Tony Ortega: Victim of His Own Making

For all his bluster and fake ‘tough guy’ bravado, Tony Ortega really wants you to believe he’s a victim. This victim playing strategy is one that’s been used by online trolls and bullies since the early days of the Internet.

Simply put, ‘playing the victim card’ is the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others or to manipulate others. Sounds like Ortega so far, right?

Experts tell us it can also be a form of unhealthy attention seeking (for more on this see Tony Ortega’s entire ‘professional’ career as a muck-slinging tabloid hack.) It can also be seen as a desperate attempt at deflection of responsibility.  Unemployed as he is, Tony Ortega hasn’t had anything approaching real ‘responsibility’ for a good long while but it’s interesting to note that Tony’s modus operandi has been one of blame shifting from the very beginning.

In yesterday’s post we looked at several of the ways in which Tony Ortega behavior mirrors that of the Backpage pimps he worked to defend from the editorial pages of the Village Voice.

Over the years Ortega has exploited victims of trafficking and victims of bullying for profit, using his supposed “expertise” as a cudgel to hammer his self-serving narrative into the minds of his readers over and over again.

After all, using people for profit is the M.O. of bullies and pimps like Ortega. As we highlighted yesterday, Tony Ortega’s pimp-inspired understanding sees people as little more than a commodity to be exploited and drained until they have lost all usefulness.

Some people just seek to do harm. They stir up controversy and when they can’t find it, they make it up. Then they make money off that “controversy,” regardless of the people who might get hurt along the way. That was the business model of every pimp Backpage enabled and it is evident this is the way Tony Ortega has chose to conduct himself in both his personal and ‘professional’ life.

But Tony takes it a step further.

Anytime this predatory, bad faith behavior is called out by legitimate newsmen, media watchdogs, or everyday citizens concerned by the rising flood of toxic hate speech in the public square Tony runs to his favorite go-to excuse: “I’m being victimized!”

Make no mistake, Tony Ortega is not victimized by anything other than his own greed, hysterical sensationalism, and rabid intolerant bigotry. So the next time you hear him whining about being treated unfairly take a moment and ask yourself to what extent Tony hasn’t brought all of this upon himself.

We here at the blog believe that Tony Ortega should be treated with the same level of respect and consideration he gives the subjects (victims?) of his own biased reporting, which is to say — precious little.