Talking Points Memo‘s liberal, balding head honcho Josh Marshall apparently thinks gay jokes about men who aren’t gay are funny. On Tuesday night he went on Twitter and used an old Seinfeld joke to accuse the men of The Daily Caller of being gay.
Big question: Why does he feel some need to use the phrase “young gents?”
Hey Josh Marshall: Is this really the time for a new War on Women? Or homophobia? There are women at The Daily Caller too, unlike the masthead of TPM, which apparently loves dudes because it is nearly devoid of humans belonging to the female species. Among the 22 people on the masthead, just five are women. All five of TPM‘s reporters are male. So perhaps Marshall should try counting before he starts casting aspersions about “young gents” at The Daily Caller, which employs four female reporters, a female office manager, a female sales rep, a contributor and a slew of female interns.
So young reporter gents at Daily Caller past/present seem to be rather mercurial/antic group of guys. Not that theres anything wrong w/that.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 1, 2014
Asked for comment on Marshall’s remark, one of the “young reporter gents” replied, “It’s shameful homophobia. We need to stand up to bigotry where it exists and send a clear message that Josh Marshall’s statements were wrong.”
Why the TPM editor is attacking the men of The Daily Caller is unclear. “Homophobes don’t need a reason,” remarked one of the gents, who is actually straight. “They’re motivated by hate.”
The gent continued, “Not to be a fatuous jerk, but his comment clearly was gay innuendo, especially considering the Seinfeld line. If any of us said anything close to that he would be calling for the death penalty.”
The Mirror sought comment from Marshall on why he wrote the aforementioned tweet and why his publication employs so few females in reportorial roles. An email was sent to two of his addresses. There was no response.
One possibility is that Marshall is confusing freelancer Charles Johnson as an employee of The Daily Caller and lumping in all the “gents” who work there with him. Johnson has never been a Daily Caller employee but has previously written freelance stories for the pub. Then again, lots of people have contributed stories to the DC, including Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton.
On Tuesday, Johnson published an interview with a black pastor claiming that he was paid off by GOP Sen. Thad Cochran‘s reelection campaign. TPM, among many others, wrote about it.
Marshall himself wrote, “The MS Senate primary, which is actually over, descended into deeper depths of racially tinged crazy as former Daily Caller reporter pays source to say he got paid to pay black people to vote for Cochran.”
In a semi-nod to The Daily Caller, however, liberal TPM reporter Daniel Strauss wrote, “Noel Fritsch, McDaniel’s press secretary, told the conservative Daily Caller in a report published on Monday that McDaniel’s campaign and his supporters had already found 1,500 invalid votes in Hinds County (which went for Cochran, who McDaniel challenged, in both the initial primary and the runoff).”
And in another story by Strauss, he refers to Johnson as an “obscure conservative blogger.”
Any way you cut it, Marshall’s anti-gay rhetoric against the men of The Daily Caller is bizarre.