It’s baffling that any liberal institution in times like these would book a controversial pro-Trump speaker without preparing to withstand an onslaught of pressure from its audience. You would think any bookings of say, Steve Bannon, would be made with full awareness of the risks and a laudable disregard for the inevitable wave of progressive backlash.
Yet here we are, and Bannon has just been canceled from the New Yorker’s annual festival amid a string of celebrity drop-outs in protest of his appearance. Editor David Remnick claims he’s been convinced the invitation was a mistake, seemingly because it involved compensating Bannon for his appearance. Realistically, of course, it probably had more to do with the Bannon-inspired dent in Remnick’s celebrity roster.
But before canceling Bannon, Remnick had posited a strong defense of his decision to book the former Breitbart chief.
“I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation,” he told the New York Times. “The audience itself, by its presence, puts a certain pressure on a conversation that an interview alone doesn’t do … You can’t jump on and off the record.”
That was a perfectly fair point. And as Jay Nordlinger argues in National Review, anti-Trump progressives should really welcome the opportunity for someone as capable as Remnick to engage Bannon’s worldview in front of a live audience. “Steve Bannon represents an extremely important strain of thought and mode of politics,” Nordlinger writes. “What he represents is advancing in Europe and elsewhere. Bannon is a fellow combatant of [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán, [Italian Prime Minister Matteo] Salvini, the Le Pens, and many others. They are not to be ignored. (Indeed, they are to be engaged.)”
What’s odd is that Remnick seems to agree with this notion that it’s more productive to engage Bannon with tough questions than ignore him. Either the outrage mob persuaded him out of rationality or the whole excuse for canceling Bannon was a sad and dishonest pretense to salvage the festival.
After all the scalps claimed by the Left’s rolling disinvitation campaign, why on earth would you book Bannon if you weren’t going to defend his appearance? Was the pressure greater than Remnick expected? And if so, how is that even possible?
This exercise is exhausting. Don’t book a controversial speaker if you’re not prepared to stand up to the mob. That’s the only way we’ll ever overcome this asinine fad.
[Opinion: This New Yorker reader wanted to see Steve Bannon interviewed — and debated]
