Is Candace Owens A Conservative Milkshake Duck?

In the era of Trump and the alt-right internet, milkshake ducks — sudden viral stars revealed to be racists or homophobes via internet sleuthing —  are commonplace (think Ken Bone and the mother of Keaton Jones). For a while the phenomenon was decidedly progressive — if liberals can't impose their standards in government, at least they can impose them on their viral stars. But on Tuesday night, BuzzFeed published an article that begs the question: do conservatives have milkshake ducks too?

The piece focuses on Trump media darling Candace Owens (you may recognize her name from Kanye's weird alt-right tweets). Owens has found significant attention in what conservative New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss calls "the intellectual dark web." Her bread and butter is attempting to refute arguments based in identity politics through her own story of becoming a rare black Trump supporter after allegedly being targeted by faux trolls sent by journalist and Gamergate victim Anita Sarkeesian (not joking).

As part of her origin story, Owens has owned that she was previously a Democrat, but BuzzFeed found that in 2015, Owens started a site that compared Trump to Hitler, speculated that Trump's penis was small, and called the Tea Party "bat-shit crazy" — raising serious questions about her allegiance to the president (she has recently been embraced by the Trump Administration, attending the high profile embassy dedication in Jerusalem with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin).

The story has all the makings of a conservative milkshake duck. But does a conservative's milkshake duck look like, swim like and quack like a liberal milkshake duck? Do conservatives even have milkshake ducks?

In the great tradition of milkshake ducks, the viral star in question must experience an Icarian fall after being scorched by their internet history. Ken Bone, the red-sweater-wearing man who went viral after reading a question about energy policy at the October 10th, 2016 presidential debate, was thoroughly dragged through the media after his Reddit history revealed that he empathized with the people that hacked and leaked Jennifer Lawrence's nude pictures, and sympathized with George Zimmerman, the man that killed Trayvon Martin.¹ Mashable called the revelations "pretty unsavory." The New York Post called Bone "kind of an awful guy." Even stodgy CBS covered the media's reaction, which is documented in over 15 pages google-indexed articles on the controversy from every imaginable outlet.²

This is not the reaction that the conservative internet is having over BuzzFeed's Candace Owens story. Despite her prominence in conservative media, frequently appearing on Fox News, very few conservatives are engaging with the piece. In a survey of 10 top conservative websites³, only one (The Daily Caller)⁴ has even mentioned the BuzzFeed revelations. Some conservative journalists have expressed support for The Daily Caller's skepticism of Owens, which I'm told is a common sentiment in establishment conservative media, but the larger silence on the topic shows a willingness from most Republicans to look the other way. Even at the highest levels of the party, in the Trump family, it looks like Owens still has support, with Donald Trump Jr. literally tweeting "welcome to the family Candace" in response her tweet about the article.

So what makes Candace Owens milkshake duck proof?

The difference lies in expectations and online roles. Historically, milkshake ducks first find fame for decidedly apolitical reasons. Ken Bone had his red sweater. Keaton Jones' mom had an emotional story of bullying. Both were entertaining distractions from the current political hellscape we're all experiencing now. When the political or ethical realities of these humans are revealed, however, the neutral frame that the internet applies to them is shattered. How can they be used to help us dissociate once they're contextualized in the messy worlds of politics, race or gender?

Candace Owens serves the opposite role as a political pundit, and thus, it's impossible to remove her partisan image. Politicians and pundits, these days, are almost expected to exhibit intellectual dishonesty, or at least significant opinion changes. What better example than Donald Trump himself, who was elected as a hardcore Republican despite previously being pro-choice and supporting an assault weapons ban. Despite Candice Owens' recent support of mean statements about Donald Trump, she plays an important role (bordering on tokenism) in the communications of the conservative movement and has a story that helps excuse past anti-Trump statements, which prevents her from becoming a milkshake duck.

So if Candace Owens isn't one, what does a conservative's milkshake duck look like? By the nature of media and the internet, conservative sources appear to do less pop culture and meme sleuthing than many mainstream or more liberal outlets. A simple scan of the top 20 Alexa-ranked sites shows that conservative media has carved itself a much more niche, specialized market, in the context of larger left-leaning media leaders. As a result, memes just tend to get less play on conservative sites — resulting in fewer traditional milkshake ducks on the right web.

The closest and most prominent analogy to a conservative milkshake duck would be the downfall of Tomi Lahren. Lahren's short, pithy, conservative takes earned her viral fame in 2015 after a rant she made about the murder of four marines. She was quickly hired by Glenn Beck's TheBlaze where she continued to make videos for the next year. It all came crashing down, however, when Lahren told The View in 2017 that she was pro-choice. Lahren was suspended from the site and eventually released from a contract with the company after agreeing to delete TheBlaze-produced videos from her social media feeds. In the aftermath, Lahren was slammed by other conservative media sources as well, with The Federalist calling her "incoherent" and The Rebel calling her "dimwitted." Like other milkshake ducks, Lahren no longer fit her role.

President Trump himself has exhibited a power to create a milkshake-duck-like effect in his own administration. After Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation Trump has repeatedly, publically disparaged him. Conservative media has followed his lead.

As much as we'd like to control who gets milkshake ducked and who doesn't, society decides based on the roles it assigns. Perversely, we punish the average joes who weren't looking to enter the political conversation in the first place, while letting pundits and politicians slide.