so excited to have you here.
— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) September 3, 2014
I remember an interview with Andrew Breitbart, possibly with myself or Glenn Reynolds — Andrew did countless interviews during his far-too-short lifetime — in which he noted that one of his stealth reasons for helping Arianna create the Huffington Post was that once she told him that she would work her Rolodex of celebrity contacts and invite them to blog at her nascent Website, they would drop the mask and run wild with all sorts of zany conspiracy theories — and/or express their low opinion regarding the rest of America early and often. (QED) I suspect Andrew is looking down at their latest debacle and loving every minute of it.
And as I’ve noted last month when ABC News employee Rosie O’Donnell admitted she was still truther after all these years, if you’re a Democrat who’s a truther in 2014, how much must you secretly despise recently retired President Obama?
Related: “Had Mr. Stallworth given money to Proposition 8 in California, been an advocate of traditional marriage, or suggested mankind’s involvement in climate change might be overstated, I have no doubt the Huffington Post would not have hired him,” Erick Erickson writes at Red State. “But suggest conspiracies related to vaccines and 9/11 and he is golden:”
The paths of political correctness and conformity lead to terrible places in culture. Francis Schaeffer, the theologian, wrote a remarkable book called The God Who is There in 1968. In the book, Schaeffer posits that the United States lags Europe by about thirty years in cultural shifts and he predicted a thirty year or so lag in growing secularism and conformity in the United States.
We have already reached a point in this country where secular society will drive people from jobs based on their religious convictions and rejection of secularized-pseudoscientific bullying. We have a society where people can have wacko ideas, but so long as their values do not offend the ever more pervasive multicultural political correction of the age, they’re golden.
Read the whole thing.
Update: Jim Treacher is angry with the Huffington Post. You’ll like him when he’s angry. A lot.
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