Friends inform me that my Twitter mentions are blowing up with outrage over my alleged campaign to get beloved leftist/notorious troll Matt Bruenig fired from his day job at the National Labor Relations Board. My offense? On the night he lost his side gig at Demos over said trolling and subsequently posted a GoFundMe and tweets implying that his income situation was now dire, I responded to the information that he actually has a day job as an NLRB lawyer by inquiring if the Hatch Act would apply to his trolling. Without looking at more than one or two of the individual tweets outraged at me, I’ll say a few things about my single tweet on the subject of Matt Bruenig. (Or, as the tweets I glanced at would have it, my witch hunt.)
1) In retrospect, I should have realized that people would be coming for Bruenig’s job. Had I foreseen that, I would have stayed the hell out of it for several reasons. That lack of foresight was not one of my swiftest moments, to be sure. Sleep deprivation makes us stupid.
2) I tweeted because I was startled to learn that the guy I had just been feeling bad for because losing a job right before having a child is a Big Deal even if you’re a dick, in fact has a perfectly good job with good benefits that he had not lost. Bruenig’s GoFundMe suddenly seemed like grifting. Seriously, he raised more than $20,000 in a couple hours and it turned out he still had a good job? I was annoyed at my earlier flash of sympathy for someone I think is a bad person.
2a) Yes, you can be a noble leftist and still a total dick. In fact, it’s quite common.
3) I don’t think Bruenig should lose his NLRB job, though I did think Demos acted reasonably in firing him from his side job writing for them. I suppose my query about the Hatch Act did have an ulterior motive, insofar as I faintly hoped that Hatch Act-related scrutiny might leave him with less time to troll women and people of color.
3a) A question about the Hatch Act is a limited one since, as long as Bruenig didn’t use government resources for his trolling, he’s not only in the clear but it’s my understanding that his job is protected by the First Amendment, something very few people can say.
3b) But I didn’t expect my single dashed-off tweet to be read by much of anyone, and indeed—judging by my Twitter notifications—it wasn’t read by much of anyone until days later when someone decided to dredge it up for some purpose (presumably to frame Bruenig as a martyr). At the time, it drew a single response from someone who was a member of my wedding party, which drew a response from someone else I know in real life. So … yeah, the sudden outrage is kinda laughable.
There you go! If you think Bruenig is teh awesome, you still don’t like me. If you want him fired, this is not an answer to thrill you either. Such is life.