KEVIN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE.

In my most recent Voice column I mentioned the beef over Kevin D. Williamson, would-be executioner of abortion ladies who was recently hired by The Atlantic. Well, it looks like EIC Jefrey Goldberg changed his mind about that:

Williamson’s hiring last month had already drawn scrutiny over past tweets in which he stated that “the law should treat abortion like any other homicide” and “I have hanging more in mind” for a punishment. Those tweets have since been deleted. 

"The language he used in this podcast — and in my conversations with him in recent days — made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views,” Goldberg wrote in the memo. 

"The tweet was not merely an impulsive, decontextualized, heat-of-the-moment post, as Kevin had explained it. Furthermore, the language used in the podcast was callous and violent. This runs contrary to The Atlantic’s tradition of respectful, well-reasoned debate, and to the values of our workplace."

To which all I can say is: LOL. There's no way Goldberg didn't know Williamson meant what he said. If it were such a deal-breaker for him, he might have suggested Williamson start his Atlantic tenure with a column explaining why he didn't really believe it. (Instead Williamson wrote about how Trumpkin Republicans were betraying the conservative movement and -- lest anyone think he was sucking up too much -- how Democrats are just as much an "authoritarian populist" party because they want to "sue or jail people for their views on climate change," which you may remember was a key part of Conor Lamb's and Doug Jones' winning campaigns ha I'm kidding Williamson's full of shit.)

Instead, Goldberg would have us believe Williamson misled him, and the scales fell from his eyes only when a piece of corroborating evidence (inevitably) appeared. If this is really what happened, that would mean Goldberg found all the other nonsense Williamson has published acceptable, but his belief that abortion is murder -- a belief shared by many good, solid American morons -- and that women should be punished for it -- a belief once held, or pretended to be held, by the current President of the United States, if briefly -- beyond the pale.

No doubt as I write this rightwing world is exploding with charges of liberal fascism, but if anyone is protected by Goldberg's curious selectiveness, it's not pro-choice people -- it's anti-abortion people who are, as they were when Trump relented, insulated from the logical conclusion of their beliefs by this anathema. They're just morally serious people who think abortion is the kind of murder for which only accessories should be punished!

Goldberg said he was hiring Williamson because he considered him "an excellent reporter who covers parts of the country, and aspects of American life, that we don’t yet cover comprehensively," which lol wut -- I don't recall any newhounds saying, "say, that caped fellow really made me understand the plight of landlords who evict their tenants." I rather think Goldberg hired Williamson because he's a bomb-thrower and thereby bound to draw clicks -- hate-clicks, perhaps, but clicks nonetheless -- but found to his chagrin that the first bomb went off in his own offices.

As it happens, The Atlantic is the only party that does not see an upside here. People who wanted Williamson gone are celebrating. Williamson should be celebrating, too -- he's probably getting several months' pay, at least, for a single column, not to mention an enormous publicity boost which he can take anywhere else -- maybe to Fox, where he can host horror movies as the new Zacherle. And conservatives have a brand new reason to throw a shit-fit about how private businesses that choose not to work with them are practicing censorship. It's win-whine!

UPDATE. David French, who, like many of the wingnut outrage squadron, was unwilling to mention the specific insane idea Williamson was getting flak for last week, still can't, but alludes to it in -- well, feast your eyes:

Kevin is independent. He’s provocative. Sure, he can troll a little bit, and — no — I don’t agree with everything he says. I’m a moderate, you see. If abortion is ever criminalized in this nation, I think only the abortionist (and not the mother) should face murder charges for poisoning, crushing, or dismembering a living child. So we might differ about the laws in hypothetical-future-America.

He's a moderate, you see, and that's why only the doctor is the BABY KILLER RRRARAGH whom we will STONE MASH KILL JESUS ARRGH and the mother, poor benighted soul, will just live in the Handmaid's Tale hellscape we thus create for her.