Racist smear-princess Emilia Benton—another self-interested dimwit feigning "social justice" intentions—goes after Laz again
That anyone can take such swelling pride in such a dismal, if entertaining, writing portfolio is almost enviable
Emilia Benton is a recreational marathon runner, a freelance writer, a glowering fool, and a hypocritical, racist troublemaker. She proudly identifies as a USA Track and Field Level 1 certified running coach. She has also bragged about getting all the way down to 3:45 in the marathon after figuring out she was “overtraining,” which to her seems to mean running more than eight or so miles a day to prepare for a 26.2-mile race. She even advised people not to do hard workouts during the covid-19 “pandemic,” as this protracted nemesis offered runners an unusual opportunity to, in her words, “rest (their) legs and recharge.”
In the past, these qualities would have combined to render Benton merely one more attention-hungry clown yammering at capable runners, thinkers, activists, and wordsmiths from the shallow end of the athletic, intellectual, and creative pool, where she would have spent the rest of her talent-free yet self-stroking days, splashing around with the rest of the insecure-yet-egoistic weenies who have always populated citizen-level running, but perennially lacked serious designs on seizing control of it or at least the means to do so.
In 2023, these traits, using longstanding and accepted moral and epistemic arithmetic, still qualify their bearers for fifth-degree clown-belts. But beginning in roughly the spring of 2020, these would-be appropriate barriers to general visibility also began giving opportunistic blowhards like Benton limitless avenues toward becoming published and thus defensible surface reasons to call themselves journalists.
As a result, the running outlets, just like the regular media, are serviced almost exclusively by clown-journalists, whose efforts are supplemented by too many bozo-grammers and jester-casters to keep track of.
Benton was at the forefront in the summer of 2020 of a small but noisy mob of media figures and low-IQ waddlers who decided to fling and mutually amplify false accusations of bigotry against ultramarathon race director Gary Cantrell (aka Laz Lake), with the transparent aim of dissolving Cantrell’s standing and livelihood.
Because a gathering of people just spent a few days enjoying a weird brand of fun at the non-cancelled Cantrell’s signature event, the Barkley Marathons—which saw two new names among this year’s three finishers, bringing the historical total to 17—Benton is butthurt and responding to her own chapped bunghole by lashing out with what is either a lie or reckless innuendo (TBD).
But before digesting the details of her latest celebratory transgression, you might appreciate some background material on this harried operative.
In response to my continued criticism of the broad August 2020 smearing effort in which Benton took part, rather than engage whatsoever with any of my arguments, Benton and other dyspeptic and dysgraphic figures who had congregated in a Marathon Investigation Facebook-group thread declared Substack a categorically unreliable platform, insisting that only articles published in "credible, reputable outlets” like Runner’s World were even worth reading.
I still haven’t decided which is funnier: the idea that any self-described journalist thinks “I can declare something incorrect without even looking at it if I don’t like the URL” is either a valid refutation of criticism or a way to become smarter in life; or that, apparently unbeknownst to this intrepid fact-hound, I wrote for the very same outlets she does now (or their ancestors) for over twenty years before they became completely demoralized and started enlisting whiners posing as visionaries to churn out clickable, ad-riddled content.
Benton’s article for Runner’s World in November 2020 about reining in her own alleged aerobic excesses and subsequently shifting to the “correct” mileage level, titled “The Case for Running Lower Mileage to Avoid Overtraining,” doesn’t even indicate how much she was running either before or after her “A-ha! I must be too tired!” moment. And this attempted toe-dip into muscle physiology is almost, but not quite, David Roche-like (it’s missing random, as well as useful, commas):
Experts say yes: Running truly is an individualized sport and the volume and intensity you’re better suited for to perform optimally can depend on fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fiber predisposition.
That “can” would seem to negate the entire remainder of the passage. And what does she mean by “predisposition”? I’m not sure Benton herself knows:
As a quick refresher, fast-twitch fibers have more powerful force but fatigue quickly; slow-twitch muscle-fibers are less powerful but more fatigue-resistant. Our muscles contain both types, but your personal ratio can vary depending on factors such as muscle function, age, and training history.
As a quick correction, Benton seems to have not chased “predisposition” toward its logical conclusion.
So, reliable sources are the key to gaining wisdom. Perhaps an occasional look in the mirror is in order as well.
Benton, as her participation in the anti-Cantrell pogrom implies, is an across-the-board social-justice fraudstress, extolling the virtues of not just other cognitively challenged anti-white racists (Alison Desir is practically a terrorist), but the “trans inclusion” narrative that is purposefully exclusionary toward females, with the most talented girls and women suffering the greatest proportional material, emotional, and privacy losses.
In March 2021, Benton presented the standard “let men compete as women” advocacy piece by interviewing a cast of trans people but not one person opposing the absurd, then-new NCAA trans-athlete policy. In fact, she essentially blamed the entire opposition to the lunacy on Tate Reeves, at the time the governor of Mississippi.
More recently, Benton interviewed former professional runner and current professional loudmouth Lauren Fleshman for a chum-only outlet called Well + Good, offering the mush-brained Fleshman yet another opportunity to spout a series of inanities and insincerities about trans people.
I also wonder, to whom exactly does Fleshman think she was “coming out” two weeks ago? Even clueless straight white men had picked up on that by late January.
One of the hallmarks of Wokism is that it encourages its cult members to break the same, hyper-rigid rules they establish for normies.
As I’ve said, someone can point out all day that I was born white, and have had the nerve to remain that way since, all day long if it tickles her tenderloins. But if that person is responding unfavorably to an idea I have proposed, it would make sense to also both describe why the idea is bad and connect that badness to my whiteness.
But under Wokism, none of this is necessary. A white man getting in the way of the cancellation of a white man who has done absolutely nothing wrong is obviously co-signing the “guilty” white man’s imaginary crime. Wokish people are, after all, fiercely and absolutely tribal, so they think everyone must organize their philosophies around identities and nothing more. Accordingly, everyone must, like themselves, be continually hunting for purposeful villains in every corner, at every registration table, at every water stop. And on every independent-media platform.
Yesterday afternoon, Benton tweeted this out.
That tweet and any responses to it may disappear soon, so I’ve collected some screen shots and annotated the important parts for those unable to sift through up to 240 characters at a pop.
First, where is “that photo of Laz with the Confederate flag?” If such a photo exists, wouldn’t it have been helpful for Benton to include it along with a link to her own three-year-old hit piece? So much “me” to think about, so few neurons to support other forebrain processes.
And second, would such a photo necessarily imply anything dire? Do I get to assume that anyone with a penis flying an ad hoc pride flag wants to be sent to prison for aggravated grooming with intent to pervert, then be transferred to a women’s prison so he can commence raping?
I know the idea among the Wokish is to transform people you want to be racists or otherwise evil into racists or otherwise evil people by any factitious means necessary. But Laz again? After three damned years and a clear, if mostly silent, rejection of the “bad Laz” narrative by other runners?
Lize Brittin’s question—which is not difficult to understand and should be easy to answer—had gathered over a 1,250 views, but zero replies, as of 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday.
Yesterday evening, a commenter seized on Benton’s trolling and, unknowingly fulfilling his NPC role, condemned Cantrell for a non-crime there was no evidence of.
Mr. Pearson at some point deleted his tweet, deleting Lize’s query below along with it. But Lize’s first question remains, and as of Saturday at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time it remains unanswered.
Another thing to notice here is that a tweet with over 34,300 views has so far garnered 90 likes, meaning that about one-fourth of one percent of the people who have seen it have upvoted it. And although Benton has over 2,200 followers, only five people besides Lize have replied, with one of these replies sharply disapproving. This is despite a goon-account and goober-tweets like Benton’s specifically selecting for deranged people who see the world the same sad way she does.
The last thing to notice is that Benton and one of her few sympathizers aren’t upset just at the fact that the Barkley Marathons are still happening; they’re annoyed that other people have the temerity to enjoy themselves there despite a bearded, John Lennon-bespectacled demon hosting the perambulatory escapades:
“Seeing a lot of the usual excitement”
“I’ve been cringing at all the excitement”
I’ve written many times about how these people aren’t just mean, they’re joyless and humorless to their self-loathing cores. The only time they appear to be having fun is when they are grousing about out-groupers or trying to ruin something nice—a race, a tradition, a company, a person.
In a twisted way, lying imbeciles like Emilia Benton are happy when their efforts to cancel a popular figure or event fail. That way, they have something new-not new to complain and dissemble about at the same time every year. And by this point, if the Wokish of running haven’t managed to find a different source of irritation on all fifty-two weekends of the year (or fifty-three, for leap years starting on a Saturday), give them until Memorial Day or so.
Benton is a proper Wokish person, being constitutively daft and arrogantly, flamboyantly wrong about absolutely every cultural issue she tackles in her laborious and robotic prose. She supports the very entities forming the greed-pumping, brown-people-exploiting hearts of the institutions she supposedly hates. For example, she despises what Nike did to Kara Goucher, yet loves buying Nikes.
Despite Benton’s farrago of risible deficits, I’m almost jealous of her. When I became a regular name in for Chrissakes running magazines, I was unable to convince myself I had made any kind of professional, intellectual, or moral leap forward. And I certainly never thought to use any of the outlets I wrote for to libel or otherwise harass major figures in the sport in frankly bigoted ways, and had I proposed any such endeavor, it would have been shot down in appropriate horror.
Only thanks to the happenstance advent of the bag of sham social-justice movements that constitute Wokism do people like Benton have any renown. I think it’s only fair to remind them that outside their well-guarded bubble of slack jaws and squinting eyes, everyone sees who and what they really are and what they actually want.
And although the overall trend sucks, some of this really is funny to anyone who knows even a little bit about training for marathons. I mean, “Don’t train hard during covid” speaks for itself, and “My 8:30-per-mile marathon is proof low mileage works” is reminiscent of a article in Golf Today by someone who regularly shoots 120 for eighteen holes and tells people he quit quadruple-bogeying every hole when he gave up taking an excessive number of practice putts.