The fall of Milo Yiannopoulos is now complete

The Fall of milo yiannopoulos was not like the gradual sinking of a great ship, but rather like the sudden dropping of an airliner from the sky that makes a smoking crater on the ground. A week ago, he was on top of the world. Having achieved worldwide fame for having a gang of thugs try to burn down the University of California at Berkeley campus to stop him from speaking, Milo was basking in the glow of a lucrative book deal, lots of media appearances, and a speaking slot at CPAC.

A couple of days later, all of that and more were taken away from him. The last straw had Milo being obliged to resign his position at Breitbart, according to the Washington Post.

The weapon that killed Milo’s career was an old tape that recorded him seemingly defending sex between adults and children. He has since claimed that the tape was edited and then he was inartfully trying to ridicule the idea that sex between adults and children was anything but a horror. The denials came too late and were judged to be inadequate. Yiannopoulos was transformed from the golden boy of the alt-right movement to something akin to radioactive waste.

To be sure it can be argued that Milo is being judged by a double standard. Lena Dunham can boast of her having molested her baby sister and lie about being raped, but no one even had the thought of casting her into the outer darkness. Roman Polanski could rape and sodomize a 13-year-old girl, yet Hollywood actors still compete to be in his movies and petition the courts to drop the charges of child rape. Both France and Poland have protected the odious film director from prosecution.

What does Milo Yiannopoulos do now? He could self-publish the book, adding a chapter about the pedophilia scandal. Because of his notoriety, the book will likely do quite well and help in his rehabilitation. He is a young man and, as history has shown, total ruin does not have to be permanent. But, for right now, the fall from grace of the once feared and loathed provocateur is Shakespearean in its scale. That too would make for an interesting story.