Weigel

Wikipedia Editors’ Insults Are Worth $90,000

TAMPA – If she wins an election in Utah this year, Mia Love will become the first black Republican woman in Congress. This was why she got to open the first prime-time block of the convention, and why she was walked in with a flashy intro video. PAY ATTENTION TO MIA LOVE, were were told.

One day later, I can’t remember any particular lines from the speech. It was a safe collection of appeals to tradition and Reagan callbacks. But! Some members of the TV audience, angered beyond reason by the sight of a black, female Republican, decided to express this anger by tweeting about her “aunt tom” status and chattering in Wikipedia’s edits pages about the same big idea. The Love campaign’s response to this? It didn’t need one. Conservative media ran with the story. The campaign’s haul, according to a Republican strategist here, was around $90,000 in online money. “The cost to get those donations was de minimus,” said the strategist. “You’ve got people who are trolling themselves!”