The Mirror

#NeverTrump Journo Leaves Twitter For 30 Days To Get A Hold Of Himself

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Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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Commentary editor John Podhoretz is treating himself like a small child who can’t behave. He has given himself a 30-day Twitter timeout, in which time he hopes to find God or cigarettes or something that might prevent him from dispatching lewd tweets like the one he spat at Roger Stone.

“Given his proclivities, Roger Stone will enjoy prison,” Podhoretz tweeted.

Who doesn’t enjoy kicking a man when he’s down? Podhoretz, that’s who. On Friday, Stone, an informal adviser to President Trump throughout his campaign and presidency, was indicted on seven counts of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and perjury. He was arraigned in D.C. federal court Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty. Stone’s friendship with Trump dates back 40 years.

Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” spanked Podhoretz for his poor behavior by posting the tweet on screen.

The Commentary editor has since deleted his tweet, but not before Breitbart News‘s John Nolte wrote it up and bashed Podhoretz for being a homophobe. He also took himself off the Twitter map for 30 days. What a hardship. How will he possibly survive his starvation diet?

“Twitter is for sad fat people with weird personal lives,” a longtime Washington journalist told The Mirror.

Over the weekend, Podhoretz — who is, perhaps, the hairiest person I have ever seen in a swimming pool — says he was forced to reactivate his Twitter account to “still rumors” that the medium had suspended him. “It will go down Sunday at 7 p.m.,” he announced.

His original sign-off went like this:

“I have deactivated my Twitter account for 30 days,” he tweeted Saturday. “I began receiving hate messages for a tweet about Roger Stone I deleted after five minutes because I decided it was in poor taste—and yet a screen shot [sic] of it was saved of it and circulated around the (if there is such a thing) pro-Stone right, which does not deal in niceties to put it mildly.”

He went on, “That said, the ill-advised tweet was a reminder to me that I don’t really like the person I can become at times on Twitter. And I’m not sure I can avoid becoming that person in a world on 280 characters.”

What a pity. Podhoretz dished out hate and got some in return. Hilariously, he blames his asshole-ish self on 280 characters.

“So I’m gone,” he wrote rather dramatically. “I’m too prudent to leave permanently; Twitter has been a huge help in building awareness of @Commentary and our circulation gains. But what shall it profit a man if he gain the reader but lose [sic] his soul?”

Who does MSNBC “Morning Joe” frequenter John Podhoretz think he is, Shakespeare?

“He wasn’t getting enough attention so he had to do one of those God awful why-I’m-leaving-Twitter announcements. I like the joke he made about Commentary’s ‘circulation gains’ thought,” another Washington journalist told me on condition of anonymity.

Still, another Washington writer was even less kind about the whole thing.

“This fat fuck has enabled online harassment of other journalists, political figures, restaurant hostesses and even delivery drivers who are late bringing him more shitty food to shove into that stinking hole under his nose,” the individual told me. “The fact that he’s getting a taste of his own medicine doesn’t bother me even a little bit.”

The ego on Podhoretz has to be elephantine to believe that anyone truly cares whether Twitter banned him for joining an online mob and hurling a gay innuendo at Stone, who is married to a woman.

Better people and reporters have tried and failed to leave Twitter.

Last year, NYT White House correspondent Maggie Haberman announced her departure. She even wrote an op-ed about it, saying that she may return but she won’t engage. But she spoke too soon. She was back in a flash and has resumed dryly engaging with Trump and others. (RELATED: NYT’s Maggie Haberman Said She Was Leaving Twitter But She Just Can’t Help Herself) 

Last July, Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts tried to follow suit.

“In solidarity with my colleague @maggieNYT – whom I believe is an absolutely stellar journalist, I too am pulling back from Twitter. She has it right – a bilious anger video game,” he wrote.

Guess who is still tweeting? Right. This guy.

Most recently, NYT columnist Farhad Manjoo advised journalists to stop tweeting. Well, not stop stop. But tweet less and “lurk” more. CNN’s resident Trump-hating balding man baby Brian Stelter was heartbroken.

“Sometimes the insanity on Twitter makes my brain hurt,” Stelter wrote in a story. “Sometimes the hatred makes my heart ache. But I almost never think about leaving. Until now.”

Try until never. Stelter is not going anywhere.

The most astonishing thing about Podhoretz’s emotional tweet-fart against Stone is that just days before, he seemed well aware of how rotten social media can be. In an op-ed for the New York Post, he wrote that the Covington boy debacle proves that “social media is cancerous” — a wincing metaphor for anyone who has ever watched someone die of the actual disease.

“Can social media be saved?” he asked in his lede. He goes on to say that “social media corrupts our rational judgment.” In this article, he is not speaking autobiographically. He’s talking about everyone else.

Podhoretz spoke of “restraint” online and wrote, “We’re supposed to know about all this, but either we don’t or we just don’t care. The seduction of immediacy is just too great. So is the fear of remaining quiet in the face of something egregious. …there is something entirely new about a social media mob, and that is the fact that joining it happens at no cost whatsoever. You don’t have to get out of your house and go somewhere, pitchfork in hand.”

He even complimented himself.

“I have been an active participant on social media for a decade and have developed a reputation for being ‘good’ at Twitter,” he wrote. “I’m fast, and I’m funny, and I’m emotional, all of which seem to stimulate others.”

Wait — he’s funny?

He loves Twitter, he gushed, just like he loved cigarettes. But “it makes most of us meaner and uglier and more hostile, and is therefore clearly a bad thing spiritually.”

I can hardly wait for February when Podhoretz returns with his pitchfork, presumably a changed man.