A writer for Slate, a prominent left-leaning online magazine, continued his trend of responding insensitively to the news of celebrity deaths.
Late Saturday, after it was confirmed that Paul Walker, the star of the Fast and the Furious movie franchise, had died in a fiery car crash just outside Los Angeles, Yglesias tweeted a link to a six-month-old post he’d written titled “The Fast, the Furious, and Long-Term Erosion of American Social and Economic Institutions”.
The fast, the furious, and the long-term erosion of American social institutions: http://t.co/1jcvetX3VZ
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 1, 2013
The post is an overwrought interpretation of the social and economic significance of the “Fast and The Furious” movie franchise.
Walker, 40, played the lead role in several films in the series, which portrayed heists and illegal street races. Walker reportedly died while riding in the passenger seat of a Porsche being driven by a friend. The two left a fundraiser being held by Walker just moments before the crash, which obliterated the car. It is not yet known what caused the crash.
In his post, Yglesias argued that the strong in-group preferences displayed by the characters in the movie franchise were a result of growing economic inequality.
“And yet at a time when elites long ago stopped caring whether the gains of economic growth would be widely shared, and in recent years seem to have turned their backs on the unemployed altogether, then these are the heroes we’ll turn to,” wrote Yglesias.
It is unclear why Yglesias felt the need to capitalize on Walker’s death. His forced and unpersuasive argument makes no mention of Walker one way or another — though a gratuitous slam at the excellent “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” in which Walker did not have a featured role, could be interpreted as a negative thumbs up by the grave-dancing trust-fund intellectual.
As some Twitter users pointed out, it was “too soon” for Yglesias to use Walker’s death to drive traffic to his website.
But Yglesias’s actions Saturday are tame compared to comments he’s made in the past upon the news of other celebrity deaths.
After Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com died from a heart attack in 2012, Yglesias littered Twitter with a series of foul remarks. He tweeted “Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBreitbart dead.”
Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead.
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 1, 2012
Yglesias sought to justify the angry responses to that tweet by adding “If you think @AndrewBrietbart’s opponents shouldn’t be glad he’s dead, you’re not taking his life’s work seriously.”
If you think @AndrewBrietbart‘s opponents shouldn’t be glad he’s dead, you’re not taking his life’s work seriously.
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 1, 2012
Another example of Yglesias’s celebrity death-gloating was captured in a video posted on Youtube shortly after the death of Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. Russert died in June 2008 from a heart attack.
At an event hosted by the Utne Reader, Yglesias, sporting a McCain 2008 hat in ironic fashion, said “for the first time I thought, it’s really too bad Tim Russert is dead.” Yglesias said he wanted to see Russert interview vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Asked by someone outside the view of the camera if he had never been sad about Russert’s death before that, Yglesias responded with a flat “No.”
Yglesias explained the backstory on a beef between him and the NBC host. “I did an article for the Washington Monthly about why Tim Russert is evil, and unfortunately it came out like three weeks before he died,” said Yglesias while laughing.
“I couldn’t express how I really felt about his passing,” said Yglesias. Asked how he truly felt about Russert’s death, Yglesias said he was “basically happy” before turning the conversation to Tim Russert’s son, the journalist Luke Russert.
Yglesias’s tweet Saturday was low on the insensitivity scale compared to one sent out by an editor at the feminist website Jezebel. Erin Gloria Ryan tweeted “why couldn’t it be scott walker. 🙁 #wisconsintweets” in reference Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who is a Republican. Ryan later deleted the tweet saying “Dumb joke deleted. Apologies.”
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