Cooler, saner heads might have found Greene’s initial behavior “uncalled for,” perhaps downright “inappropriate” or even “extreme” — except that her colleagues and the media went out of their way to make it very hard for any sane person to end up saying so in retrospect. For in their own conduct, in their own bigoted and irrational labelling and hysterical vituperations, Greene’s critics only ended up making it seem like Greene — the erstwhile QAnon sympathizer — was the most sensibly behaved person in the whole scenario.

Flynt was more a product of a decaying culture than a cause. We very often complain about the media we have, and yet, in very many ways, the media we have are the media we have deserved. The law of supply and demand definitely holds. Whether it be a substandard journalism or a subhuman pornography, at the outset the would-be consumers of such things are as much to blame as those who descend to provide them. If no one bought it, no one would sell it.