#761
sOmEwHeRe OvEr ThE rAiNbOw
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brits are the fucking worst why the fuck would any of them reproduce christ
#762
sOmEwHeRe OvEr ThE rAiNbOw
Post rating: ~
that fucking labour party clip christ on a bike how juvenile obnoxious, how fucking old are they fucking 12
#763
Dont Mess With Sucess
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I just want to point out that David Bowie was 28-29 when that whole "Thin White Duke" thing happened. And Bowie went on to become a very successful white man. So if Kriss is reading this, do NOT give up hope. Rather, blame drugs
#764
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
it was still a widespread and working defense up through and after his death of David Bowie Heiling Hitler that the drugs went into his arm and taught it to Heil Hitler. when the drugs went away he forgot how to d oit, and no more Hitlers were Heiled by confused musician David Bowie
#765
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a while back i read some article that argued that the thing about bowie not remembering that period because of drugs or whatever was fake, but that he preferred to claim that he didn't remember because he felt that people had misunderstood his satire or something.
#766
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it was possible to heil hitler ironically in the 1970s, but not now,
#767
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for krissakes, bowie was caught in mid-wave in the photograph, all the other nazi shit was just part of the whole occult phase every guy goes through
#768
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don't you fucking dare tarnish the good name of david bowie by even mentioning him in the same breath as sex pest s*m kr*s
#769
[account deactivated]
#770
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
I dont think either are directly comparable with trying to bring a bunch of Nazi paraphernalia from... ahem... station to station
#771
[account deactivated]
#772
Dont Mess With Sucess
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For real what's up with super powerful people and child molestation? Or is that just a stereotype that we carefully will not undermine?
#773
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I think it's just a correlation between "being powerful enough to get away with doing terrible things" and "getting away with doing terrible things," that then becomes mutual complicity and multiplies itself through the favor trading necessary to protect themselves from the consequences of their awful actions. The same shitty structures of deflected blame and enforced silence that happen in abusive families, just scaled up by disproportionate power. Plus the generic narcissism and dulled conscience from a culture that equates power and money with moral uprightness.
#774
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don't forget the wild card that is blackmail. sometimes people are allowed to hold positions of power because others hold evidence of their vices, and the worse the vice the more trust they are granted
#775
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so the allegations against louis ck that have been swirling for years have just been confirmed in a high profile expose. he's cancelled the premiere of his hilariously poorly timed paean to woody allen and is refusing to answer questions https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/arts/television/louis-ck-sexual-misconduct.html

e: wtf

In 2015, a few months before the now-defunct website Defamer circulated rumors of Louis C.K.’s alleged sexual misconduct, Ms. Corry also received an email from Louis C.K., which was obtained by The Times, saying he owed her a “very very very late apology.” When he phoned her, he said he was sorry for shoving her in a bathroom. Ms. Corry replied that he had never done that, but had instead asked to masturbate in front of her. Responding in a shaky voice, he acknowledged it and said, “I used to misread people back then,” she recalled.

Edited by Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia ()

#776
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btw yes the sam kriss thread is now officially the public figures exposed as sex offenders thread
#777
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speaking of which, have we discussed matt taibbi and mark ames yet? https://jezebel.com/writers-matt-taibbi-and-mark-ames-serviced-no-one-but-t-1820007051
#778
[account deactivated]
#779
Post rating: +
ironically it's much easier to get these kinds of stories off the ground when dealing with actual public figures, which people in the entertainment industry naturally are, as opposed to capitalists in general, who generally are not. it does happen sometimes though, as with jeffrey epstein for example (never forget the publication of his little black book, which has never been followed up in any substantial way)
#780
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

speaking of which, have we discussed matt taibbi and mark ames yet? https://jezebel.com/writers-matt-taibbi-and-mark-ames-serviced-no-one-but-t-1820007051



the one staffer they mention a lot in the book, masha, said recently that she saw no harassing behavior from ames, taibbi or anyone else while working there. for me though it's like, you make shit up like that for laughs, you pay the piper, but for better or worse i don't think it's going to have a big impact on any of their careers

#781
Post rating: ~

cars posted:

Petrol posted:

speaking of which, have we discussed matt taibbi and mark ames yet? https://jezebel.com/writers-matt-taibbi-and-mark-ames-serviced-no-one-but-t-1820007051

the one staffer they mention a lot in the book, masha, said recently that she saw no harassing behavior from ames, taibbi or anyone else while working there. for me though it's like, you make shit up like that for laughs, you pay the piper, but for better or worse i don't think it's going to have a big impact on any of their careers


yeah. i mean, i understand how that sort of thing can be satirical in the context of stereotypes of expat behaviour, but it's pretty on the nose. ames has always been a braggadocious shithead who sometimes does very good work. taibbi i can't be sure about, there's something off about the clean image he maintains now compared to his exile work, especially in the context of the allegations of gender-motivated bullying that led to his departure from first look - alex pareene went to bat for him at the time to say that was all crap, but, something something boys club. end of the day, i probably just dont trust journalists, and dont trust men, and so i trust male journalists even less, and of the two of these guys, i'm more willing to give ames a pass for making up dumb gross stories because he at least doesnt try to project an image of being a "good guy", if that makes sense?

#782
Post rating: +
i think they did all of it. the pitch of the exile was always "we're here to talk about how everyone is a scumbag, and you can trust us to tell it b/c we're honest scumbags." given that it was late-90s moscow that is undoubtedly true which means its sad that they're the only ones who will pay for it even if they, too, deserve it
#783
Dont Mess With Sucess
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thirdplace posted:

i think they did all of it.


http://exiledonline.com/about-those-exile-smears/

#784
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I’m sorry but I have to repeat this: “Johnny Chen” who I “interview” in the first pages of the book is an invented character, who wrote outrageous club reviews and raped his way through Moscow while working for USAID as an adviser (according to our invention).

yeah see this does actually make sense, poor taste notwithstanding, and he freely admits the cringeworthiness in retrospect

#785
Post rating: +++++
so about the exiled alumns, it seems the only allegations against them are based on their own writing. there have been no actual accusations against either ames or taibbi. indeed, everyone that has worked with them, has defended them--including the women they were supposed to have harassed:


indeed, even former a former target of theirs has said that no one at the time took their writing literally, and while ames and taibbi were certainly drug addicts, they were not sexual predators.

as for the question of satire, i obviously do not think that satire is defense in and of itself, and i completely understand people's distaste for their writing; however, i feel like i need to defend it to some degree. my perspective is a bit different, serbia still retained family social cohesion that seemed to have been mostly eradicated in the soviet blocs. after the wars had settled down, serbia has lower or comparable violent crime rate than western european states; however, we do have parallels to russia. the fall of the communist states was arguably the greatest tragedy of the late 20th century. life expectencies plummeted, the economy was plundered, and suddenly women were forced to adapt to capitalist forces they hadn't seen before. women in russia probably got it a lot worse. ames saw this rape of a country, the rise of prostitution, destruction of order, release of destructive hedonism, and massive influx of drugs. during this, ames saw westerners praise all of it while maintaining this public veneer of virtue, so he decided to turn this formula on its head, publicly declare himself a scumbag while calling out other westerners profiting off of all this suffering that he was cataloging. obviously i think the exiled may have crossed the line in some of their writing into being too dark; however, and maybe it's because of my prejudices that i mentioned, i don't think the Exiled should be dragged into this, completely understandable, purge of men in media.

i will note that i am less familiar with taibbi, than i am with ames, so i may have missed something in regards to him.
#786
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#787
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fwiw, people have reported weird, aggressive (but non-sexual) behavior from Taibbi firsthand, i can't find the story but it was around the lines of screaming at a reporter in a busy cafe for bringing this stuff up and flouncing off.

i don't put much stock in the "no victim" thing because most of the victims were Russian prostitutes who had no particular reason to know or care that this particular asshole john would some day be in a position where accountability was possible. those are really the ones i'm concerned about, btw; the employment stuff sounds like it could have been tacitly accepted by a staff that was living in a time and place where far worse exploitation than routine ass-fucking jokes was common, but ames wrote a ton of stories where he hired prostitutes and often treated them like total shit.
#788
Dont Mess With Sucess
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now THATS what i call aggressive pricing
#789
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it's also sort of ridiculous and offensive how fuckin' aggrieved they both act when people act like the memoir they published and marketed as "the inside story of how the tabloid came to be and how Ames and Taibbi broke all their biggest stories" and formally classified as nonfiction is, in fact, true. that's on you, bubby, and even if the people using it against you happen to be "malevolent cretins" you only have yourself to blame.

relatedly, let's say they're right and it's all a big satire--they're supposed to be fuckin journalists, and you don't get to pass off fiction as nonfiction just by slapping the word "gonzo" on it if you want to be a reporter
#790
Post rating: +
thirdplace, hey if your instincts are telling you that ames and taibbi are creeps and we shouldn't trust them, that's completely understandable. however, afaik, it was their publisher of the book was the one who decided to call it non-fiction, not them. and yes, i agree, their could be victims out there that did not come out, but the accusations of their russian opponents during the time was never "this is true" or "here are women we found to testify against you for the crimes you admitted to in writing." the russian authorities never denied that the Exiled was satire, they claimed it was against russian values and culture. i mean, ames wrote articles about how people should just gas middle america, and the Exile invented fake identities under which they would write articles. i mean, you can say that it's against journalistic integrity, but considering the actual work they did during and after the dissolution of the exiled, i don't think that's a particularly strong criticism.
#791
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the progressive consensus now is that 'sex work is work' and prostitution is a choice to be defended, so i dont know who would be making a stink about that?
#792
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yeah, I also don't think it's incontrovertible enough that anyone who does not Disavow is ergo a Bad Person. also, there was unquestionably a lot of genuine satire in the paper... but i read all this stuff when back it was first being put out. to me it always seemed fairly clear which was which and I perceived most of the sex stuff being as firmly in the "gonzo but still basically real" column.

as for the book, maybe you can blame the publisher for the title page, but for the back cover and other marketing? it was certainly enough to fool the reviewers, who describe it as a mix of irreverent personal stories and important substantive reporting, but not as satire. and i agree that their american work suggests they are good and credible journalists, which is why i'm assuming that they're desperately trying to wave away the accurate journalism that isn't compatible with their contemporary images rather than that they previously were borderline fabulists
#793
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

thirdplace posted:

it was certainly enough to fool the reviewers, who describe it as a mix of irreverent personal stories and important substantive reporting, but not as satire.



well i mean, just looking at this part in isolation, that sort of lazy, closed-circuit misapprehension in the press about that time and place has formed many of the punch lines of ames and taibbi's bad jokes over the years. i don't know much about their virtue outside of the drive-time crud they typed up in their sweaty fart box of an office, i wasn't there and if someone starts accusing them directly of assault or rape it'll all turn real quick... but reviewers missing how shock-value satire was a huge part of the eXile, with the same satire played not even half-convincingly straight in the book they wrote about it... that's kind of jaw-dropping, and also kind of exactly what I'd expect from the crowd the eXile targeted, as those targets try to look cool after the fact by applauding the story of the paper after it got killed. those writers weren't out there fighting the effort by U.S. diplomats to shut the eXile down at the time because they were just as unaware of what was going on then as they were later, and those who weren't merely dumb were scared, but later they could pretend that covers adorned with racial slurs in massive type were just too beautiful to last in this corrupt world of endless PC Putinite oppression.

while the sources for breaking stories regarding other parties, parties directly accused of harassment, assault and rape, hardly mitigates the direct allegations against those others or the harm those others have done through their actions, whatever comes out against ames and taibbi in the days to come, it's worthwhile to remember that as of right now, the mortal sin they've committed in the eyes of the parties currently refusing to believe satire exists is that ames has absolutely refused to play the role they'd expected him to play in the current wave of beigist Slavophobia after they ever-so-bravely cheered him on against the Russian government after the battle was already lost. it's not impossible to accept the truth of accusations while also noting who's pushing them for cynical reasons and where and when and likely why. doing otherwise is not Marxist and consistently erases class

#794
Post rating: +

cars posted:

if someone starts accusing them directly of assault or rape it'll all turn real quick...


exactly. a single accuser coming forward would completely change things

#795
Kurdt
Post rating: +
believe anti-imperialists
#796
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No one actually believes any of the Ames/Taibbi stuff they spent a couple days last month pretending to believe and be offended about for cynical transparent reasons... and furthermore if being addicted to drugs and making tons of bad posts 15 years ago is a crime... then I hope you got a real big jail cell, man
#797
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it's one thing to do a reading and decide that it was all fake satire, but come on dude. there's nothing implausible about believing accounts of exploitation written by people who didn't, at the time, make any claims towards feminism, decency, or really even leftism (og exile's politics were mostly "punks who admire NazBols") & who were living in a place where exploitation and abuse were commonplace and had no consequences
#798
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i like to imagine ames and taibbi were in a sort of a 'heart of darkness' type situation where hardcore amphetamine abuse and the ambient level of sexual violence in russia made them temporarily lose their faculties
#799
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i mean if you're both a marxist and feminist/pro-feminist then the existence of men who are decent under one set of material conditions but do extremely shitty and exploitive things under another is a very natural thing to expect, even if it isn't really compatible with the tone of how we all talk about sex abuse and exploitation in 2017
#800
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thirdplace posted:

there's nothing implausible about believing accounts of exploitation written by people who didn't, at the time, make any claims towards feminism, decency, or really even leftism


on the contrary, if they claimed those things while writing that kind of stuff it would make it far more suspicious imo