The Hounding of a Gay Writer

So I’m perusing the web on the airplane to Los Angeles and saw a blast of incandescent gay fury all over the place. It turns out that Ezra Klein had the gall to offer a writing fellowship at Vox to one Brandon Ambrosino, a 23 year-old professional dancer who is a graduate of Liberty College, Jerry Falwell’s joint. Judging from the reaction, you might have thought Ezra had hired Rick Santorum. Oh! the screeds and harrumphs, the sighs and the gasps! Here’s the gay politburo official at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern, in a dreary tract against what he calls Klein’s “unbelievably bad hire”:

Ambrosino’s ideas are not brash, unconventional, exciting, or avant-garde. They are reckless, retrograde, and vapid—and hiring Ambrosino reflects startlingly bad, potentially catastrophic judgment by Vox.