David French, a columnist for National Review, and his wife Nancy French, a columnist for the Washington Post, have come under what French called “an unending torrent of abuse that I wouldn’t wish on anyone” in a column published Friday. He describes how, more than a year ago, he began seeing images of his daughter’s face photoshopped into gas chambers or slave ships, and how the comment section of his wife’s blog on Patheos filled with images of extreme violence.
French’s adopted daughter is black and was called “niglet” and “dindu” by French’s online harassers, who also claimed his wife cheated on him with black men while he was deployed to Iraq. It's a common charge among far-right internet trolls who often accuse others of being cuckolded, both sexually and ideologically.
French recounts how, immediately after he declined to mount an independent run for president, his wife received an email from a Trump supporter “who informed her that he knew the business end of a gun and told her directly that she should shut her mouth or he’d take action.” In another incident, French wrote that a phone call between his wife and her elderly father was interrupted by a third angry voice on the call, spurring “a brief, anxious search inside my father-in-law’s home for a potential intruder and yet another call to law enforcement.”
This is how French ends his National Review article:
Two weeks ago Nancy and I were enjoying lunch with friends after church. My son’s football coach asked if “things had calmed down” after the tumult of the summer. I grabbed my phone, said “let’s see,” and opened my Twitter mentions. I laughed at the first one, a standard profane rant calling me a traitor for opposing Trump, but when my wife looked, her face twisted up in shock. There they were, just below, more tweets from more men, aimed directly at her. She burst into tears.
So, no, things have not “calmed down,” and I’m always amused when people tell me that I belong to Never Trump because it makes me feel good about myself. There’s nothing that gives me pleasure about this election season. But if I can do anything to expose and oppose this latest debasement of our politics and culture, and to defend my wife and daughter, then at least I will have purpose.
Look I don't think it is okay for ANYBODY to be treated in this manner.
But it hard to feel sympathy for somebody who had no problem supporting the beta version of Trump, but then acts terrified to see who supports Sarah Palin 2.0.
In many ways Nancy French was instrumental in helping Sarah Palin expand her brand and fire up the very same group of right wing nutjobs who are currently suggesting that she be burned at the stake.
Nancy French helped to put the words in Palin's mouth that her knuckle dragging fans found so inspiring, and even helped her wayward daughter attempt to repair her reputation by writing a book accusing Levi Johnston of rape.
I wonder if she ever lost any sleep at the notion of his face "twisting up in shock" at reading those words?
You know there is a passage from a widely discredited book that I once read, I think it went a little something like this:
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.
The reaping part is always a bitch, don't you think?
