BATON ROUGE, Louisiana – The university’s student newspaper editor Louisiana State University (LSU) is demanding university officials denounce Breitbart Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ ledcture which condemned the ‘body positivity’ movement.
Quint Forgey, the editor in chief of LSU’s Daily Reveille, wrote in a letter that the “university should denounce” Yiannopoulos along with his messagewhich he called “hateful” rhetoric.
“A performance from Milo Yiannopoulos — the alt-right antagonist who spoke last night in the Student Union Theatre — isn’t meant to make people laugh, unless you consider the mere sight of an overweight woman doing yoga funny enough to generate an audible human response,” Forgey wrote.
“The purpose of Yiannopoulos’ rhetoric is to upset other people,” Forgey continued. “There’s no punchline — just bruised egos and the type of division a town like Baton Rouge isn’t lacking.”
Yiannopoulos, who entered to the 1,200 plus person crowd in full Marilyn Monroe-inspired drag, mostly touched on the problems of social justice warriors (SJWs) and big business promoting obesity to young women as a healthy alternative lifestyle in his lecture titled “Fat-Shaming Works.”
Within the lecture, Yiannopoulos spoke freely about lesbian culture, feminists desire to play victims and the Black Lives Matter movement, as Breitbart Texas reported.
But, Forgey writes that he doesn’t believe LSU students who are fans and supporters of Yiannopoulos understood the humor-induced lecture.
His art is provocation for the sake of provocation. I get his pitch: by amplifying divisive rhetoric to socially intolerable and upsetting levels, he’s supposedly exposing an unflattering subcurrent of whiny, righteous pomposity that resides somewhere in the progressive left.
But I had a hard time looking out on that packed house last night and believing all those members of the University community, vehemently applauding the public degradation of plus-sized women, were in on the joke.
I value free speech as much as the next college newspaper editor. I never questioned Yiannopoulos’ right to speak on campus, nor Students for Trump’s right to invite him.
But I am beginning to question the standards by which we judge performers who occupy our University’s main stage. How hateful must a performer’s rhetoric be for the University to at least speak out against it?
A number of students at the Yiannopoulos event said the Daily Reveille had been targeting the British conservative provocateur in the week before he came to the college campus.
One student told Breitbart Texas that “the paper was full of” anti-Yiannopoulos rhetoric leading up to Yiannopoulos’ appearance.
While garnering one his largest crowds yet on a college campus, LSU student protesters were nowhere to be found, despite planning their “response” to Yiannopoulos weeks beforehand, as Breitbart Texas reported.
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.