Roger Stone, trash-tongued bridge burner?

Note: While I'm critical here of various news sites (to which I've submitted writings) and Fox News programs, I patronize all regularly and generally endorse them. But honesty is the best critical policy. And I think friends should be able to speak frankly, even when it's unflattering.

Following the sad death of Barbara Bush, Fresno State Associate Professor Randa Jarrar tweeted: "Either you are against these pieces of shit [the Bush family] and their genocidal ways or you're part of the problem. That's actually how simple this is. I'm happy the witch is dead, can't wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million Iraqis have. byyyeeeeeeee."

Jarrar posted other, related vileness, and claimed her Fresno State tenure protected her from sanction. Controversy ensued. Fresno State distanced itself from Jarrar's horrible remarks (though rather feebly), and independent news media sites like Breitbart, Infowars, and Gateway Pundit published critical coverage of her nastiness.

Some observers called for Jarrar's firing. I would not, for this reason: She'd (presumably) expressed her admittedly foul sentiments in private time and not with Fresno State facility. Unless her attitude can be established as impacting negatively on job performance, professional sanction should not even enter into this matter.

But, considered as a moral issue, the bug-eyed Jarrar's spittle-flecked malevolence is undeniably reprehensible. Judging by her tweets, she seems proud of her calculatedly repulsive nature, and eager to cavort in bestial aspect for public consideration.

At issue here is not whether critical comments can be made. Of course they can. But declaring them publicly in the immediate hours following a person's death is poor taste, indeed, and underscores the given speaker's low character.

Associate Professor Jarrar was not alone in reveling in Barbara Bush's passing, or contriving disgusting commentary.

Appearing on Alex Jones's Infowars, Roger Stone declared: "I understand I'm going to take a lot of crap for speaking the truth about Barbara Bush. She was a mean-spirited, vindictive drunk. She is ascending [sic] into Hell, right now. She's not going to Heaven. She was a bad person." 

(Stone makes decisions about afterlife disposition?)

As noted above, Gateway Pundit and Breitbart had run pieces denouncing Jarrar. But they were conspicuously silent regarding fellow traveler Stone. Of course, Infowars gave Stone a pass, though it, too, had been critical of the Fresno State associate professor.

I get that some people spew provocative, outlandish rhetoric purposefully, their true ambition being not the communication of serious thinking, but merely attracting career-stoking attention and ginning up controversy. 

Stone was once of more legitimate stature in political circles. But he is now reduced to garish theatricalism on the internet, and that's both sorrowful and, given the revolting content of his Barbara Bush vilification, contemptible.

Roger Stone sometimes turns up on Fox News, particularly as a guest of the Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight programs. Whether Stone's Infowars remarks about Barbara Bush cause the producers of those shows to withhold future invitations from him remains to be seen.

(As a rule, no one should be barred from appearing on programs to comment on random subjects because of unrelated opinions expressed, elsewhere. But if those opinions are so distasteful they hang like a dark cloud over other efforts, credibility suffers.)

When Stone has appeared on their shows, Carlson and Hannity have seemed sympathetic to him, treating him with the uncritical regard afforded an instrumental confederate. Carlson is a serious thinker and generally rugged debater with no time for provocateurs or charlatans. He frequently disarms such and bears in for the argumentative kill. It's great fun to watch.

The visibility of Roger Stone reflects adversely on all of us in the populist revolution against anti-Constitution progressivism and globalism. Our movement must seem clownish to onlookers, when someone like Stone takes the stage. 

I wish his performing wasn't given oxygen by persons who should take their responsibilities, and our cause, more seriously.