Selling Lies Is Tony Ortega’s Trade

Tony Ortega had sold his soul to Backpage and its illegal human trafficking trade. The series of articles he had been writing in the summer of 2011, attacking men and women brave enough to stand up against the Village Voice Media had all but confirmed it.

In our last article we saw how Tony Ortega had drawn a line in the sand, aligning himself with the flesh peddlers and the human slavers against the forces of freedom and justice. And he did so – as Tony Ortega so often does – by lying through his teeth and hoping no one would notice that his cheap song and dance about First Amendment Rights and his feigned sentiments on the noble freedoms of self expression were nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the crimes and misdeeds of the puppet masters pulling his strings.

Luckily contemporary critics like Malika Saada Saar, head of The Rebecca Project saw right through Ortega’s ruse. Saada Saar in particular was quick to point out that Tony Ortega’s cheap ploy to fly the flag of free speech was nothing more than a hollow, distractionary tactic.  And her critique of Ortega’s bogus ‘free speech’ excuse was both pointed and effective.

She responded this way:

“ If I tried to sell crack online through Backpage, the Village Voice would not stand up and say this is about the First Amendment… It’s convenient and politically easy for them to frame this as a free speech issue and it’ s not. It’s a human rights issue.”

Saada Saar was absolutely correct.

It was widely believed that Tony Ortega had long lying been lying to protect the revenue generating machine the Backpage sex trade had become.  Now the truth was undeniable. The Backpage controversy had never been about Free Speech.

Saada Saar had exposed Tony Ortega’s con — It wasn’t an amendment rights issue, at its core it had always been a human rights issue.

What is more, in making her case by comparing it to the sale of illegal drugs she stumbled on what was perhaps the most apt comparison ever made involving Tony Ortega.

After all, Tony Ortega’s ethics have always been more suited to the life of a lies dealer than a credible journalist.

Maybe that is why Tony Ortega chose to attack critics of his Backpage bosses as aggressively as he did.

Selling lies was Ortega’s trade, after all, and there was no way he was going to sit idly by while activists and actual journalists slinging pure, uncut truth muscled in on his corner.