THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Todd Kincannon
No one will be surprised that Todd Kincannon, former Southern Carolina Republican Party chairman is tweeting racist nonsense. It’s just that this racist nonsense is, even by conservative standards, pretty blatant and ugly. What you may not know about Todd Kincannon, however, is that he’s been on a tear over Twitter’s policy of suspending abusive users. I wrote about it back in December, when I noted that he was abusing their algorithms to get people suspended on the left who he didn’t care for. Of course, reality was something else entirely, because the algorithm didn’t pay much attention to whether someone was liberal or conservative, and so people on all sides of the debate were suspended. Since then, Kincannon has switched to claiming that liberals intentionally try to silence conservatives online by using the “Gulag” to silence them. Not only has he made this claim, but he is raising money online by making it. Here’s a screenshot of part of the page he has created on Rally. It even has a logo that seems professionally designed, and yes, a clarion call to help defend conservatives.
Once upon a time, and for reasons I can’t begin to understand, Todd Kincannon followed me on Twitter. Not knowing who he was, I without much thought reciprocated. It didn’t take long for me to understand what a horrible mistake I’d made, and I blocked him. Turns out that Kincannon is one of the more odious trolls the Rabid Right has to offer. Not only is he a typical “Bad, Evil Libruls hate us patriots” Conservative, he’s managed to turn racism into a profit center.
Playing the victim card, he’s created something called the Twitter Gulag Defense Newtwork (#tgdn), because us evil Libruls are oppressed good, God-fearing Conservative patriots. Kincannon specializes in pushing the edge of the envelope when it comes to racist, inflammatory tweets. The strategy seems to be to force Twitter to suspend him for being a hateful jackass so he can attract rage-fueled Breibots and Tea Partiers to leap to his defense.
SEND ME MONEY SO I CAN FIGHT THE EVIL, REPRESSIVE LIBERAL TYRANTS WHO WANT TO SILENCE ME AND ALL CONSERVATIVE WHITE AMERICAN PATRIOTS!!!
Hey, it beats working, right??
The sad thing is that Kincannon is the former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, which should tell you everything you’d ever need or want to know about the Palmetto State’s GOP. Not exactly the “big tent” party….
If you going to be a dick, you might as well go big or go home, amiright?
There are those arguing that Kincannon was perfectly within his 1st Amendment rights to do what he did…and they’re correct. Sadly, the 1st Amendment offers no proscription for those prone to being a hateful, divisive dumbass. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: free speech can be, and very often is, ignorant and offensive speech. Kincannon has every right to air his idiocy and racism as he sees fit. Here’s the beautiful things about the 1st Amendment, though…it also allows those who disagree with Kincannon to call him out for being a racist jackass.
What I find most disturbing about this kerfuffle is the dull roar of absolute silence emanating from the Right. If Republicans are as concerned about appealing to minorities as they profess, they could have at least pointed out that Kincannon doesn’t speak for the GOP and that his view are anathema to the party. That Republicans have been stone silent on Kincannon’s racist lunacy can, and probably should, be taken as an implicit endorsement of his pronouncements. The reality is that Todd Kincannon is not the only hateful racist in the GOP. He’s just the only one with the cojones (and the business plan) to let his freak flag fly. Evidently, Kincannon’s theory is that the more outrage he generates, the more he can appeal to the knuckle draggers for the financial support he needs to fund his battle against the evil Libruls…and he’s probably right.
Don’tcha just love America??
Oh, and one more thing before I go: It seems that Kincannon has something of a penchant for sexting photos of his purple-headed yogurt slinger to the ladies. Class. Pure class, no?
Hey, what else is the Twitter for??
