Liberal comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, who has been known to feud with Salon.com on Twitter, recently spoke with The Daily Beast about his particularly beef with the liberal publication.
When asked to elaborate on his pithy tweets directed at the site, Oswalt specifically pointed to a May 2013 article published in Salon that criticized him for defending a comedian over a rape joke.
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“That’s all about them wanting to get people to read them, and doing anything they can, and so they put up a comedian’s picture and slap the word rape next to it,” he explained. “The thing Salon is really good at, which is when they point out somebody who is being willfully ignorant about a subject so they can appeal to a certain audience.”
“When they write articles ‘Did The Onion Go Too Far?’ or ‘Is Patton Oswalt Supporting Rape?’ they already know the answer, but they know by feigning ignorance they can create all this debate about it,” Oswalt added. “It upsets me because I used to really, and still do sometimes, love the articles Salon writes.”
Oswalt alleged that all of Salon’s “look-y look-y s–t” actually “hurts progressives.”
“It’s very personal but the fact is that that they want comedians to think twice, three times, four times about any kind of comedy,” explained Oswalt.
On the contrary, he argued that the politically correct “shushers” and “scolders” should not try to censor comedians and prevent them from harnessing their “satire and offensiveness and bad taste.”
However, he later added that critics of comedians — like those at Salon — actually inadvertently make satire “sharper.”
“Nothing’s gonna make the satire sharper than having something as dull and dull-witted as Salon around not getting these jokes,” explained Oswalt. “Their review of John Oliver’s brilliant new show literally included the line, ‘Does it have to be a straight white male hosting the show?’ Oh my f—–g god people.”
