You may have heard of Tal Fortgang, a Princeton freshman who recently announced that he was done checking his privilege and asked that you kindly quit asking him to do so. Originally published in the Princeton Tory, a right-leaning campus publication, the piece went "viral," as the kids say, and it was picked up elsewhere, including by Time.* This college freshman announcing to the world that he had no intention of apologizing for who he was has caused the left to absolutely lose their minds. It's really been fun to watch.
For instance, Salon has published at least three front page pieces about Young Master Fortgang all of which, I believe, were featured prominently at the top of the site. This morning Peter Finocchiaro wondered why conservatives love wünderkinds. On Monday, Mary Elizabeth Williams told Fortgang that she wasn't interested in his apologizing for his privilege, she just wants him to check it.*** On Sunday, Katie McDonough deemed Fortgang a "jerk" and emblematic of racism in America.
It's worth noting that each of these pieces does exactly what Man of the Left Freddie de Boer has smartly warned the left they shouldn't do. That is to say, no one at Salon or other liberal outposts are really interested in making an argument to convince people why Fortgang is wrong or evil, they're just spouting buzzwords in the hopes of scoring points and signaling to their peers that they hold desirable opinions. As Freddie put it, "They say terms like 'privilege' or 'mansplain' or 'tone policing' and expect the conversation to somehow just stop, that if you say the magic words, you have won that round and the world is supposed to roll over to what you want." Reassuring your peers that they're right and the boorish outsider is wrong is double plus good, and being double plus good in the eyes of your peers is all that really matters.
Salon aside, the most amusing reaction—and the one that shows just how deep Fortgang has burrowed under the left's collective skin—came from Adam Weinstein at Gawker,**** who's blowing the lid off this whole thing, people. Did you know that there are conservative magazines on college campuses? And that some of those magazines receive funding from conservative foundations? And that some of the students who work at conservative magazines on campus go on to work at conservative magazines in Washington, D.C.? Wake up sheeple!
In all seriousness, this sentence is amazing:
One of Collegiate Network's founders is John Podhoretz, the conservative scion and editor of Commentary, who spent some time on Twitter praising and promoting Fortgang's piece without ever acknowledging that his group had helped make its publication possible.
As if Podhoretz has any idea who Fortgang is, any idea that the CN funded his newspaper, and was under some sort of professional obligation to note that the kid may have received money from an organization he hasn't had a professional relationship with for some time.
I like to imagine Weinstein having created a Homeland-style chart, yellow strings radiating outward from a black and white image of a scowling J-Pod. As though Podhoretz was sitting at his desk, carefully cultivating the career of Tal Fortgang, molding him in his image, whispering his name into the ears of the editors at Time. "I've found a new young pretty thing," one imagines Weinstein imagining Podhoretz mumbling darkly. "Let's get this story out there asap!" I would react with snide condescension in an effort to distract from the conspiracy he's uncovered, though. After all, when I was at the office of the Virginia Advocate, slapping together an issue at 2 in the morning on a Friday whilst half-in-the-bag on Beam and Natty Light, I too served as a cog in the conservative cabal.
Of course, Weinstein is smart to catalogue all the privilege young conservatives have at university and point out the dominating influence conservatives have on campus culture. It's a good thing that there are plucky young upstarts like Campus Progress to push for progressivism on our, frankly, fascist institutions of higher learning. If they weren't countermanding the influence of the conservative cabal where else would college kids be able to hear about liberal ideals?
Anyway, I salute Tal Fortgang. His trolling has bothered the left so badly that they're spending multiple days attacking his work and are, thankfully, distracted from real crimes like Bridgegate or microaggressions or whatever.
*Which is still a thing, apparently.**
**I kid! You know I love you Time.
***No, really, her piece could have literally been a tweet: "Tal Fortgang says he doesn't want to check his privilege, but I think he definitely should do that." Boom, 99 characters.
****Credit where it's due, this is a pretty solid description of the Free Beacon: "a tabloidy blog site for millennial Beltway righties who hate liberals but love craft beer." Hate's a strong word—some of my best friends are liberals!—but we certainly enjoy trolling them so hard.