Keller @ Large: We May Have Found A Limit To What's Acceptable

BOSTON (CBS) - As you navigate this increasingly coarse, obnoxious culture of ours, sometimes you start to wonder - Is there any such thing these days as going too far?

Some websites have given up on hosting visitor comment sections because of the tsunami of vile slander that gushes through them. And after last year's election, you can be forgiven for doubting that there are any limits to the dishonesty and vulgarity that's acceptable to the public.

But one man has just proven that, yes, there are still some limits to public discourse.

He's Milo Yiannopoulos, an openly-gay polemicist who specializes in provocatively racist and sexist comments. His self-promoting hate speech has provoked sometimes-violent protests at some of his speaking engagements.

None of that stopped Steve Bannon, President Trump's chief strategist, from hiring Yiannopoulos as an editor at his arch-conservative Breitbart website, and it didn't deter the American Conservative Union from booking him to headline their annual conference.

But after video surfaced of Yiannopoulos praising pedophilia and claiming that critics of it "can get quite hung up on this child abuse thing," his speaking gig has been cancelled.

A spokesman for the Conservative Union said that while he and his group welcome the airing of disagreements among conservatives, there is "no disagreement among our attendees on the evils of sexual abuse of children."

That's reassuring. Perhaps over time we can restore similar stigma to the sort of gratuitous verbal abuse of women, people of color and immigrants that Yiannopoulos has made a career of.

Who knows? If this keeps up, online comment sections might become readable again.