Rather than having a monomaniac fixation on one or two subjects, Steve is well-read, his blog serving as a platform to showcase his broad repertoire of knowledge – from sports, to movies, to history, and books (particularity, his fondness of Robert Heinlein, Hunter S. Thomson and Tom Wolfe) – to his tens of thousands of loyal readers. His opinions, while sometimes controversial on matters such as race, are not belabored, meaning that he isn’t pounding the reader upside the head to get his point across, and it’s this joviality, nuance, and tact that sets him apart from most political bloggers and pundits, and allows him to court a large, somewhat ideologically diverse audience without ‘selling out’.
Rational Wiki describes Steve as a “…hardcore racist, misogynist, white supremacist, anti-Semite, Islamophobe, homophobe, classist, ableist, transphobe, transmisogynist, xenophobe, pseudo-scientist and all-round champion asshole and bigot who can arguably be credited (if such a resumé can be to someone’s credit) as the godfather of pseudo-scientific on-line hate.”
But the funny thing is if you actually read his blog (or his archives) for any length, which the Rational Wiki authors obviously failed to do, you will see he’s not only open-minded and open to criticism, but more so than most internet pundits. As far as I can recall, with the exception of the execrable Ramzan Kadyrov, Steve has never openly disparaged anyone. If you agree, great, but if not, he’ll still respect your opinion, maybe debate you, and even punish your comment, too. Occasionally, he poke fun, mentioning that ‘so and so’ is Jewish or whatever, but that’s not hate. It’s an observation. In the not-so-distant future, will it be a hate crime to merely mention that someone who is actually Jewish is Jewish? Or a black person is black; a Muslim is Muslim, etc?
Again, you have to understand Steve is an artsy guy, and I don’t mean that derisively, because through his posts he expresses an interest in music, movies, and sports, and other aspects of American culture – all of which are heavily influenced by minorities, dispelling the liberal generalization that the ‘alt right’ is full of uncultured hicks. It’s hard to be a cinephile and hate blacks, because many actors are black. Same for sports and music.
To some on the right, the liberal media is the scourge of all evils, and this understandable. Even I feel that way sometimes about certain stories or how certain stories are reported. To Steve, it’s a source of misinformation that should be corrected, not an enemy that must be vanquished. In fact, Steve links to the NY Times – a lot. Although the NY Times is liberal, they have well-researched content, and reaching across the aisle is how you broaden your readership and overall presence in the pundit-sphere, as well as doing a service to your readers by presenting quality information, even if the source is from the other ‘team’. By always reaching out, this is how Steve was able to forge connections with both Steven Pinker, who is Jewish, and Malcom Gladwell, who is of mixed-race, during the IQ Wars. So much for being a big racist, huh? Although Steve disagrees with some of Gladwell’s views, it was never personal or acrimonious, both sides benefited from the publicity generated through these public exchanges.