With the admirable exception of Tucker Carlson, conservative media personalities have carefully avoided criticizing United States Secretary of Transportation “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg for being an arrogant, effete, gay exhibitionist who is pushing LGBT-BLM moonshine. The now-established criticism conservatives in good standing are allowed to voice is that Buttigieg is an inefficient, distracted cabinet member, who is not dealing adequately with air traffic and trucking problems. On Jan. 11, The Spectator broke this taboo by publishing a commentator who mocked Buttigieg’s “magical gay puppy dog powers” and who depicted him as someone who, “like Obama . . . easily charms unmarried, childless women.” Quite expectedly, the conservative celebrity who was allowed to tell us the obvious is Chadwick Moore, a very open, practicing homosexual.

This parallels the mainstream conservative practice of allowing criticism of blacks only through designated black conservatives. Whenever Fox News wants to call attention to something unpleasant about American black life, they drag on to their programs Larry Elder, David Webb, Lawrence Jones, or (less credibly) Leo Terrell. These black guests are periodically allowed to criticize dysfunctional or violent aspects of American black society—things that accredited white “conservatives” are not supposed to notice too closely. 

To be sure, their commentary, when it is on target, is welcome. But the practice of only allowing members of a given “in-group” to register criticism is a form of the very identity politics conservatives claim to hate. It also represents a submission to the strictures of political correctness.

For these and other reasons, the conservative establishment often functions as a less advanced part of the woke regime. It moves more slowly than the “liberals” but in the same general direction, always advancing the woke left’s agenda.

Unfortunately, one cannot describe the cultural revolution we’re experiencing unless one observes its salient characteristics, however discomforting those might be. The Democrats and the mass media are pushing something other than incompetent administrators when they demand the appointment of LGBT activists and black nationalists to high positions in government. To fault these appointments on grounds of inefficiency is to ignore why they were made. Buttigieg was not elevated to his cabinet post because he has tested experience with transportation. He was put there as a woke statement by a less-than-principled president trying to appease the culturally radical demographic in his party.

Everything Buttigieg does that attracts publicity—whether it’s pushing for a more “diverse” transportation industry or taking off two months during a shipping crisis to “parent” with his homosexual partner (after adopting children and being photographed in a hospital birthing bed)—pulsates with wokeness. Ignoring this side of Buttigieg’s career and advancement is like pretending that Kamala Harris became vice-president because of her knowledge of statecraft. Only a fool would believe that or think Buttigieg is where he is politically and professionally because of his unusual skill-set as a transportation secretary.

We might then ask: when will the non-left, or that part of it that enjoys a media presence, tell us the real reason that woke celebrities are appointed to high places? Let’s stop pretending that leftist governments are just failing to find professionally competent “candidates” for cabinet posts. Clearly, they are using their appointment powers to showcase woke politics. And let’s also not pretend that I’m saying what I’m clearly not. I am not objecting to someone’s appointment on the grounds that he happens to be gay. I am objecting to the fact that someone is where he is precisely because he is a gay activist and because he uses his prominence to push the LGBT-BLM agenda. I can’t think of any other reason that Buttigieg, Kamala, Karine Jean-Pierre (Biden’s dipsy press secretary), and many of his other appointees are where they are in his administration, except as woke advertisements.

Buttigieg’s entire persona has been wrapped up with woke exhibitionism since he became a media celebrity. Whatever fame Mayor Pete has achieved rests on his woke identity. It’s also disingenuous to keep telling us, as the “conservative” media do nonstop, that “we’re against identity politics” but then to recoil in fear from pointing out the same evil when it comes to gays, lesbians, or transgendered Republican celebrities. Why are conservatives not allowed to criticize identity politics in discussing the crusading and ostentatiously gay Buttigieg? Perhaps now that Chadwick Moore has done it, others might find the courage to follow suit, but I’m not holding my breath.