It started like any normal evening. I was five cocktails in and e-mailed my editor a new piece (standard subject line: “put this up this evening or I’ll call every connected person I know and make sure you never work again”). There was nothing about this particular piece, “Just Asking Questions: Reopening the Debate About Women Getting the Ballot” that anybody would find objectionable. So when my editor sent me back a one-line response that said, “Milton, are you sure you want people to read this piece?” you can imagine how quickly surprise turned to fury.
I lost an uncle to cancel culture. Everybody has that friend of a friend who was cancelled, but I never thought it would come for me. This is something that happens to others, you might think, but you’d be wrong. Especially if you’re me, who was wrong about this (and nothing else).
Now, I could tell you this editor’s home phone number, but I am civilized. If you e-mail me personally, I’ll politely tell you whatever you need to know. Suffice it to say that this editor, who is younger than me and the living embodiment of everything I loathe (tk a way to imply she’s a Jewish woman but not say exactly that for plausible deniability later remember to delete this note Milton!). Her feelings will often supplant cold hard facts, facts like how I would like to write a piece about how I believe in race science and if I don’t get to do that then somebody is getting fired.
An editor’s job is to take heat when I say “this infers leftists should get the death penalty for questioning patriotism” when what I meant is that this implies. An editor’s job is not to stifle my sweet, sweet creative juices as they flow. If I put a a word in a sentence it’s meant to be there, damnit, and how dare you question its placement. That double “a” was a test, by the way. I am full of intention, and if you think I’ve made a mistake then it’s you who has made the mistake.
What was I talking about? Whatever. This is my letter now, I’ll run long; nobody’s here to step on my vision.
Ah yes, the matter of my book. Recently I wrote a book titled, More Colonialism Now: America’s Superiority Gives it the Moral Imperative to Bomb Whoever, Whenever. Henry Kissinger and Joe Biden gave it glowing blurbs. When I walked to the gas station near my brownstone, as I often do, to yell at the man who puts air in my tires that he needs to make something of himself, I decided to do a little rendezvous into the gift shop. There was a bestseller section, and my book was not to be found. Now, slanted media might tell you that my book has sold nine copies total, all to the dark money investors who have been keeping my career afloat for years. But they’re biased. The truth is, real people are coming up to me in droves, confiding to me in private that they’re too afraid to buy my book, so they buy something “woke” and, at the last minute, switch out their purchase for my book.
I’m surprised that more people aren’t burning my book, as they do in George Orwell’s Fahrenheit 451. That’s right, I’ve read Orwell. And a book as dangerous as mine should warrant more attention from the lamestream media. I keep shipping copies to woke sites like New York Review of Books and Breitbart, but obviously they’re all too radically left to pay attention to the common sense jingoism of a centrist war hawk genocide apologist, or, as I like to call myself: a patriot.
If you want to buy my book you’ll have to e-mail me, because it’s too dangerous for a conventional publisher to put it out. Please e-mail me.
What I am trying to say is, this infamous Harper’s Letter… I was not invited to sign. My intellectual peers passed over me, despite us agreeing totally that the Left has gone too far and nobody thinks for themselves anymore. I was not invited to work for Quillette or Persuasion, because neither appreciates my incisive prose and incredible ideas. The National Review will not lift their restraining order because they are cowards.
The editors of Current Affairs would have you believe that they have been publishing my column as a joke to show how bereft of any substance outside of grievance are the ideas of an avowed centrist like myself. The joke is on them, because here you are reading this. You understand that I am the victim, in this and all situations. No longer will I do Current Affairs the favor of providing the one bright spot in a magazine full of disgusting drivel. When I asked them to fire me, the editors laughed and laughed, and said, “Milton, we wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.” Well, I quit. Obviously this magazine is afraid of my ideas, and I have no choice but to be voluntarily expelled.
What’s next for old Milty? I play my cards close to the vest, reader. Wouldn’t you like to know?
Okay—twist my arm—it’s a fellowship at Harvard.
Signing off—FOR NOW.
