Names and faces
The organizers of this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference on Monday rescinded their invitation of Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos after critics of the rightwing speaker re-posted old videos of him criticizing age of consent laws and joking about a sexual encounter as a teen with a Catholic priest. Hours after the announcement from the American Conservative Union — which founded and hosts the conference — Yiannopoulos’ publisher canceled his book Dangerous, which had been scheduled to come out in June. The conservative group’s chairman, Matt Schlapp, said in a statement: “Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation.” He added, “We realize that Mr. Yiannopoulos has responded on Facebook, but it is insufficient.” A group called the Reagan Battalion tweeted video clips Sunday in which Yiannopoulos discusses Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality. Yiannopoulos took to Facebook on Sunday night and again on Monday to defend himself. He first suggested he was a victim of “selectively edited videos” as well as his own “sloppy phrasing.” “My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous. But I understand that my usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor might have come across as flippancy, a lack of care for other victims or, worse, ‘advocacy.’ I deeply regret that.”
Country star Eric Church has taken his biggest step yet to battle ticket scalping by canceling more than 25,000 tickets to his spring tour that were purchased by scalpers and putting them back on sale for fans to purchase. The “Springsteen” singer said in an interview he’s going to do everything he can do to stop what he calls a criminal organization that’s making millions. “They buy thousands of tickets across the U.S., not just mine, and they end up making a fortune,” Church said. “They use fake credit cards, fake IDs. All of this is fraud.” The tickets will be released at noon today for the remaining stops of the 60-city tour. Church has used this same method to cancel tickets purchased by scalpers for a few individual shows previously, but never on this scale, and few artists are as meticulous as Church is when it comes to verifying who is purchasing tickets for his shows. “Every artist can do this, but some of them don’t,” he said. “Some of them don’t feel the way I feel or are as passionate.” Church’s tour is among the top 10 global tours with ticket prices averaging $60.67.