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In the past, Oklahomas running backs coaches might have pointed toDeMarco Murrayas an example of how its done. Murray redshirted, fought through multiple serious injuries, stuck around for his senior year, set numerous program records and then led a productive NFL career, including leading the league in rushing in 2014.

Now, Oklahomas running backs coach willbeDeMarco Murray.

Murray was announced Monday as the newest member ofLincoln Rileys coaching staff.

This is a really exciting day, being able to welcome one of our programs all-time best players back to Norman, Lincoln Riley said in a statement. DeMarco had a tremendous playing career both at OU and in the NFL and has a passion for coaching and helping young men grow as players and people. Hes got an incredibly bright coaching future and will be an outstanding mentor to our players. I dont think theres anyone better to lead our running backs. Everyone in our program is excited to have DeMarco, his wife Heidi and their children as part of our family.

A product of powerhouse Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Murray signed with Oklahoma in 2006 and left school with the programs record in all-purpose yards (6,718) and touchdowns (65). That means, in all of OUs storied history of producing prolific offenses, no player carried the ball for more yards or crossed the goal line more than Murray.

This is very surreal, Murray said. Obviously I never thought Id be back coaching at the place where it all started for me. Having the opportunity to come back and be among great coaches and be with some of the people I grew up with is exciting. Im thankful for the opportunity Coach Riley is giving me and Im looking forward to being back home.

Murray replacesJay Boulware, who left to become the tight ends coach and special teams coordinator at Texas, his own alma mater.

Murray arrives in Norman with only one year of coaching experience, serving asKevin Sumlins running backs coach at Arizona last season. After a 7-year NFL career, Murray spent 2018 as an analyst for FOX Sports.

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Georgia state rep. proposes pay-for-play legislation with a twist that will make no one happy - NBCSports.com

PASADENA, CA - APRIL 17: Comedian Joe Rogan performs during his appearance at The Ice House Comedy ... [+] Club on April 17, 2019 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)

The news that comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders for president matters just as much as The New York Times endorsing both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar; Which is to say, not at all. But all the buzz surrounding Rogans nod to the Independent U.S. senator from Vermont has taken on a life of its own, far surpassing the Wha...? moment that followed The Times hotly debated double trouble pick.

This week, the Sanders campaign embraced the endorsement, which Rogan announced during a podcast withTimesopinion writer Bari Weiss, the self-described left-leaning centrist whos described by observers of her writing as a pro-choice conservative.

Sanders acceptance of Rogans support,in the form of this video, didnt just generate a backlash. The reaction seen on Twitter was more like front-, side-, top-, bottom- and every other which way-lash. To call it a backlash would be akin to describing the movie Joker as an intimate drama about a desperate mother and her troubled son.

As Dani Di Placido explained in his own Forbes.com story, in the rush to condemn the podcast as problematic, many commentators are missing the point.

Rogan, the colorful, bombastic, actor-turned mixed martial arts commentator has become an influencer in American politics and well-known for his candid conversations with controversial figures. Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, Edward Snowden, Jordan Peterson and Roseanne Barr have sat in the same studio as Dr. Cornel West, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Macaulay Culkin and Robert Downey, Jr. Elon Musk famously smoked pot there, sending Tesla stocks plummeting 9%.

But Rogan also made racist remarksthere, about a primarily African-American neighborhood where he saw the film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes: We walked into Africa, he said on his podcast in 2013. His podcast is one of the most downloaded podcasts on iTunes, and he has nearly 6 million followers on Twitter.

Ten million users follow the Sanders campaign; another nine million follow his official Senate account. The endorsement video tweeted by his campaign was seen more than 5.5 million times, and retweeted 145K times.

That endorsement tweet was swiftly followed by outrage, hand-wringing and a statement by Briahna Joy Gray, national press secretary for the Sanders campaign. She did not name Rogan but made the point that the campaign is not going to reject support from people just because they dont always share the same beliefs as Sanders, the Washington Post reported.

Sharing a big tent requires including those who do not share every one of our beliefs, while always making clear that we will never compromise our values, wrote Gray. The truth is that by standing together in solidarity, we share the values of love and respect that will move us in the direction of a more humane, more equal world.

Among the angry responses to Grays statement was this tweet from the press secretary for rapid response at Human Rights Campaign, Charlotte Clymer, in which she declared: I am a human being and a trans person. I am not another belief.

Her boss, Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David, followed-up by publicly calling for Sanders to renounce Rogan and his endorsement. David noted that Rogan has attacked transgender people, gay men, women, people of color and countless marginalized groups at every opportunity.

Given Rogans comments, it is disappointing that the Sanders campaign has accepted and promoted the endorsement, David said in the statement, which contrasted Rogans record with Sanders, applauding him for having run a campaign unabashedly supportive of the rights of LGBTQ people.

The Sanders campaign must reconsider this endorsement and the decision to publicize the views of someone who has consistently attacked and dehumanized marginalized people, David said.

Two examples of this would be Rogans podcast with Peterson in which the two men mocked respect of a trans persons pronouns as madness; more famously, Rogan misgendered the first MMA fighter to come out as transgender, Fallon Fox, in 2013. You're a f***ing man, Rogan said. That's a man, OK? Fox publicly asked for an apology; she never got one.

Moveon.org not only called for Sanders to reject the endorsement, but to also apologize for accepting it in the first place.

But like a big electoral bug zapper, Rogans endorsement didnt merely scare-off some voters; It drew some closer.

Socialist journalist, editor of Jacobin magazine and Guardian columnist Bhaskar Sunkara called Rogan the best endorsement Bernie Sanders could hope for his fans are a group of people we cant afford to cede to Trump.

And since transgender people are not a monolith, it should come as no surprise there are trans voters who welcome Rogans endorsement. Here are tweets from three trans people who refused to join the Sanders-bashing bandwagon:

@Fox_Barrett tweeted, Hey. Fellow trans folk. I REALLY don't give a sh*t if Joe Rogan is endorsing Sanders. Neither Biden nor Warren nor f***ing Buttigieg are going to meaningfully push something like Medicare for All through. Free healthcare is a queer issue. Please don't get distracted.

The thread by Princeton professor and author Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, shared by transgender athlete and journalist Karleigh Webb, actually walks the line. The scholar, who in 2017 called President Trump a racist, sexist megalomaniac and received death threats for making those remarks in a commencement address, doesnt have a problem with the endorsement. Taylor does call out the campaign for failing to take the next step, and urges Sanders supporters to adjust their focus forward, not try to rewrite what happened this week.

I think its fine to accept the endorsement even as I disagree [with] highlighting him in an ad... Solidarity cant be built on a faulty unity that assumes some of our acceptance of the repugnant ideas that continue to keep us divided. And receiving Rogans endorsement [without] publicly challenging his backward politics is effectively to accept those ideas... Stop denying Rogans bad politics, instead challenge them.

The bottom line, of course, is: Will all this hurt Sanders at the Iowa caucuses one week from Monday? Its highly doubtful, but rival Joe Biden certainly is doing what he can toward that outcome:

At last count, in 2016, Iowa had about 7,400 residents who identified as trans, or 0.31% of the states population. And for Joe Rogan, like Dave Chappelle, every trans Iowan is a punchline whose sole purpose is to make people laugh. This is, after all, America in 2020, where punching down is tolerated, so long as we defeat the bigger bully.

Medicare for all will take care of trans people, and only Bernie Sanders...

Just you wait...

Youll see...

Hell protect trans rights, as soon as hes elected...

Hey, as soon as this election is over, trans rights are next...

By the way, that reminds me, did you hear what Joe Rogan said about trannies?

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Joe Rogans Endorsement: The Stain On Bernie Sanders That Some Voters Think Makes Him More Attractive - Forbes

College football season is over. The offseason moves have begun. Some coaching carousels remain in full swing, while others have settled on whos to lead their respective programs in 2020 and, possibly, if the head coaches prove their individual worth in wins, beyond. Some players are bowing out and taking their talents elsewhere. Other players are deciding whether to stick around for the remainder of their eligibility or, at the behest of their Pop Warner dreams, to take it pro.

Thats where we come in, because news across the college football landscape comes at you fast this time of year. Check in here for the latest updates on the coaching carousel, as well as any player updates that impact the Big 12 Conference and the Texas Longhorns.

Its unsurprising given the exodus taking place at LSU right now thats what happens when you produce a team like the national championship-winning Tigers but newly hired Baylor head coach and former LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda has hired his first coach away from the Tigers staff: analyst Jorge Munoz, who will lead the Bears receivers in 2020.

During Munozs two seasons in Baton Rouge, he worked in a non-coaching role with offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger and wunderkind passing game coordinator Joe Brady, who was recently hired away by former Baylor head coach and current Carolina Panthers head coach Matt Rhule for a role as Rhules offensive coordinator next season.

Texas Tech (defensive personnel)

IN

OUT Kerry Cooks (fired), Todd Orlando (USC)

It took Orlandos firing by Texas head coach Tom Herman to make it happen, but nevertheless, former Longhorns defensive coordinator landed with an in-state rival. Under Texas Tech head coach Matt Wells, Orlando will coach linebackers and has been named assistant head coach. To land him, Texas Tech nixed safeties coach Kerry Cooks and opted to move current defensive coordinator Keith Patterson in Cooks place.

However, all of the above fell through when Orlando ditched Lubbock for a gig as defensive coordinator with the USC Trojans just two weeks into his tenure at Texas Tech.

TCU (offensive personnel)

IN

OUT Curtis Luper (Missouri), Chris Thomsen (Florida State)

Two things are for sure: former running backs coach Curtis Luper is heading to the Missouri for a similar role and offensive line coach Chris Thomsen is off to the Florida State, where hell serve as a deputy head coach under head coach Mike Norvell. The rest, however, remains up in the air, albeit delicately Football Scoop reported on Jan. 15 that former TCU offensive coordinator Doug Meacham is expected to return as an inside wide receivers coach. Colorado State running back coach Bryan Applewhite is also expected to join TCU head coach Gary Patterson, per Football Scoop.

247Sports reports that Patterson is expected to name former Minnesota head coach Jerry Kill to his offensive staff, as a special assistant to the head coach. 247Sports notes that Kill wont be among the ten assistant coaches in 2020. Instead, hell oversee the offense from the perspective of coach and player evaluations, play calls and schemes, among other things.

Baylor (head coach)

IN Dave Aranda (LSU), Ron Roberts (Louisiana)

OUT Matt Rhule (Carolina Panthers)

The NFLs Carolina Panthers stole Baylor head coach Matt Rhule at a price of $60 million over seven years. As a result, Baylor hired LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda. Its the first head coaching job of his career and also means that the Longhorns will face a new defensive coordinator in Baton Rouge this September. Not longer after, Aranda then hired Ron Roberts, who spent the past two seasons as defensive coordinator at Louisiana. In 2019, Louisiana finished No. 18 nationally in scoring defense, allowing 19.7 points per game.

Oklahoma (defensive personnel)

IN

OUT Ruffin McNeil (personal leave)

Football will have to wait for now, because family comes first for Oklahoma assistant head coach and outside linebackers coach Ruffin McNeil, whos leaving the program to move back to North Carolina to take care of his sick father, the Sooners announced Thursday.

Oklahoma State (offensive coordinator)

IN Kasey Dunn

OUT Sean Gleeson (Rutgers)

Longtime Oklahoma State assistant coach Kasey Dunn got the best of this move. Dunn, head coach Mike Gundys longest tenured staff member since 2011 and the 2017 National Wide Receivers Coach of the Year, was promoted to offensive coordinator after Sean Gleeson was hired away for the same role with Rutgers.

Kansas (defensive personnel)

IN Jordan Peterson (New Mexico)

OUT Clint Bowen (North Texas)

In December, longtime Kansas defensive coordinator Clint Bowen announced he was leaving the program to join North Texas, after serving in a variety of roles over two separate stints 1998 to 2009 and 2012 to 2019 and under several Jayhawks head coaches. As a result, Kansas head coach Les Miles hired a safeties coach in Jordan Peterson, who previously served in the same role with New Mexico since 2017 , and as defensive coordinator with the program after he was promoted last year.

West Virginia (offensive personnel)

IN Gerad Parker (Penn State)

OUT Xavier Dye (South Florida)

When West Virginia receivers coach Xavier Dye announced his departure for South Florida, head coach Neal Brown landed on Penn State receivers coach Gerad Parker to step in as the programs new offensive coordinator. West Virginia assistants Matt Moore and Chad Scott shared offensive coordinator duties in 2019. Moore and Scott remain on the coaching staff and will likely be moved to position coaches.

Iowa State (tight ends coach)

IN Mick McCall (Northwestern)

OUT Alex Golesh (UCF)

Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell couldnt hold on to tight ends coach Alex Goresh, whos taking over as co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach with the UCF. As a result, longtime college football guy and former Northwestern offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mick McCall has joined the Iowa State Cyclones as a running backs coach, according to Football Scoops. Assistant coach Tom Manning was in charge of running backs in Ames in 2019 but has opted to move to coaching the tight ends position.

Redshirt sophomore defensive lineman Houston Miller Listed at 6-4, 275 pounds, Miller has declared for the NFL Draft. In 28 games at Texas Tech, Miller notched just three tackles.

Redshirt junior defensive tackle Ross Blacklock Despite the NFLs Advisory Committee telling Blacklock that he should hold off on declaring for one more season, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, hes opting to do so anyway and has signed with an agent.

Junior receiver Jalen Reagor After leading the Horned Frogs in catches (43), yards (611) and touchdowns (5) an inconsistent season by his standards Reagor has opted to forgo his senior season and try the NFL. Hes projected as a first round pick later this year.

Redshirt junior cornerback Grayland Arnold After earning a second-team All-Big 12 recognition in 2019 and a second overall conference ranking with six interceptions, 40 tackles and two pass breakups, Arnold is heading to the NFL, like former coach Matt Rhule.

Junior defensive lineman James Lynch This one was a no-brainer for the 2019 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. He finishes his college career with 33.5 tackles for loss and 22 sacks.

Junior receiver CeeDee Lamb For those who watched the Longhorns take on the Sooners in 2019, this move was in itself equally obvious for Lamb. After consecutive 1,000-yard receiving seasons with double-digit touchdown catches, Lamb is a projected first round pick.

Junior linebacker Kenneth Murray It didnt end well for Murray and the Oklahoma defense against LSU in the College Football Playoff Semifinal game (Heisman Trophy-winning LSU quarterback Joe Burrow ate their lunch), but Murrays 102 tackles and four sacks in 2019 were enough to boost his confidence enough to send himself to the NFL.

Freshman Utah State linebacker Christian LaValle LaValle, a member of the 2019 signing class with the Utah State Aggies, will finally get his chance to play for Wells, who left the Aggies for his current role at Texas Tech after the 2018 season. At 511, 240 pounds, 247Sports ranked LaValle and the No. 44 inside linebacker in the nation coming out of high school. LaValle will likely be forced to sit out the 2020 season unless he successfully petitions the NCAA for an eligibility waiver.

Senior Temple tight end Kenny Yeboah Yeboah barely missed his chance to reunite with former head coach Rhule, who recruited Yeboah as part of the 2016 class. As a redshirt junior with the Temple Owls, he accounted for career highs in catches (19), yards (233) and touchdowns (5). Yeboah is expected to fill a much needed role for the Bears in 2020.

Senior UCLA receiver Theo Howard Three months after he announced his intention to transfer away from the UCLA Bruins, Howard has found a landing spot in Norman, where hell help push what will be a younger group of receivers for the Sooners in 2020. During his career at UCLA, Howard amassed 1,359 yards and nine touchdowns on 119 receptions.

A host of current Sooners have also entered their name into the transfer portal. Names included among that bunch are redshirt sophomore linebacker Levi Draper, redshirt sophomore linebacker Ryan Jones, freshman linebacker Jonathan Perkins, redshirt junior cornerback Jordan Parker, freshman safety Ty DeArman and redshirt sophomore defensive tackle Troy James, among others players on the offensive side of the ball, such as redshirt junior receiver Mykel Jone and redshirt freshman offensive lineman Michael Thompson.

Though James and DeArman are set to land at Prairie View A&M and SMU, respectively, it remains to be seen where the remainder of the transfer hopefuls will land in 2020.

Junior West Virginia offensive lineman Josh Sills West Virginias loss is Gundys gain. With two years of eligibility remaining, Sills opted to remain in the Big 12 as a graduate transfer. His 2019 season ended early on with an ankle injury. Prior to then, he started 22 of 25 games with the Mountaineers and was named second-team All-Big 12 in 2018.

Oklahoma State receiver Tyrell Alexander has also entered the transfer portal, according to GoPokes. In Stillwater, Alexander was recruited as a receiver but was moved to cornerback prior to the 2018 season. He was then moved back to receiver, where he played for the remainder of his time as a Cowboy. The redshirt senior will be immediately eligible wherever he lands, as noted by our SBNation neighbor Cowboys Ride For Free.

Senior running back Khalil Herbert You know run game-happy Les Miles hates to see this one. Prior to his commitment to Virginia Tech in early December, at Kansas, Herbert, who redshirted four games into the 2019 season, rushed for 1,735 yards and 14 touchdowns with an average of 5.4 yards per attempt during his time with the Jayhawks.

Junior West Virginia offensive lineman Josh Sills Like we noted above: West Virginias loss is Gundys gain.

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Big 12 Offseason Tracker: LSU analyst Jorge Munoz expected to join Baylor as WR coach - Burnt Orange Nation

Zachary Leeman

Since being thrust into headlines thanks to his endorsement of Bernie Sanders, Joe Rogan has been slammed as transphobic and racist, but the attacks say more about the modern mainstream media than him.

With a podcast that is consistently at the number one or two spot on iTunes, and has a YouTube subscriber base of more than seven million, an endorsement from Rogan is no small thing.

The comedian and former Fear Factor host regularly reaches a bigger audience than most cable news shows and blogs with his varying interviews with just about anyone you can think of from Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler all the way to presidential candidates like Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang.

A video clip of Rogan admitting he was likely throwing a vote Sanders way was posted on the Vermont senators social media, and the mainstream media and left-wing talking heads responded by labeling 52-year-old Rogan as a troublesome figure with a past filled with a history of racist, homophobic and transphobic comments.

That was how CNN described Rogan, anyway.

And they werent alone in shining a negative light on the man.

Voxclaimedliberal identity politics" are the enemy of Rogan's podcast.

Slate warned Sanders against touting the endorsement and slammed Rogan for his proximity to racism thanks to controversial guests like Alex Jones.

And plenty of talking heads put in their two cents on Twitter.

The hatred of Rogan supposedly comes from his stances on transgender athletes hes said hes against genetically born men competing against genetically born women, especially in fighting. It also relates to some more politically incorrect jokes and comments hes made in his hundreds of hours of podcasting he once said finding out that Richard Pryor may have had sexual relationships with men was disappointing, for instance.

The criticisms dont really hold up since Rogan has always supported civil rights and hes open to talking to anyone, whatever opinion they hold.

This is why the outrage comes across as so inauthentic. It is motivated not by a genuine displeasure with Rogan and his views, but rather by confusion.

The media and modern talking heads hate Rogan because they dont understand him. We live in a time when every single political debate is boiled down to a five-minute yelling segment and pundits speak from a place of supreme confidence before even knowing the facts. It sells better when youre 100 percent against Trump or 100 percent with him, for instance.

Meanwhile, political blogs feed specific audiences with specific points of view, rarely challenging them with inconvenient facts. If you want a right point of view, you go to the right. If you want a left point of view, you turn left.

This is what sells and to see something like Rogans podcast being taken more seriously, when it is so radically different to all of this, is what drives the confusion and frustration.

Someone like Rogan is scary and hard to understand for the modern media because his popularity doesnt fit conventional wisdom and his rising popularity signifies a dissatisfaction with the parameters set for public discourse on television and on the web.

Rogans popularity has been fueled by a desire among a growing number of people for longer form conversations about topics as silly as Bigfoot to as serious as the US economy. Rogans podcasts can run for hours sometimes, and hes not afraid to admit when he doesnt know something. Many of these comments taken out of context either come from some stage in a mental journey listeners were on with the man and his guest, or theyre pulled from a free-wheeling comedic conversation.

And while its regularly promoted today to simply not talk to someone you may disagree with see Morning Joe proudly banning Kellyanne Conway from their show or cancel culture victims like Roseanne Barr Rogan will have just about anyone on his show. From Ben Shapiro to Jordan Peterson, Rogan regularly talks to people he disagrees with. You may see the podcaster debate his guest or even get turned around and change his mind on a subject because of something they said. And, honestly, when is the last time you saw that happen in the mainstream media?

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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The media hates Joe Rogan because they dont understand him - RT

This article is inThe Spectators February 2020 US edition.Subscribe here.

In April 2017, a group of students at Dartmouth College met with Dr David Bucci to complain about sexual harassment in the department of psychological and brain sciences that he chaired. The allegations didnt sound particularly grave none of the students complained of rape, for instance but Dr Bucci flagged it up with the Title IX office even so. It was that offices responsibility to follow up sexual harassment complaints and it duly did, suspending three professors and mounting several investigations.

You can imagine Dr Buccis surprise, therefore, when seven female students named him in a lawsuit they filed against Dartmouth 19 months later, accusing him of ignoring the original complaint. In the 72-page legal document, which did now charge one of the professors with rape, Dr Bucci was named 31 times. The plaintiffs were seeking $70 million in damages.

Twenty years earlier, David Bucci had suffered a mental breakdown, but hed managed to rebuild his life with the help of medication and therapy and was now happily married with three children. Nonetheless, he found the lawsuit deeply distressing, particularly when his name started appearing on Twitter accompanied by hashtags like #MeToo and #TimesUp. Dartmouths lawyers advised him not to respond publicly, which he wanted to do, and he reluctantly complied. The furor on Twitter continued to build, with students, alumni and faculty members demanding he be fired under the banner of #DartmouthDoBetter. A woman at his local food co-op called him a disgusting human being.

Not surprisingly, Dr Buccis mental health began to deteriorate and, last year, he was hospitalized for depression and treated with electroconvulsive therapy. Dartmouths lawyers strongly rebutted all the allegations against him and the faculty dean sent an email to the department expressing her complete confidence in him, but it did little to stop the workplace mobbing. When it looked as though Dartmouth was intending to settle, Bucci urged the college to extract a statement from the plaintiffs proclaiming his innocence. But when the settlement came awarding the women $14.4 million there was no such clarification. The following month, in October 2019, David Bucci took his own life.

The 50-year-old Dartmouth academic was the latest victim of cancel culture, a digital version of public shaming that has claimed the lives of several dozen victims and ruined those of thousands more. Last year, at least one other man committed suicide after being #MeTood Alec Holowka, the creator of the video game Night in the Woods and a list of the canceled included Woody Allen, who lost his movie deal with Amazon; Kevin Hart,who was forced to stand down as host of the 2019 Oscars; and Shane Gillis, who was fired from Saturday Night Live. In the case of the last two, their unpardonable sin was to have told inappropriate jokes.

To say I know how David Bucci felt would be an exaggeration, but I do know what its like to be put in the digital stocks. In January 2018 I was targeted by an outrage mob on social media following my appointment to the board of a new higher education regulator by the British prime minister. As a Brexit-supporting, middle-aged, conservative, white, heterosexual male, I wasnt exactly a popular choice with the English university sector and the offense archaeologists quickly went to work, sifting through everything Id ever written or said in my 30-year career as a journalist. They were looking for evidence that I was unfit for public office and they didnt have to search very hard.

For instance, Id written a piece for The Spectator in 2001 praising a TV show on the obscure cable channel Men and Motors, because it featured topless girls draping themselves over fast cars. The copy editor, who was a friend of mine, gave it the headline Confessions of a Porn Addict his idea of a joke. I thought it was funny, too, until it came back to bite me in the butt 17 years later. An online metal detectorist found it in The Spectators digital archive, stuck a screengrab on Twitter and within minutes Londons main evening paper turned it into a news story. New pressure on Theresa May to sack porn addict Toby Young from watchdog role, ran the headline.

Seven days after the appointment was announced, my suitability for the role had been debated in parliament, an online petition calling for my sacking had attracted 220,000 signatures and a posse of journalists was permanently stationed at the end of my front yard, ready to pounce on my wife and four children whenever they left the house. I resigned from the board of the regulator and apologized for my sophomoric scribblings, hoping that would draw a line under the affair. But that turned out to be naive. I subsequently had to stand down from the board of a charter-school chain Id set up, give up my position as a Fulbright commissioner, abandon my fellowship at Buckingham University and fall on my sword as the head of an education charity. That last one was the job that paid the mortgage. It was a vertiginous fall from grace, like something out of a Tom Wolfe novel. In December of that year I didnt get a single Christmas card.

Unlike David Bucci, I never felt suicidal. I dont have a history of mental health problems, which helped, and even though I was expelled from the world of charities and public service the respectable world, as it were it didnt have much impact on my journalism career. Louis C.K. said that when he got canceled, people used to shout at him on the street, but that only happened to me once and after that I took to wearing a trapper hat whenever I left the house. Not that I did leave the house very often invitations came there none. With no organizations to run and few social obligations, I took up exercise to fill the time. The upshot was that between January and December I lost almost 30lb, which was therapeutic. I was able to tell myself that something good had come out of the whole experience: the public humiliation diet.

Another of the benefits of being canceled believe me, there arent many is that you end up making contact with other people whove been through the same experience. The New York Times ran a piece on this last November, which featured several Spectator contributors: Those People We Tried to Cancel? Theyre All Hanging Out Together. Thats not quite true, but I did meet about a dozen of my fellow malefactors in Toronto at the beginning of 2019 at a party held by Quillette, an Australian online magazine that functions as a kind of support group for the publicly shamed. Claire Lehmann, the editor-in-chief, has never been socially ostracized herself, but she acts as a mother hen to journalists and academics whove found themselves ex communicated for saying the wrong thing. Three months after my fall from grace she offered me a job as an associate editor, which is how I came to be at the party.

One of the deplorables I bumped into was Stephen Elliott, a writer and filmmaker who told me his story of being falsely accused of rape. In 2017, his name was included on the Shitty Media Men list, a McCarthyite document circulated by a former assistant editor of the New Republic called Moira Donegan. The entry for Elliott read: Rape accusations, sexual harassment, coercion, unsolicited invitations to his apartment, a dude who snuck into Binders??? (Binders is a Facebook group for women writers.) His accusers were anonymous and there was no corroborating evidence, but it was enough to end his career. He lost potential Hollywood and advertising jobs, speaking invitations were rescinded, essays and short stories hed written were unpublished, his literary agent dumped him, and close friends stopped returning his texts and emails.

He became a shut-in and a drug addict and, when his savings ran out, his thoughts turned to suicide. He felt helpless, he explained: How do you rebut an anonymous rape allegation? His liberal friends refused to take his side because it has become a sacred principle of the #MeToo movement that we should believe women, even though in this case we dont even know if his accuser is a woman.

He put together a suicide kit and did a trial run that involved driving to the top of a hill near his house, smoking a lot of pot and fastening a plastic bag over his head. But, mercifully, he had a change of heart. He put his life back together and, in due course, decided to retaliate against the architect of his misfortune. In October 2018 he filed a $1.5 million lawsuit in New York against Donegan and some of the other women whod contributed to the Shitty Media Men list.

Elliotts courage has inspired me to mount my own fightback against cancel culture and this month Im launching the Free Speech Union a mass-membership organization based in London for people who feel their speech rights are in jeopardy. Our concern wont primarily be with the laws around free speech, although they could do with being toughened up in Britain. Rather, our focus will be the Maoist climate of intolerance thats enveloping our institutions. Last year, Cambridge University offered a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, but withdrew it when he was photographed standing next to a fan wearing a Proud to be an Islamophobe T-shirt and thats the tip of the iceberg. Boris Johnson succeeded in defeating Karl Marx at the ballot box, but Antonio Gramsci continues to sweep all before him in the cultural arena. The Overton window is getting narrower by the day and we need to do something to make it a little wider.

One of the benefits of full membership will be access to a legal insurance scheme: if we think youve got good grounds for a lawsuit, well take it on. In addition, well use the tactics of the Twitchfork mob against them. So if they gang up against someone on social media, well gang up against them. If they launch an online petition calling for someone to be fired, well launch a counter-petition. Same goes for open letters. The enemies of free speech hunt in packs; its defenders need to band together too.

I hope the Union wont just attract male, pale and stale conservatives, but liberals whove been judged insufficiently woke by their left-wing colleagues. Im thinking of feminists like Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel whove found themselves under attack sometimes literally for challenging trans orthodoxy. In the academy, the professors most likely to be canceled are old-fashioned leftists like Bret Weinstein, the biologist who was hounded out of Evergreen State College in 2017 for refusing to comply with a student edict demanding all white people remove themselves from campus for a day. The message I hope to get across to liberal renegades is: free speech is for thee and not just for me. We will welcome mavericks and dissenters of all stripes.

Judging from the response Ive had so far, theres a real desire on the part of people from across the political spectrum to fight back against this resurgence of authoritarianism. You could feel how much appetite there is for a resistance movement from the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Ricky Gervaiss opening monologue at the Golden Globes in which he took on the Torquemadas of the Woke Inquisition. Lets make 2020 the year cancel culture gets canceled.

This article is inThe Spectators February 2020 US edition.Subscribe here.

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So you've been canceled. Here's how to fight back - The Spectator USA