On June 18, the Op-Ed Editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch announced they'd be dropping George Will as a columnist. The announcement comes after Will's June 5 column on "sexual assault" (yes he used quotation marks to describe the very real phenomenon) launched outrage from well, everybody, who felt Will was undermining the experience of rape victims. Tony Messenger, Editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch told CNN Sunday: "So many of [our readers] were so deeply offended that George Will told them that they were somehow trying to seek a special status...because of their alleged sexual assaults."
According to Media Matters, who first brought attention to Will's column, the decision to sack Will has been in the works for several months, but the June 5 column was the final straw. In the June 18 editorial in which Messenger announced the St. Louis Post-Dispatch would no longer be running Will's column, he writes:
The change has been under consideration for several months, but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it.
So, it seems Will was an asshole before the whole "sexual assault" business, but no one thought to do anything about it. Let's take a look at some of the crazy columns of Will's past...
He doesn't believe in science
On May 6, Will was part of a Fox News "All Star Panel" that criticized Obama's global warming agenda. Will argued that global warming is a theory fabricated to serve the interests of the liberal federal government. Will said: "There is a sociology of science, there is a sociology in all of this, and engaging the politics of this, we have to understand the enormous interests now invested in climate change."
He doesn't care if people don't get to vote
In December, 2012, Will penned a column entitled "Federal Voting Drive Makes a Mountain Out of a Molehill," in which he argued that amendments to the Voting Rights Act gave "a few government-approved minorities... entitlement to public offices." As Andrew Cohen eloquently pointed out in a piece for The Atlantic published in response to Will's column, Will assumes that voters "suppress themselves" and fails to recognize the gravity of voter suppression, referring to it as "a molehill."
He thinks people like Obama because of his skin color
In October of 2012, Will argued that Obama's supporters were staying positive about the President because they were "reluctant not to give up on the first African American president." This allegation was quickly torn apart by everyone with half a brain, who realized that Will was, once again, operating in an alternate universe in which non-white people use their race to get ahead.
In response to the column, ThinkProgress.org pointed out that in contrast to Will's argument, "credible academic estimates suggest Obama lost a net 3 to 5 percent of the national vote in 2008 as a consequence of his race."
