Toast Points For The Week of December 5th

by Mallory Ortberg · December 5, 2014

Instead of reminding you what we did on the site this week (go click through! It’s good for you) I want someone to explain to me exactly what the New Republic is and what happened this week. Is it going away? You can make jokes later but just give me a solid walk-through without making me click on any links. You have my attention.

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47 Comments

    1. fferj +8

      I worked for him. He pronounces the first consonant of his last name as a W. <eta> Well in thinking about this, it’s not a strong W, it’s sort of halfway between a W and a V because it’s a bit fluffy.

  4. Megan +53

    Can I turn this into a little open thread continuation and vent about whatever is going on with the Rolling Stone “oh there were discrepancies in that gang-rape victim’s account, sorry readers” situation. UGH. UGH. (I don’t actually know what the deal is because whatever it is it will fill me with sorrow and/or rage so I’m not clicking through, but this has the downside of meaning that I don’t know who to be angry at). Something terrible happened to that girl, whether she can point to the exact date on the calendar or not.

    1. SarahDances +29

      I know! Because there are never ever any discrepancies whatsoever in the stories of legitimate trauma victims. I also don’t know what the alleged discrepancies are, and am too scared to click on anything that might tell me.

      1. thebellewitch +32

        I read the Washington Post’s piece on it (don’t even read the Rolling Stone ‘apology,’ as it says nothing but “Oh we’re throwing our source under the bus now.”) and it’s discrepancies such as the date (apparently no party on the night cited), how many people were involved and whether the alleged ringleader rapist was a frat member. ‘Jackie’ stands by her story and even her friends who question the details believe that something bad happened to her.

        Not that those last inconvenient facts are going to do anything to stop her from becoming the latest scapegoat of ‘women who lie about rape.’ What a freaking train wreck.

        1. Megan +32

          AHHHHHHH their (RS’s) trust in *the victim* was misplaced???!?!?!? what about the trust you placed in your reporter and her editors and whatever agreement they came to about how much or little fact checking to do? that’s what seems misplaced now YOU ASSHOLES

          1. katiemcgillicuddy +54

            And now, because they chose to sensationalize this one story (which, um, just cause she remembered something wrong doesn’t mean she lied, at all) without proper fact checking, shitty people everywhere are going to dismiss all the other evidence that UVA is a trainwreck when it comes to dealing with sexual assaults, and those same people will give credence to every son of a bitch MRA who likes to pretend women just constantly lie about rape, and who are going to scream at the top of their lungs, for years, BUT REMEMBER THAT TIME THAT ONE WOMAN LIED (and again, absolutely nothing is telling us she lied, at all, but who cares about that)

            Fuck you Rolling Stone, FUCK YOU.

            ETA: GOD SERIOUSLY FUCK YOU ROLLING STONE, I HOPE YOUR PIECE OF SHIT MAGAZINE DIES SOONER RATHER THAN LATER

          2. Megan +27

            Yeah I just fired off an email to them because I thought if I did I could let it go and move on but somehow I became even more enraged. It was a giant struggle not to just type FUCK YOU over and over and over argh I’m so glad for The Toast.

            also “I’m never clicking to your WebSite again” is a lot less satisfying than “cancel my subscription immediately” or even “REMOVE MY NAME FROM YOUR MASTHEAD”

          3. Unreadaethel +19

            UVA’s seriously not a safe environment. When I was doing food delivery, I was offered the late night shift (midnight-2 am), but I refused it, because I was not delivering food to frat houses at that hour. Of all of the “bad” areas in Charlottesville, fraternity row is by far the most genuinely scary.

        2. rhymeswitheight +30

          And the bullshit about how the FRAT says it never had a party that night, because of course they have no reason to be anything other than completely honest about this… but way at the end of the article, the university’s Greek life organization says that frats have to register their parties, but the records don’t date back to that semester. THAT is a fucking discrepancy.

          1. SarcasticFringehead +28

            Well, and what counts? Like, if I were at a frat and a bunch of people were drinking & listening to music & whatever, I would call it a “party,” even if it’s not officially a Party. Not that the frat would have any reason to split those kinds of rhetorical hairs, of course.

    2. hussified +11

      This afternoon was the first chance I’d had to open the Rolling Stone article and read it, and THAT FUCKING LETTER was what greeted my eyes. I am so fucking disgusted.

    3. dakimel +14

      I am INFURIATED about this. I mean, I was so pleased that people were starting to discuss a lot more openly the university response, what’s fair and appropriate, what’s best for the women/victims, how to counteract the rape culture. And devastating as Jackie’s personal story was, it WASN’T the important part of the article – the important part was investigating what happened to someone – anyone – who was a victim of rape on campus. And RS showed pretty clearly, I think, that the university response, not just at UVA though they have plenty of work to do there, is woefully inadequate. Also that there is no education of young men about rape culture.
      Now we just get to point fingers and victim blame and whitewash over the very real problems. Disgusting. Their statement is disgusting, and their cowardice is disgusting.

    4. Taiga +5

      It’s so infuriating! She tells them she doesn’t want them to run her story, THEY RUN IT ANYWAY, then accuse her of lying when it can’t be verified.

  6. fferj +134

    TNR was founded a hundred years ago as a liberal journal. It has gone from left-of-center to Stalinist (during the Henry Wallace years) to irrelevant left-of-center to contrarian right-of-left (“even the liberal New Republic” — sort of like Slate before the Internet). During Marty Peretz’ ownership and, particularly, Andrew Sullivan and later Peter Beinart’s editorship, TNR had a lot of unfortunate racism – against African-Americans and against Palestinians particularly. It was also very pro Iraq War (as were many liberal outfits — even NYRB and The New Yorker were split at the time, amazingly). The “back of the book” run by Leon Wieseltier was a great cultural outlet – he basically had a full cultural review similar to LRB/NYRB in the second half of a weekly magazine, and he edited that section for over 30 years (since ’83).

    With Chris Hughes purchasing the magazine from Peretz a few years ago, everyone thought this would be great — more internet/digital savvy coverage, less racism / reflexive Zionism. He brought back Frank Foer as Editor and hired new staff writers, including more women (though still very few POC). Unfortunately, Hughes was disappointed with traffic and advertising revenues, and seems increasingly to not be a fan of long-form journalism. His model may be something more like the Atlantic Wire or Buzzfeed, both of which are great venues, but seem not matched to the existing magazine.

    The last straw was Hughes bringing in Guy Vidra, a somewhat illiterate new-media-strategist-pontificator (kind of like that Bustle guy), who had worked at Yahoo!, as a new CEO of TNR, against Foer’s wishes. They were pushing to effectively eliminate the magazine side of the magazine — move to a monthly in print that is mostly a continuous digital presence — though there’s little evidence that they would be good at this, compared to existing content providers who do a good job in the space (like, why would New Coke TNR beat Buzzfeed at their own game all of a sudden.) So Vidra pushed to replace Frank; they hired Gabe Snyder to replace him without telling Frank they were moving in a new direction, and then Frank was fired, Leon quit, and all of the rest of the staff and contributing editors resigned.

    So now Hughes has paid a lot of money for an old media brand without any of its old media employees, and he wants to start a new media brand out of it, for which I’d say good luck, except that I’m kind of bitter about the process of trashing the old house in order to build a new building on its foundations, which seems neither necessary nor even a good business move.

    3. PunnyDreadful +14

      This was really good. On Twitter, it’s mostly been snarky NY journalists mocking smarmy DC journalists.

      Now can you tell me the appropriate amount of time to wait before sending them my resume?

    5. jessicalhdoyle +18

      my memory is — as a then-13-year-old who really did not know how to be bisexual, in 1992, and had access to almost no resources on the subject at the time — that under Sullivan’s editorship TNR was one of the few mainstream magazines devoting much in the way of coverage to gay rights (as opposed to AIDS coverage) and one of the first to argue in favor of gay marriage. Certainly it was the only one I could find in my school library.

  8. grahamwjenkins +18

    Frederik deBoer summed it up perfectly here (http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/12/05/dear-very-serious-journalists/):

    “The New Republic was never anything but a warmongering racist antileft trashpile and I hope the whole enterprise burns to the ground and if you are nostalgic about it you’re nostalgic for The Bell Curve, the war on Iraq, and Marty Peretz’s Muslim Hating Neo-Fascist Jamboree. The whole enterprise was corrupt right down to its colonialist bones and if some Facebook billionaire wants to turn it into Tinder For Politico Jagbags it could not possibly suffer in comparison. Shedding tears for Leon Wiseltier’s job is like worrying about what became of Stalin’s cat. I only pray for the day that your twisted obsession with Village bric-a-brac is performed by the unpaid interns that are the inevitable future of Big Media, which will be celebrated by you neoliberal clowns right up until some 17 year old earning nothing but 3 $9,000-a-credit-hour credits literally unplugs the keyboard from your workstation. Tell Stephen Glass I said hey and shut out the lights on your way out.”

    1. fferj +12

      Well, I’m comfortable taking the contra to Freddie here. Man, he hates Zionism with the passion of 1,000 suns and all that, but it seems like dancing on the graves of a bunch of journalists who wanted to continue doing long-form journalism is odd, particularly since the reign he’s complaining about largely ended with the Bush presidency.

      The magazine wasn’t black-and-white during Peretz’ ownership, and it wasn’t after Peretz’ ownership, so, nu, but ‘corrupt’ and ‘colonialist’ I think are unwarranted. But Freddie’s kind of a gas, so I can’t be mad at him. He’s mad at everyone, and he’s right at least 55% of the time.

      1. kilks401 +17

        If TNR had hired some black journalists and reckoned with its 90s odiousness, I would be sympathetic to this. Also, plenty of people, including Ta-Nehisi Coates were sympathetic to the journalists losing their jobs, I personally think Rebecca Traister does great work (and she may still work there, and i will still read her).

        But so many people, with Chait and Lizza leading the charge, were lamenting the history of TNR, not just the current iteration. This isn’t that long ago,

        Hell, Andrew Sullivan is arguing that it was brave for TNR to publish pieces questioning whether black people are inherently stupid, https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/540928834603057…

      1. sednarea51 +15

        I have a +4 Int/Cha scrunchie. Will come by tonight for trade. (Don’t bother locking your door, I’ve maxed my Open Lock skills.)

    2. Jeff +8

      I try not to take on an air of moral superiority about what are essentially culture preferences – clothes, movies, sports, and the like – but good lord do I not need to read about anybody’s “Swarovski-crystal-studded head wrap.”

    3. deleted6501527 +21

      It’s not just the title; the whole article screams Onion to me.

      ‘ “I can tuck my hair into a headpiece in a cab on my way to work, and in 45 seconds I look polished and put together,” said Ms. Sun, 34, who owns four coronets of varying degrees of extravagance. “On a serious-business scale of 1 to 10, I will wear a tiara or an embellished headband to anything 7 or below.” ‘

      I can’t even tell what’s satire any more.

    4. nicoledieker +38

      Those pieces aren’t even tiaras. They are HEADBANDS. Tiaras are worn so that the base rests horizontally on the brow, not so that it curves over the head.

      1. Absotively +2

        I mean, you could maybe argue that the tall crown-shaped one is more tiara than headband, but since it’s in the “celebrities who wear whacky clothes started the trend” picture, I don’t think it really counts as part of the trend.

  10. jbdelong +6

    A bunch of people whose principal talent was going the extra mile to suck up to Marty Peretz could not figure out how to go the extra mile to suck up to Chris Hughes…

  11. jessicalhdoyle +7

    Taking a moment to point out that the TNR debacle and the doubts expressed over the RS article are linked, and the link is Stephen Glass. The original blog post questioning the RS story (at least the first I saw) was by a former editor of George who opened his piece describing how he got duped by Stephen Glass. (If you don’t want to read that piece, see Kat Stoeffel’s skeptical response.) One of the co-authors of the Slate piece (which Stoeffel was also unimpressed by) questioning the RS writer’s failure to talk to the alleged rapists is Hanna Rosin, was a friend of Stephen Glass’s when they worked together at TNR, as was Jonathan Chait, who has been one of the loudest decriers of what’s happened this week at TNR. I wonder if people who were previously betrayed by Glass are more likely to be publicly skeptical of big articles, as a way of showing they don’t plan to get fooled again. Which is not to imply some sort of grand conspiracy theory — or for that matter to imply that the TNR alumni somehow want to see RS go down. More to say, the journalism world is awfully damn small.

    (For the record, I don’t know any of these people and haven’t written for any of the above publications, though I did once work with a guy who worked at George.)

  13. demisemiquaver

    This is exactly my thought. My sister is in a sorority (not at UVA) and from what she has told me, frats have "registered parties" which are officially sanctioned, but then there's also a lot of "a bunch of people spontaneously came over, drank a lot, and carried on" parties which happen regardless.