The vicious Corey DeAngelis, predictably, gets sent to the Bridget Ziegler/Mark Robinson porn grifter farm
Remember: it's always, always, always projection. And they'll always try to blame *you* for their behavior.
I was a victim of poor decisions and poor influences. I have turned that experience into the fuel that fires me to save young people from being put in the same position I was put in and to help parents protect their children. — education “activist’/ grifter Corey DeAngelis, explaining revelations that he was a secret gay pornographer in the fairly recent past.
I have never experienced the sensation of living with a sexuality or sexual identity that a) is inconsistent with the hetero/cis wrapper I present to the world b) differs from what the majority of my society presents to the world c) runs afoul of the norms and prejudices of my family and/or community.
And if I had, the people who love me — my parents, grandparents, extended family etc. — would not have cast me out and/or showered me in shame and cruelty. They never would have wavered in their love and support for me. I am a very lucky person in that way — and many others.
I don’t know how it feels to experience the opposite; so I can’t know how I would behave. But I hope I wouldn’t turn vicious toward other people to protect myself.
And that brings us to one Corey DeAngelis — who recently joined the ever-growing community of personally vicious anti-woke public school haters revealed as secret porn performers or addicts.
When Bridget Ziegler has to comfort you, something has gone very wrong
Unless you’re one of my very knowledgable education readers, you’ve probably never heard of Corey DeAngelis. In the greater American Grifter Pantheon, he is (or rather was) a niche and minor player.
He’s long been a loud online bro mouthpiece for rich, fake libertarian guys who hate the idea of public education. These glib public school abolitionists have endless money to spend. They paid Corey DeAngelis to be mean online to anybody who chose to affiliate with or advocate for public schools — students, teachers, parents, whomever. And the “choice” world loves him for it.
Here’s what one “respectable” fellow choice bro said about DeAngelis after the porn revelations.
DeAngelis is the type of person who fellow education ”activist”-turned-secret gay (or at least bisexual) pornographer Bridget Ziegler rushes to defend and comfort.
Now that is funny.
Ask not for whom the right wing cancel tolls; it tolls for thee
Alas, Bridget Ziegler’s moving expression of support did not prevent a brutal cancellation by the folks who actually paid Corey DeAngelis. They know they can always find some other bro eager to be mean online to people who choose public schools.
And DeAngelis’ low-level “libertarian” buddies are having a hard time accepting that the anti-woke cancelyard is full of indispensible grifters. Note the bold, from a very ideologically sympathetic writer in Reason magazine. It shows what they actually loved — and lament losing — about DeAngelis.
Corey DeAngelis, an education researcher known for his vigorous advocacy of school choice, has been fired by his primary employer, the American Federation for Children (AFC), a person familiar with the situation tells Reason. (DeAngelis is also a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, which publishes this website.)
DeAngelis regularly feuds on social media with supporters of the education status quo, including Democratic politicians, media figures, and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten. But he is currently at odds with some allies who have turned on him following revelations that he previously performed in a pornographic film for gay audiences.
The trouble began on September 20, when the conservative Substack Current Revolt called attention to his history with the porn industry. Several conservative organizations then rescinded invitations for him to speak, and AFC fired him.
And this, from the same article in Reason, is just hilarious.
What's happening to DeAngelis is a classic example of cancel culture: He is being punished for a regretted incident from his distant past that has nothing to do with his current job. Conservative organizations may well have morals clauses in their contracts, and they are free to hire and fire at will. But any institution that purports to oppose cancel culture, yet refuses to work with DeAngelis on this basis, is engaged in hypocrisy.
Ironically, it is DeAngelis being accused of hypocrisy—wrongly—by the progressive left. Left-leaning gay media outlets, including The Advocate and Pink News, are reveling in DeAngelis' cancelation; both led with headlines describing him as an "anti-LGBTQ+ activist" who has been exposed as a gay film actor. The clear implication is that there is some tension between his past work and his present political views—akin to an anti-gay religious figure or Republican politician who has been caught in a sex scandal.
Of course, neither outlet does the work of demonstrating that DeAngelis is in fact an "anti-LGBTQ+ activist." Some critics even imply that favoring charters, vouchers, or education savings accounts is de facto evidence of anti-LGBTQ sentiment, a flatly absurd claim.
It's true that DeAngelis has worked alongside groups and individuals that are often described as anti-gay, such as Moms for Liberty and PragerU. These groups often object to being characterized that way, instead claiming that they are merely opposed to the ways sexuality is discussed in schools. Their misleading claims about the widespread infiltration of "groomers" into the school system, however, can plausibly be read as evincing some anti-gay prejudices. School choice advocates should consider whether such associations do more harm than good. But it's intellectually lazy to presume that these prejudices are shared by everyone who has ever agreed on some aspect of a broader education reform agenda.
Bridget Ziegler, of course, is now a politically dead secret pornographer loyal to a husband who trolls for threesomes and/or degrading violent sex with vulnerable or intoxicated women. She is collecting a salary and insurance until her term runs out on the Sarasota County School Board.
But she was co-founder of Moms for Liberty.
Evolving cruelty, consistent lies, predictable end
I obviously can’t speak for how Corey DeAngelis has experienced his sexuality and sexual identity.
But I do know that DeAngelis has long been a particularly vicious and smarmy character in the ever evolving, but always vicious and smarmy, public school abolition grift. Over the years, this grift has dishonestly called itself “reform” or “no excuses” or “choice” or “parents rights,” depending on whatever it thinks is most helpful to the grift at any given time.
One always becomes a “star” in this often bipartisan reform universe through the exercise of public personal viciousness and a willingness to lie with cruel glee about fellow human beings — ostensibly for their own good — who choose public schools.
The “education reform” public education abolition grift has always required its public voices to lie about public school parents, teachers, and students in the same the same way J.D. Vance and Donald Trump lie about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Standardized test scores/school grades have been the most effective “objective” tool possible for stigmatizing the low capital/high need kids that public schools serve at scale — and the human beings who work with them.
They’re grooming the kids is exactly same type of personal lie as they’re eating the dogs; they’re eating the cats is exactly the same type of lie as your standardized test scores mean you suck and your teacher doesn’t care.
DeAngelis always reveled in that type of anti-human, mob-inciting lie — even before those lies became sex-based starting in 2020-2021.
He was the meanest of the pre-Rufo “choice” bros. After all, Reason celebrated DeAngelis for his “feuding” — not his research. This personal viciousness — unique even within a very vicious circle — helped DeAngelis pivot easily and prominently into the Chris Rufu “groomer”-bro model that emerged in the aftermath of COVID. It now seems to be unraveling because of its own gross, grifty stupidity — and perhaps because of all the porn.
And it’s hardly surprising that America’s lead anti-woke, LGBT-hating grifter bro has no problem with Corey DeAngelis’ secret gay porn life.
A despicable fake “movement” destroying itself with projection and grift
The fall of this minor anti-woke political education celebrity provides yet another example that anyone who publicly obsesses on the non-abusive sexual behavior, sexuality, or sexual identity of other people (particularly vulnerable people) is almost certainly redirecting their own insecurities or self-loathing about their own sexual behavior, sexuality, or sexual identity.
I’ve seen this happen too many times now to ignore it: you’re guilty till proven innocent. If you doubt me, consider this: there aren’t that many prominent, anti-public school, anti-woke grifters. It’s a pretty tight circle.
And yet, in just the last nine months, at least three of them — DeAngelis, Bridget Ziegler, and Mark Robinson — have been revealed as robust users and/or creators of (sometimes gay or at least bisexual) pornography while publicly demonizing the sexual identity and behavior of vast swathes of decent LGBT people.
A fourth anti-woke education grifter, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples, long employed as a “senior advisor” a violent guy named Larry Wilcoxson, who had been arrested four times, including for molestation of a 13-year middle school girl — after he was fired for exposing himself to a female custodian — at her middle school.
Wilcoxson may still be employed by Byron Donalds. Who knows? I couldn’t ever get anybody to address it when I wrote about it almost two years ago.
That’s how a fake movement kills itself; and I seriously doubt that we have heard the last of anti-woke grifter freakiness.
Who victimized you, Corey?
LGBT-themed books should be included in schools — and LGBT clubs welcomed — so that LGBT kids don’t grow up thinking they’re alone and shameful, as I suspect (without knowing) that Corey DeAngelis did. It’s hard to see his porn performances as anything but self-hatred. He talks about them that way.
Look at his passive, weak expression of victimhood. Check the language.
I was a victim of poor decisions and poor influences. I have turned that experience into the fuel that fires me to save young people from being put in the same position I was put in and to help parents protect their children.
DeAngelis obviously wants you to blame public schools and/or some shady LGBT cabal for making him engage in gay porn and then attack totally innocent, normal people as “groomers.”
But that’s just what a grifter says when he gets caught. It’s garbage.
If what DeAngelis implies here was remotely true, he would have been saying it from the start. If he could “blame” his gay porn on woke public schools, he most certainly would have, directly. It might have saved his career. The grifter “right” loves a fake “redemption” story that it can blame on the woke “left.” (Editor’s note: the woman at the heart of that link I shared has genuinely repudiated what she used to be a part of and sought reconciliation. It’s the way she was used by other people that is most damning.)
If Corey DeAngelis was a man — or an “effective education activist” — he would say who and what, specifically, victimized him. Name who put you on the screen, Corey.
Instead, we get this self-exonerating nonsense. I’ve translated it into reality from DeAngelis’ original word salad:
I masturbated on video as an adult with a bunch of other dudes; therefore your kid doesn’t don’t get to read Drama or And Tango Makes Three or Beloved.
Sure, Corey. Thoughts and prayers.
The Puritanical strain of Christian Nationalism always seeps out of the closet, which is why the news seldom lacks fresh examples of scandalous behavior by these folks. Putting themselves out front and attempting to force others to conform to their "norms" by distorting the laws of the land is a threat as real as some mug physically menacing you in a public forum.
I agree. It’s that self-hatred and insecurity that comes through over and over again with these folks.