Yes, ash grows weary of nullifying the usual suspects: Will, Coulter, Malkin, Parker, Novak. She stopped reading some of them long ago and after this column by Will concluded
he wasn’t worth bothering with either. Then she happened to catch a synopsis of a Will article arguing the natural superiority of conservatism over liberalism which reinforced her decision to add him to the “ignore” list.
But meanwhile there’s this:
Of all the conservative op ed writers, and not just those in our paper, George Will is exemplary. He’s as sleazy as the rest of them, but so cleverly presents his consistent message of privilege and entitlement he’s almost convincing to unsimilarly situated sensibilities.
Yet his misleading and distracting tactics are transparent if you read him closely. Take “hate crimes,” for instance. In his latest column, he cites statistics as if they were relevant. A tiny percentage of crime occupies that category, and a tiny percentage of that category involves violence is his argument against legislation. Since when does the prevalence of a particular offense figure into calculating the extent of its impact upon its victims?
As for the larger framework – the intimidating nature of the implications to society – upon which the rationale for the homosexual dimension of hate crimes is based, Will ignores that aspect of the issue entirely. Instead he pretends determining the motive would require mindreading, as if the thugs who murdered Matthew Shepard – the bill’s inspiration – should have gotten off the enhanced punishment hook because they didn’t keep diaries or announce their intentions to future witnesses.
At least Will refrains from perpetuating the insidious doublethink about all crimes being hate crimes, tacitly conceding that hit men don’t feel one way or the other about their victims. Nor do robbers, thieves, muggers, white collar book cookers and numerous other perpetrators for whom violating inconvenient laws is a business decision, not a threat to life and limb. But as you give him credit for not advancing that instantaneous cliché, subtract points for indulging the temptation to sarcastically cite white males among the protected classes should one happen to be on the receiving end of the illicit activity. Will must know the law applies to historically disenfranchised or exploited subsets of the population - excluding his own advantaged majority.
“Hate crimes” are propelled not merely by hatred but hatred toward certain proscribed classifications of individuals driven, in turn, by fear, resentment, and/or prejudice. Will undoubtedly is aware of all this yet mucks up the works in his mission to continue comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.
George Will is just another aristocratic and self-serving Caucasian. In other words, nobody special.