The first thing I met was a guy with no buzz [Update]
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Everything about the attempt to make Mike Cernovich a Thing seems excessively belabored and awkward. The Washington Post article about him starts with the overblown headline:
Mike Cernovich steps into the U.S. Senate race in Arizona. A ‘gonzo thing,’ he says.
To say he is hanging out with Kelli Ward, one of three Republicans running for Jeff Flake’s seat, would be an exaggeration. And having set him up as “the professional conspirator and far right Internet presence,” the reporter becomes rather coy about why anyone should give a shit.
Between volleys of gunfire, he tries to explain the difference between the conspiracy theories and far-right memes he has helped send viral, and those he actually believes in. It’s usually a hazy distinction.
“The Clintons were running a pedophile ring” is what Cernovich tweeted in late 2016, for example — when he was regularly promoting the false #Pizzagate rumors that led a man to fire a gun inside a Washington pizza place, thinking it was some sort of child sex dungeon.
Now, on the Friday before Arizona’s primary election, Cernovich no longer overtly claims that a massive network of pedophiles has infiltrated the U.S. government. But “there has to be some nefarious thing going on,” he says. “There’s no other explanation.”
Other things for which there’s no explanation: That statement. Reporters didn’t press him on it, or if they did, they couldn’t be bothered to write it down.
There’s no end of tweets for him to explain. When shown one from 2012 in which he wrote “date rape does not exist,” Cernovich invents a new conspiracy to deny it. “I don’t even remember tweeting that out,” he says, half-smiling and sweating in the heat. “That’s probably fake.”
No follow up on that one either. Perhaps the heat was getting to everyone.
I imagine the reporters felt a bit awkward when Ward explained why Cernovich was there.
“To get you guys to come on out,” she tells reporters. “So thanks for coming. I’m glad that the hooks are working.”
The hook, apparently the idea of a staffer, did work, for better or worse: Reporters for The Washington Post, CNN, Politico and the Atlantic are all at the gun range, waiting to board the campaign bus and spend a long ride to the next event crammed in with Ward, Cernovich and a long list of uncomfortable questions for the candidate.
Back on the bus, Ward didn’t have much to say to Cernovich and Cernovich didn’t have much to say to anyone else and it all started to sound like a remake of Huis Clos with a larger cast and set on a bus that rolls endlessly through the Arizona desert and the bus driver never blinks.
Will adding Cernovich to her campaign do anything more than fail to teach outlets not to chase after internet assholes? Polls in Arizona close soon, but the answer is no.
[Update: McSally — 53%; Ward — 28%; Arpaio — 19%. I thought Ward would finish last, but I guess the presidential pardon couldn’t overcome the stench of sadism that wafts off Arpaio.]
