Alex Stein came to a low level of internet fame when a series of his appearances at various city council meetings went viral. In those meetings Stein would usually pretend to be some concerned citizen and then do a literal song and dance routine. The entertainment value of those videos was usually the shoddy, amateurish, improvisational style. His social media profile grew with these seemingly silly pranks and Stein, who lives in a wealthy area of Dallas, has subsequently branded himself as a comedian and a “professional troll.”
That last distinction is important since most of what Stein does is usually not funny, and like most right-wing humorists today, the fact that even their own audience doesn’t laugh much* means they need another excuse to cover up the true nature of their frequently mean and cruel antics. Stein’s social media feeds tend to rely on one joke: transgender folks seem to confuse Alex Stein. Recently, Stein has made viral news by harassing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol, calling her his “favorite big-booty Latina” and courting a confrontation with her.
With the conservative billionaire fascist variety show we call Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) taking place in Stein’s neck of the woods this past weekend, this meant the professional troll would only have conservatives to harass or make fun of, right? Wrong. There was a professional journalist and a woman Stein decided he could bully in the name of … professional misogyny.
*See Joe Rogan and the fact that after listening to hours of his podcast over the years I’ve never heard him utter a single joke on his podcast
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VICE reporter Tess Owens has been covering CPAC the last three days, writing up many of the same things anyone covering what is actually taking place at CPAC would be covering. For example, she’s covered the Marjorie Taylor Greene prayer reenactment of Jan. 6, insurrectionists, and she’s covered CPAC’s choice to have Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán speak his special brand of racial purity propaganda.
And Owens is also a woman who is about a foot or more shorter than Alex Stein. That means she is the perfect person for Stein to harass and make uncomfortable “professionally” trolling.
What is the joke here, exactly? There really isn’t one. Stein’s sociopathic smiling and laughing seems to be what he believes passes as humor. He spends his time accusing Owens of spreading fake news, calling VICE a “lying media outlet,” and making sure that he is enough of a spectacle that Owens has to really worry about whether or not she is safe. He chases Owens around with a growing crew of MAGA-hat wearing zombies. It seems that the fact that she posted video evidence of literally what people were doing at CPAC is proof that she is trying to make conservatives look bad.
I mean, really? There isn’t even any editorializing here. You don’t have to. The Republican Party at this point is like being forced to attend a school function with a drunk racist relative who frequently gets into fights.
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