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

By the way, future Pulitzer winner Katie Way wrote a nasty email to Ashleigh Banfield mocking her age and her highlights, so it seems like she's got this whole journalism thing figured out at age 23.

Ashleigh Banfield Fires Back After Getting Insulting Email from Writer of Aziz Ansari Piece

 

The Porn President

With his phony gilt Louis XV chairs, his casinos and beauty pageants, and his succession of prom-queen-jerky paramours, Trump has spent his career performing, and the role he has chosen is that of a poor man’s idea of a rich man. He went so far as to create an imaginary friend, John Barron, to lie to the New York press about his sex life. He claimed, falsely, to have been involved with Carla Bruni, a fantasy the former first lady of France publicly ridiculed. He boasts in his memoirs about his involvement with “top women,” writing: “Oftentimes, when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’”

Who is “you” in that sentence? Marks. The people to whom he wants to sell ugly polyester ties and third-rate condos, with his name on the building in big gold letters.

Mr. Williamson is right. I'll put it this way: The friends of mine who admire Trump are ... the friends of mine who I would expect to admire Trump.

(Not the more sophisticated, useful idiot @YankeeFan admiration. But legit think the guy is Gatsby.)

 

Katie Way has no idea what this means.

“I was brown-haired for a while when I was a war corespondent, interviewing Yasser Arafat, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank. Google those places.”

 

I haven't seen this many liberals rally around a sexual predator since ... well, you know.

 

LOL, rally.

 

It's a legal mess, agree or disagree.

 

Mocking her hairstyle? That doesn't seem very pro-woman.

 

I'm suddenly reminded of When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong.

 

When I was 23, I was dumber than a post, and frankly much dumber than Katie Way.

This is Internet journalism in 2018. Clearly has some talent, thrown in the deep end of the pool, thrashing her way out against a lot of journalistic heavyweights. It's hard not to feel for her. It's hard to shame somebody that young for a messy piece that shouldn't exist in its current form.

 

Say whatever you want about Aziz Ansari, but leave Ashleigh Banfield alone!

 

When you're young and think you know way more than you do, it's so easy to get angry when people criticize your work, and clap back and attack them personally. I've done it several times, and I always regretted it looking back. If you do good work, and Way obviously thinks she did, they you let the work speak for itself. What in the world does attacking Banfield do, other than reveal you have some insecurities about the piece? Good work speaks for itself, especially for other journalists.

Here is what's hard, though: A lot of us (mostly old school journalists; mostly male and white) are saying "Gawd, young people who think they know it all are just the worst and I'm so very thankful I wasn't thrown into the deep end at a time when I thought I had it all figured out..." The problem is, the traditional path of being mentored on the way up doesn't exist anymore. The EIC of Babe.net is probably not that much older than Way, and he/she is likely an arrogant idiot too, with little experience editing pieces of so much gravity. So of course she's not going to get good advice.

In part, this is what social media has done also to journalists: Made them think they have to respond to "owns" with a series of "owns" in return. Most young journalists aren't getting any good career advice, and in the vacuum, they're also learning to fire off smart allecky retorts in search of RTs. Calling Banfield a second-wave feminist with bad highlights, dear lord. Rudeness aside, maybe try to have a grasp of stuff in your profession that didn't happen within the last three years, kiddo.

 

Geez, I know we want to avoid stereotypes, but is there anything more stereotypical millennial than Katie Way's personal attack as defense?