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

Hella?

 

You're very skeptical of the details in legacy publications (Rolling Stone, New York Times, Esquire) and pride yourself on it. Especially when it comes to "gripping narrative."

Why is Babe.net getting a pass from your usual skepticism?

 

I would not have run the story.

 

But don't you think, regardless of how many positive cues came before it, if there is one negative cue, he should shut it down?

 

Yet you called it the most thorough account of a sexual assault we've seen, to date. (Paraphrase.)

 

Of sexual misconduct.

Which detail am I to be skeptical about? Grace said she gave verbal and non-verbal cues. Aziz Ansari apologized for misreading them. When the story hit, he denied nothing.

Why don’t you believe Grace?

 

No. It depends what it was. "Not now," "let's wait till the second date," etc. are of a different stripe. The totality of the event too -- and, not incidentally, the writer's clear biases that have come forward since then -- suggest that what we're told happened is not what we would see happening if we could go to the video.

 

There is really no way for him to come out looking alright if he does dispute it.

"She blew me!" That doesn't make him sound like more of a gentleman, you know? All he can do is say, yeah, I perceived it differently. It's absolutely impossible to go point-by-point on this.

 

Some of the details don't ring true to me. You really believe he "stuck his fingers down her throat" multiple times? Was Ansari trying to extract her molars? Or was that, perhaps, the kind of metaphorical exaggeration I've seen you rail against many times when we discuss stories here?

 

What I've seen is, whether you are innocent or guilty or whether is murky, there is no response you can give that will satisfy people. Louis CK gave what seemed, to me, like a genuine apology that admitted everything and that he realizes now even though he asked for consent he was in a position of power over these women, and he was still savaged for it. Other people deny some of the details, and are savaged for it. Maybe they all deserve to be savaged! But there is no proper response to this that is satisfactory. I've yet to see a single response that wasn't attacked further for "still not getting it." I'm unclear if a "getting it" exists, actually.

 

It doesn’t ring untrue to me. The way the story read, “the claw” seemed to be a known move, like “the shocker.”

The details ring pretty true to me. I think this is how it went down, from Grace’s point of view. You are expressing skepticism I haven’t seen expressed elsewhere. Most I’ve seen think that, taken at face value, the story still does not portray newsworthy sexual misconduct. Caitlin Flanagan, Legacy Pundit, thinks Grace just “wanted to be the famous man’s girlfriend.”

 

Michael Flatley? Conor Oberst? The Duke lacrosse team?