Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

Amid criticism over Aziz Ansari piece, Babe editor stands by story

The circumstances surrounding the story remain unclear. Herrmann said Babe.net "heard about this story through personal networks, and then had to speak to a lot of different people before we got to the source. Our reporter Katie Way approached her, not the other way round."

 

https://jezebel.com/babe-what-are-you-doing-1822114753

Jezebel thinks the reporting was too detailed.

Because of the amateurish way the Babe report was handled (her wine choices; her outfit), and the way it was written with an almost prurient and unnecessarily macabre interest in the minute details of their interaction (“the claw”), it left the subject open to further attacks, the kind that are entirely, exhaustingly predictable. The usual subjects emerged with the usual opinions: within minutes, alt-right toad Mike Cernovich was dismissing Ansari as a “beta”; within hours, neoliberal icon Caitlin Flanagan had written a confused, disingenuous essay in The Atlantic using Ansari’s race as a rhetorical device for her disdain for Me Too; within days, hardline carceral-state cheerleader Ashleigh Banfield was accusing Grace of harming the entire Me Too movement. To no one’s surprise, The New York Times’s Bari Weiss weighed in on Monday night, rolling her eyes at what she considered to be Grace’s requirement that Ansari be “a mind-reader.”

 

So I'm an ageist fogey who's... right? Which is it?

 

The editor-in-chief of babe.net is a 28-year-old dude? That seems problematic.

 

"If commentators want to patronize babe because it's a new site or they haven't heard of it or because it's run by a bunch of young women, that's their trip," Herrmann said. "The idea that reporters shouldn't investigate stories that don't involve law enforcement is patently ridiculous."

 

Scocca, as is often the case, hitting it on the head here.

 

Scocca's argument is that we should believe Babe.net BECAUSE it's out of left field?

Not sure I'm buying that.

 

Yes.

EDIT: To be clear, I was agreeing with you. But you and I both know that if this were a ... broader (HA!) ... forum, there'd be lots of clucking from the younger set.

 

I think that Scocca's argument is that there are some sour grapes being consumed.

 

Sour grapes because they're not getting the clicks? Hardly.

 

And that's always going to be his argument, because Fuck Working For The Man.

There are serious problems with the babe.net piece and with the story it told even if taken at face value.

To put the political spin on it, this is the kind of mind control that gets liberals in trouble. If you aren't ready to run Aziz Ansari up the flagpole, you are betraying the movement.