Thursday, June 28, 2018

Spreading hate can be profitable, at least for a while

Pamela Geller is a right-winger and vicious anti-Muslim bigot. The New Yorker has  story about her and other free-speech grifters (as GQ dubbed them) whose project is apparently to cost liberal colleges lots of money by causing ruckuses, disguised as concern for free speech - they then ride the controversy to money and notoriety and in the case of people like Christina Hoff Sommers, approval by her bosses, the Koch brothers.

Geller is quoted:
Geller and Cernovich changed the subject to Internet censorship. “They kicked me off Google AdSense,” Geller said. “I was making six figures a year from that. You can’t even share my links on Pinterest now! I’m ‘inappropriate content.’ ”
Wow six figures from a blog. That's pretty amazing. I'm surprised she was kicked off Google AdSense long before making that much money, I have found GoogleAdSense to be extremely touchy about content, even just reporting the news, if it's violent, can make them freak out. Which is why I don't have Google ads on this, my personal blog.

In case you're not familiar with Geller, she's about as far right as you can get, and the thought of poor people getting healthcare drives her into paroxysms of lies as Media Matters documented (along with so many other of her frothing, often exaggerated or false claims) back in 2010:
Geller: Senate Democrats supporting health care reform voted "to rape the American people." In a December 21, 2009, blog post, Geller wrote of the cloture vote for health care reform: "The moochers and the looters, the crooks and degenerates voted at 1 am this morning to rip the constitution to shreds, to rape the American people and to nationalize medicine." She added that passing the bill on Christmas Eve would be "an act of treason and blasphemy."
I'm sure even without Google Ads though Geller is doing fine - between all the right-wing freaks in the US and the generous wingnut welfare from plutocrats she'll never go broke selling hatred.