David McElroy

Alex Jones is a nutcase — and that comparison is an insult to every other nutcase in the world.

I have no idea whether Jones believes the insane things he says or if he’s just playing to an audience of gullible misfits in order to make money. I halfway suspect he believes much of what he says, but that he plays up certain stories because they attract attention.

So if I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s equal parts madman and showman.

Jones is a slimy opportunist with more than a few screws loose, but I have a serious problem with any social media platform that bans his rants because of “hate content.” (What exactly is hate these days?) Over the last week or so, we have seen Apple, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube kick Jones off of their services.

These companies have no problem with nasty, hateful and vulgar content in their music catalogs or other posts. What makes the rantings of a madman so different that these media companies have decided to ban him? This is “virtue signaling,” not something which is going to “stop hate” or any such nonsense.

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When did you become you?

I’ve been thinking about this question for days because of an exchange I heard on an old episode of public radio’s This American Life. Host Ira Glass was reminiscing about his experience as a child magician.

Glass interviewed a woman who had hired him for a couple of parties back when he was 12. He was talking with her about how it seemed so strange to think of what he had been doing at that age when the woman interrupted him with a question.

“Do you think you’re doing anything different today?” she asked.

Glass protested that what he does now — as a radio host — was clearly different, but the woman would have none of that. To her, the Ira Glass of today is still the storytelling entertainer who she knew as a 12-year-old magician.

I turned the show off at that point, because it suddenly hit me very emotionally that she was right, not just about Glass — but about me. I’m the same person I was at 5 or 10 or 12 or 16. I’m still the same person I was when I gave the camera this very serious gaze as a 5-year-old at my kindergarten graduation.

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