A 'Wacky' MRA Lawsuit Guy Shot A Judge's Family; Maybe We Should Stop Indulging This
Everyone loves a wacky lawsuit guy. We've certainly been guilty of laughing at them. Who's easier to dunk on than a guy who insists that women on Twitch made him jerk it until his dick fell off merely by having boobs? And that's generally what happens: Some entitled skid mark checks a few boxes, we spend a few hours quote-tweeting the headline, and then it goes away because it turns out judges aren't forced to hear out every screeching ogre with a boo-boo. Except they don't really go away. Those guys are still out there, and if they're unhinged enough to literally turn "ladies' nights" into a federal case, it turns out they're probably capable of a lot more.
That's not a hypothetical example. On Sunday, a lawyer and men's rights activist named Roy Den Hollander showed up at the home of a judge who'd heard one of his cases several years ago and shot her son and husband, killing the former and putting the latter in the hospital.
Authorities are also pretty sure he killed a fellow activist on the other side of the country earlier this month, but they can't exactly interrogate him because he shot himself not long after he left Judge Esther Salas's house. It's not clear why he did it, other than a terminal cancer diagnosis and a commitment to taking his "enemies" down with him. Judge Salas, who presided over the case of a young woman represented by Den Hollander who wanted to register for selective service, actually allowed the case to go forward and agreed with some of Den Hollander's points, but according to him, she wasn't, "moving the case along fast enough." Let this be a lesson, ladies: You can never please these guys. He mostly attacked her race and gender in his writings, though, so that probably had more to do with it.
While he was building up all this homicidal rage, the media treated him like a Valentine-delivering clown: definitely not trying to make anyone comfortable but ultimately harmless. After filing a series of lawsuits against various New York City nightclubs arguing that "ladies' night" specials constituted discrimination, he was granted cheeky profiles in The New York Times and The New Yorker and even interviewed by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central, who has been quick to take down YouTube videos of the segment since the news of the murder broke. These screencaps are pretty much all that's left:
It's nice that they realized it was probably a mistake to humor the dude, but pretending it never happened isn't the way forward, either. The next time you have a perfect zinger for some jackhole with a bad take, maybe just ignore them. Worst-case scenario, they might be Steve Buscemi in Billy Madison ...
... but even if they're not, they don't need the attention.
Top image: Comedy Central
