What does the community think of him? I have seen interviews and read articles by him. The guy seems off his rocker and full of self loathing. That's just my opinion. Still it would be fun to bang him after I picked his brain.
I never heard of him until all the chaos at Berkeley. My opinion, not a fan, but he has the right to speak like everyone else. The irony of what happened at Berkeley is that it had the opposite effect of what the protesters wanted, it raised his profile and emboldened his followers. I looked on Amazon just now and his book is now the #1 best selling book. So now he is actually profiting from what happened. What would have been the smart move is to protest at his speech and challenge his views with rational arguments and questions that may change the perspective of some of his followers. You don't do that by shutting down a speech. He is an insensitive person, but that is all he is. The people that fight so hard against him, give him too much power.
I see him as an attention whoring douchebag but if institutions want him to talk he should. We can't claim to be open-minded yet shut down dissenting views from ours that's hypocritical. It only gives him the opportunity to have a victim complex. It seems like more and more I see people from the left be the intolerable people they claim the right are. Of course not all people from any side are that close minded.
I'm most likely the only one who thinks something positive. He gives me hope. He is openly gay and I mean really really open. Which is valuable when you're conservative and LGBT. I thought I was doomed to abandon my political home. Now I know I don't have to.