WE ALL KNOW THE ANSWER: Stacy McCain: Why Is KiwiFarms.net ‘Harassment,’ But What Taylor Lorenz Does Is ‘Journalism’?
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THE STREISAND EFFECT: ‘Libs of TikTok’ Gains 300k+ Followers Since Doxxing From Hack Journo Taylor Lorenz.
Here’s a working link, and it does indeed show Lorenz as “excluded from the Wayback Machine.” It’s amazing what can be accomplished with Bezos bucks behind it.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I remember when the folks at the Internet Archive, which hosts the Wayback Machine, were raising money after the 2016 election based on their vows to resist Trump’s looming censorship. But to paraphrase Tom Wolfe, Fascism is always coming from Republicans, but always actually comes from Democrats.
THE MSM IS IMPOTENT AGAINST PRIVATE CITIZENS EXPOSING THEIR LIES AND SHIBBOLETHS: Doxxer Taylor Lorenz thinks she’s the real victim.
We need an army of Libs of Tic Toc.
TRAPPED IN 2020: Meet the Americans STILL isolating 4 years into Covid pandemic… including NJ woman who’s been in lockdown for 1,620 days.
Surprisingly, CTL-F “Taylor Lorenz” brings back zero results.
BEEGE WELBORN: I Don’t Want to Get Anyone’s Hopes Up, But…THERE’S BEEN TALK.
So, this is all just kind of fun speculation, mind you. Brought on, of course, not by my twisted imagination – even I have my limits – but by a convergence of events and signs from the Heavens.
First, what was that rumble from the turgid bowels of the WaPo?
Was Taylor Lorenz hacking up another hairball?
Gads, no.
It’s someone once mistaken for a respected columnist. And what she had to say was shocking in the extreme…but, oh, so tempting…
Democrats are wrestling with an age-old problem
Maybe Hillary Clinton could come to the rescue.
DON’T PLAY WITH THEIR EMOTIONS THAT WAY.
Oh, I could go for a little cruelty.
FOUR YEARS AGO THIS WEEK: The New York Times published Tom Cotton’s editorial on June 3rd, 2020, and the repercussions continue to this day. From Noah Rothman, then-with Commentary, the next day: The New York Times and the Vanguard of the Incognizant.
“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton, “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain, and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” The senator has advocated extraordinary measures involving the domestic deployment of uniformed soldiers for several days—as we’ve witnessed mass protests in American cities during the day and wanton violence, rioting, and looting by night. This exhortation is not new for him, but the venue in which it was placed—the New York Times opinion page—inspired a frenzied revolt from within the journalistic institution that published him. More remarkable, the aggrieved staffers and writers at the Times generally declined to issue a counterargument. They simply declared Cotton’s arguments anathema and sought to wield whatever power they could muster to see them banished.
One by one, New York Times staffers added their voices to a coordinated campaign of shame directed squarely at the paper’s management. “Running this puts Black [New York Times] staff in danger,” wrote technology reporter Taylor Lorenz, writers Caity Weaver and Jacey Fortin, climate reporter Hiroko Tabuchi, book critic Parul Sehgal, graphics assistant Simone Landon, reporter Katherine Rosman, styles desk editor Lindsey Underwood, culture writer Jenna Wortham, contributor Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and columnists Kara Swisher and Charlie Warzel. The News Guild of New York soon chimed in with a statement: “[Cotton’s] message undermines the journalistic work of our members, puts our black staff members in danger, promotes hate, and is likely to encourage further violence,” the Guild affirmed in what was billed as a “response to a clear threat to the health and safety of the journalists we represent.”
As I wrote back then (and the rest of this post continues in the original post’s tense), as a result of their staff’s meltdown over the Cotton op-ed, the New York Times, already drowning in a fantasy-land of alternately running pro-Soviet Union apologia and their anti-American founding “1619 Project” series, promises to narrow what they view as acceptable opinion even more. Or as Tina Lowe writes at the Washington Examiner, “New York Times employees can bully their bosses into submission — just don’t criticize a celebrity:”
A newspaper, beyond its moral purpose to tell the truth, is functionally a business. To turn a profit, it must balance journalistic integrity with revenue from subscribers and advertisers. Thus, it came as absolutely no surprise when the New York Times fired Alison Roman, the up-and-coming chef who irked professional celebrity Chrissy Teigen with a rude remark in an interview that was falsely smeared as racist and subsequently piled onto by Teigen.
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As you may recall from a long day ago, after the opinion page published a fairly straightforward op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, arguing to utilize the military in quelling protests — a position shared by the majority of Americans and 46% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, mind you — several staff members instigated a civil war, all sharing the same copypasta bullying their bosses: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”
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Publishing the opinions of the Taliban wasn’t a bridge too far for the staff, and employees claiming that destroying property isn’t violence on national television isn’t a bridge too far for the management. But a sitting United States senator’s opinion that’s shared by the majority of the electorate is, and as a result, journalism will suffer in the future.
The bitter babies at the New York Times wanted less speech, and they got it. They’ll now publish fewer op-eds overall. There is a wholly illiberal war on the free press, and its primary aggressors aren’t in the White House or corrupt police stations. It’s being waged from within the inside.
Bari Weiss, one of the saner voices at the Times, responded to her colleagues’ collective primal scream in a Twitter thread earlier today:
Naturally, as this Mediaite headline notes: NY Times ‘Civil War’: Opinion Writer Bari Weiss Gets Buried By Colleagues for Tweeting Her Takes on Newsroom Friction After Cotton Op-Ed.
In 2015, Ashe Schow, then with the Washington Examiner wrote, “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”
The Gray Lady is finding out, good and hard.
Meanwhile, Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor threatens violence against Weiss, in a since-deleted tweet:
As William F. Buckley famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
WAPO FIRES EDITOR, REPLACES WITH WSJ AND TELEGRAPH ALUMS:
Well, well, well. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it still kinda does.
After losing half its readers and hundreds of millions of dollars, the Bezos-owned newspaper is radically shifting strategies.
Sally Buzbee, the author of this absolute disaster, no doubt left under her own steam to spend more time with her family or something similarly false and anodyne-sounding. It certainly had nothing to do with the wreckage of a once-great and respected news outlet.
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I, for one, thank her for helping inspire this dramatic shake-up. Among other things, it looks like the Post will be putting much of its most egregious propaganda-producers in a new division of the newsroom, and it may even rededicate the regular newsroom to reporting actual news.
Perhaps. I will believe that when I see it, but clearly there is at least a desire to do so. After all, the interim Executive Editor will be coming from The Wall Street Journal and the permanent replacement will be coming from The Telegraph Group–you may recall, I have recommended The Telegraph in one of my Things I Like columns.
The Wall Street Journal is not actually a conservative newspaper–it’s opinion section is, but much less so the newsroom–but it is superior to both The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Telegraph actually leans centrist and by newspaper standards, is far-right. It probably provides the most objective reporting in the English-speaking world.
Vanity Fair describes how the WaPo’s publisher broke the news to his employees: “I Can’t Sugarcoat It Anymore:” Will Lewis Bluntly Defends Washington Post Shake-Up.
During the Monday meeting, Lewis said, “We need world-class journalism every single day, and the people that are coming in to help us do that will be a real benefit to the organization.” He said he “really enjoyed working with Sally” and “wish[ed] it could have gone on for longer, but it couldn’t.” As far as diversity goes, Lewis admitted “it’s not great” and vowed to do better going forward.
Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether “any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions,” a question that prompted applause. Lewis said there will be “significant opportunities” within the new organizational structure. Asked by another staffer about which people he met with, Lewis said, “It was an iterative, messy process, which I don’t want to go into the details of.”
At one point Lewis was asked whether he was intentionally bringing in people who come from a different culture than the Post. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore,” Lewis said. “So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”
He continued to take a blunt approach when asked about the “third newsroom,” specifically how it would be staffed. “I’ll be looking for people to put their hands up internally, but also sourcing talent externally,” said Lewis. (Of the “third newsroom,” Lewis said in Sunday’s memo, “The aim is to give the millions of Americans—who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed—compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”)
It sounds like the “third newsroom” might end up as the rubber room where Taylor Lorenz and the more outre members of the Post’s staffers will be housed, perhaps where they can do the least damage to the paper’s actual reporting:*
* Or lack thereof: Sally Buzbee’s Rocky Tenure at the Helm of the Washington Post.
During her tenure, she oversaw the creation of a “Democracy” team at the paper in the wake of January 6. While the idea predated Buzbee, she helped make it a reality: a nine-person team within the National desk that counts reporters in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin among its members.
The idea that the institutions of democracy are under threat from the right came to inform much of the Post’s reporting under Buzbee. During her three-year tenure, the paper dedicated significant space to airing the concerns of left-wing activists and dismissing or distorting the concerns of those Americans who don’t share the progressive assumptions of the paper’s editors and reporters.
Today, we look at some of the best examples of that phenomenon.
Beginning with one of the most egregious examples: reporting that New York City mayor Eric Adams might not have approved the deployment of police to Columbia University’s campus during anti-Israel protests without pressure from Jewish “billionaires and business titans.”
“Overall, the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor,” the Post’s report read.
New York City deputy mayor Fabien Levy and others were quick to call out the antisemitic undertones of the article. “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print,” Levy said.
Perhaps it’s no wonder that the Post seems to think it wasn’t necessary for the NYPD to get involved, even when students and outside agitators seized a building on campus — the outlet had previously characterized the anti-Israel protests as “antiwar demonstrations.”
But lackluster campus reporting is just one part of the paper’s larger failure to accurately and fairly cover the Israel–Hamas conflict.
Finally, Kyle Smith of the Wall Street Journal lays down a marker:
Gonna make a bold prediction: "Democracy Dies in Darkness" will disappear from the masthead.
— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) June 3, 2024
OLD AND BUSTED AT THE WAPO: Woodward and Bernstein write All the President’s Men.
The New Hotness? Masked-up Taylor Lorenz attends Pornhub awards.
The Pornhub Awards party was announced at the end of January 2024 and is the 6th annual awards event put on by the company. A news release about the event stated, “The nominees and other event details will be announced shortly. For now, save the date – March 28!”
“A note for all Models; now is a great time to update your profile picture or upload a photo album with some sexy and SFW pictures! If you are nominated for an award, we will use photo assets from your Model profile to celebrate and share your achievement,” it added.
Pornhub, owned by the company Aylo, has come under fire for many controversies such as distributing child pornography.
It has also pulled its services out of several states such as Texas, Utah, and others over age verification laws that are designed to protect minors from being exposed to pornographic content.
As our sister site Twitchy asks: Career Change Coming? Taylor Lorenz Attends Adult Streaming Site Awards … in a Mask, Obviously.
Otherwise, what dirt does Lorenz have on her bosses at the WaPo that she continues to be employed there?
Flashback: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?
WELL-MEANING, BUT UNCONSTITUTIONAL AS HELL: I’m not sure if the Oklahoma Legislature is just trolling mainstream media, but they have introduced a bill that would require impositions akin to “licensing” journalists and publishers. Real democracies don’t do that.
Yes, I’m sure that Taylor Lorenz and Keith Olbermann’s tests may provide interesting (and explanatory) results, but this could swing both ways. The bill would require that:
“Each individual reporter, producer, writer, editor, or any other employee involved in the production of content distributed by a media outlet is hereby required to:
a. complete a criminal background check conducted by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation,
b. receive a license as prescribed by the Corporation Commission as provided in subsection C of this section,
c. complete a propaganda-free safety training course of no less than eight (8) hours as prescribed by the State Department of Education, which shall be developed in coordination with PragerU,
d. provide proof of liability insurance no less than One Million Dollars ($1,000,000.00), and
e. submit to quarterly drug testing for illicit substances to be administered by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation”
Mind you, I’m a big fan of Prager, but honestly, I can think of many people, like myself, who consider vodka one of our “Precious Bodily Fluids.”
NATE SILVER: The McDonald’s theory of why everyone thinks the economy sucks.
I wonder how often Jeff Stein and Taylor Lorenz — the authors of a recent Washington Post story on customer perceptions about the economy — eat from chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell. I’m guessing it’s not very much. Because despite their attempt to frame consumer perceptions about high fast-food prices as “misinformation”, it’s in fact a category where there’s been a big increase in how much consumers are spending, and one that tells us a lot about why Americans are unhappy with the economy overall.
Well, Taylor Lorenz. But read the whole thing, which is quite interesting. Another excerpt:
Inflation — the price of a fixed basket of goods — increased a lot during this period: by 16 percent. But consumption increased by considerably more than that: by 25 percent. That’s right. From December 2020 through June 2023, Americans’ financial outlays increased by 25 percent. It’s not just that the fixed basket of goods was getting more expensive — they’re also putting more in their baskets.3
Now, it’s also true that consumption generally increases at a faster rate than inflation — as Americans get wealthier, they have more money to spend in real dollars. However, over the past few years, between higher prices for the same goods, clever strategies to get you to spend more, algorithmically-driven price discrimination, and pandemic-driven changes in spending habits — for instance, people who work from home are paying more for housing — Americans are really draining their batteries to zero. Here is the personal savings rate, which is now hovering at about 3 percent — about as low as it’s ever been save for a similar stretch just before the financial crisis.
I think people know more about how they’re doing than WaPo writers earning six figures.
YOUTUBE STAR MR. BEAST BUILT WELLS IN AFRICA AND SOME PEOPLE ARE…ANGRY?
Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz accused Mr. Beast of having “received extremely light criticism in the past for the way you’ve monetized ‘kindness’ content that some vulnerable people found to be exploitative.”
There are two main “arguments” here, although that might be giving them too much credit.
The first is that Africa doesn’t need charity. While there is certainly a broader, nuanced conversation to be had about the systemic problems holding back progress in Africa and whether some forms of Western charity are counterproductive, it’s still just generally untrue as a matter of objective facts and statistics to claim that it doesn’t have a poverty problem.
Yet it’s also obviously untrue in the specific situations Mr. Beast was involved in — because many of the places he built these wells did not previously have clean drinking water. If he were doing something unnecessary, the actual beneficiaries wouldn’t have been so incredibly grateful.
In the same vein, if Mr. Beast’s actions “shamed the Kenyan government,” that’s actually a good thing. Kenya’s government is quite corrupt, and if so many of its people don’t have access to clean drinking water, it’s not doing its most basic job.
You know you’re over the target if you receiving flak from Taylor Lorenz.
WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF THE WASHINGTON POST UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: Alert: Taylor Lorenz Tries To Murder Trans Activist Who Tanked Bud Light Sales.
Why it matters: If Taylor Lorenz is going to denounce others for spreading death and disease, she should stop posting photographic evidence of her own efforts to spread death and disease. Her reckless actions are bound to get someone killed.
Bottom line: We are literally shaking right now.
Same.
MARK JUDGE: Reporting the snooze: When did journalists become so boring?
Christopher Hitchens. Hunter S. Thompson. Georgie Anne Geyer. Say what you will about these legendary American journalists , but they were not boring.
Thompson, known for his drug use, became famous by reporting on the biker gang known as Hell’s Angels, who beat him up when his book was published. Hitchens was a boozer, atheist, iconoclast, and war correspondent with a cutting wit. Georgie Anne Geyer was a fearless foreign correspondent who interviewed Fidel Castro .
Their kind has since disappeared from our media landscape, to be replaced by the likes of narcoleptic Andrea Mitchell, dear-Lord-is-he-still-talking-about-nothing Joe Scarborough, and cipher Taylor Lorenz.
What happened? When did journalists become so boring?
“Never mistake motion for action,” Ernest Hemingway, another great, nonboring journalist, once said. On Twitter, on 24/7 cable TV, in the newspaper, and on websites, there is a lot of frantic motion but not much action.
This past weekend provided an excellent opportunity to see what today’s “journalists” have morphed into: Here Are The Best & Worst Moments From The White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
WAPO’S “TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST” NEVER FAILS: ‘Is That True?’: Washington Post Reporter Questions TikTok’s Link to CCP.
Washington Post technology columnist Taylor Lorenz, the self-described “most online reporter that you can find” said Thursday in a discussion hosted by the libertarian magazine Reason that she doesn’t know where TikTok is headquartered or that a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member holds an executive position with the tech company’s parent, ByteDance.
“I actually don’t know where TikTok is based,” she said. “Umm. The CEO was in Singapore. Umm. So he’s there and then it’s [sic] the U.S. it’s sort of run regionally around the world.”
The former New York Times reporter also questioned whether it was “true” that a CCP official serves in a senior position at ByteDance. “Is that true? Is that true? Is that true?” Lorenz said. (Zhang Fuping, who serves as ByteDance’s editor in chief, is a Chinese Community Party secretary.)
To be fair, it can be difficult for the elderly to learn new technologies.
JON GABRIEL: Teens spent the pandemic in front of screens. And we wonder why they feel hopeless?
Meta, Instagram’s parent company, found that adolescents face challenges with social comparison, social pressure and negative peer interactions on their app. The internal studies showed that “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse.”
A university study from Singapore showed that teens who received fewer “likes” reported more negative emotions and thoughts about themselves.
As Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, put it, “kids have a biological vulnerability to want social rewards, and now we’re handing them a way to get it – on steroids.”
Then, COVID-19 entered the picture. Beginning in 2020, teenagers were locked out of schools and extracurricular activities to embrace a life mediated entirely by screens.
More from Ace of Spades: Depression and Suicidality Surge Among Teenage Girls and This Correlates With Smartphone Usage. Internet Addict Taylor Lorenz Says It’s Just “This Late-Stage Capitalist Hellscape” That’s to Blame, Not My Precious TikTok!
TONIGHT ELON SETTLES ALL FAMILY BUSINESS:
● Cue lefty meltdown while people guess why Twitter suspended Aaron Rupar. (Permanently?)
● Well DAMN! Many OTHER lefty accounts (including Keith Olbermann) have been suspended.
● Huge Suspension Drops on Twitter, Liberal Meltdown in Progress.
● GMTA:
● Elon Musk Vows ‘Legal Action’ Against Trackers; Clarifies Private Jet ‘Doxxing’ Policy.
● “It appears [Rupar] shared info for a website for ElonJets that was banned for doxxing, good riddance.”
● Taylor Lorenz locks down her Twitter account.
THE MEDIA FEAR LOSING THEIR GATEKEEPER RIGHTS ON TWITTER:
The tipping point came during the 2020 presidential election, when Twitter froze the sharing or linking of an explosive New York Post story involving Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and a laptop. Reporter Jake Sherman had his Twitter account suspended briefly for attempting to share it. The problem was that the story was accurate. Twitter put its powerful thumb on the scale of a presidential election.
It’s notable that much of the corporate media are now so bereft at Elon Musk’s completed purchase. Reuters has even set up a live cam outside the company headquarters building in San Francisco. Are they waiting for jumpers? Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz bluntly stated, “It’s like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight,” (which made Musk’s move sound pretty cool, to be honest). NBC News’s reporter Ben Collins declared that “all the red lights are flashing here.”
Still, the absolute best thing that can happen to Twitter is that it becomes less important. Newsrooms are often glued to the platform because of how it acts as a live heartbeat of news. However, in recent years, they’ve also used it to elevate and cancel even the most randomized and powerless of users to teach them a moral lesson. Yet much of the country is not active on Twitter, even if a small number of hall monitors in the media are.
This report is angering Twitter’s self-appointed hall monitors: Twitter to start charging $20 a month for verification under new owner Elon Musk.
The company plans to raise its optional $4.99-a-month premium subscription called Twitter Blue to $19.99 a month. However, that price is subject to change, the outlet reported, citing internal correspondence and people familiar with the matter.
Twitter will add more features, including verification, to bring its subscription up to par with the cost hike.
The billionaire plans to make verified users fork over the cash to keep their status.
Existing verified users have 90 days to subscribe to the new Twitter Blue after its launch or they’ll lose their checkmarks, according to The Verge.
The current Twitter Blue launched about a year ago and offers subscribers a way to view ad-free articles from some publishers as well as additional customization settings.
Musk has been outspoken about his desire to grow subscription numbers to account for half of Twitter’s revenue as well as his eagerness to overhaul the platform’s verification process in the months ahead of his $44 billion takeover of the company on Thursday.
The answer here is simple then, Iowahawk writes:
Roger those todgers, Elon — Twitter’s financial woes are over!
RASHIDA TLAIB BELIEVES THE NFL SHOULD ‘WORK’ LIKE THE WASHINGTON POST:
At one point near the end of more than two hours of testimony, Goodell was questioned by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), who asked whether Goodell and the league are “willing to do more” to punish Snyder.
After initially asking whether he would recommend Snyder’s removal as owner of the Commanders, Tlaib followed up by asking Goodell: “Will you remove him?”
“I don’t have the authority to remove him, Congresswoman,” Goodell responded.
An NFL owner can be removed only by a three-quarters (so, 24 out of 32) majority vote of fellow owners, although Goodell does have the ability to officially recommend such a vote.
I don’t know — Tlaib may be onto something here. Think of the possibilities of Taylor Lorenz as head coach and Felicia Sonmez as general manager!
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: The ‘Putin’s Price Hike’ Spin Falls Flatter Than Biden on a Bike. “The real shocker in the poll is that even most Democrats blame Biden for inflation.”
Kevin Downey Jr: This Is NOT the America Our Soldiers Fought and Died For. “Do not adjust your dial. The communist invasion has begun!”
Yours Truly: It’s Official: WaPo Wokester Taylor Lorenz Is the Most Insufferable Person Alive. “And yet… she found a way over the next 48 hours to become still more insufferable.”
HOW TRAUMA BECAME A POLITICAL TOOL: The left’s new battleground is the psyche.
A culture that once avoided talk of mental health is now openly celebrating people who speak candidly about their psychic wounds—even or especially when they are the type of people who are known to us all because they perform labors that seem somewhat superhuman. When Olympic gymnast Simone Biles abruptly withdrew from several events at the 2021 Tokyo games, she cited the ongoing suffering she has experienced as a victim of sexual abuse. Nearly all the stories about her decision praised Biles for taking a mental-health break, even though it likely cost the Olympic team gold medals. Likewise, when the number-two ranked women’s tennis player, Naomi Osaka, withdrew from both Wimbledon and the French Open, claiming mental-health challenges, she was lionized for speaking out.
The word that is used to describe their pain is “trauma,” classically defined as a lingering and haunted response to a terrible experience such as assault, natural disaster, serious accident, or some other deeply disturbing event.
Experts praised both Biles and Osaka for putting “emotional wellness” ahead of everything else, but rather than acknowledge that athletes like them are the exception—since they had chosen to take on the mental and physical challenges that elite competition poses—experts used their experiences to argue that similar kinds of trauma were pervasive and growing. Trauma “has nefarious and wide-spread tentacles,” Margo Lindauer, associate clinical professor at Northeastern University, told one news outlet. “The impacts of trauma are ongoing and unexpected and can rear up in all sorts of different ways.”
Today, trauma diagnoses have moved far beyond the realm of individual clinical expertise to take on outsize significance as an explanation for a broad array of social, cultural, and political problems. A popular book about trauma, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 150 weeks. In it, the author explores the physiological and neurological impact of trauma on patients who had been clinically diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he claims that therapies such as mindfulness yoga, art, and dance are effective in treating them.
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Today, trauma diagnoses have moved far beyond the realm of individual clinical expertise to take on outsize significance as an explanation for a broad array of social, cultural, and political problems. A popular book about trauma, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 150 weeks. In it, the author explores the physiological and neurological impact of trauma on patients who had been clinically diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he claims that therapies such as mindfulness yoga, art, and dance are effective in treating them.
And speaking of Lorenz, she’s had quite a Sunday: Dad who barely survived COVID makes Taylor Lorenz look like even more of a jacka*s for shaming Matt Yglesias for ‘joking’ about catching COVID.
As Twitchy readers know, Taylor Lorenz went after Matt Yglesias for making light of his catching COVID because apparently when someone catches it they CAN NOT JOKE ABOUT IT because God forbid anyone cope with humor. We’re not entirely sure what bug crawled up her backside years ago but whatever it was, yikes.
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She went on to shame an actual COVID survivor, and not just any survivor but someone who was in a coma and has experienced life-changing effects from the virus she doesn’t want anyone joking about. User @Real_Life_Dad shared his experience with Lorenz perhaps in the hope that she’d figure out it’s ok to keep your sense of humor about well, any and everything. It’s how some of us actually get through the worst of times.
Ahem.
Lorenz replied with an all-time showstopper:
“Lateral ableism” — followed by a lateral mike drop:
To be fair, that’s setting the bar awfully low.
WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF VIOLENCE? ‘Ruth Sent Us’ group hinted at targeting Supreme Court Justice Barrett’s children, church. Group gave details on Barrett’s routine, her children’s school and family’s spiritual life.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?
You may have noticed a bizarre trend at organizations whose staffs are full of younger liberals: Internal disputes aren’t kept internal anymore but are aired in public, on social media or in the press, with rampantly subordinate staff attacking their colleagues or decrying managerial decisions in full public view — and those actions apparently tolerated from the top.
In the most extreme cases, you get meltdowns like the one at the Dianne Morales campaign for mayor of New York, where staff went on strike to demand, among other things, that the campaign divert part of its budget away from campaigning into “community grocery giveaways.” But it’s especially a problem in the media, where so many employees have large social media followings they can use to put their employers on blast — and where those employers have (unwisely) cultivated a freewheeling social media culture where it’s common for reporters to comment on all sorts of matters unrelated to their coverage.
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I hate that I’ve written so many paragraphs about this. I hate that I know so much about this dispute. It’s so high school, and it ought not to be any of our business. These are all internal HR matters. But Sonmez is explicit: She wages these fights in public because management is more responsive to that than when employees complain privately. By giving her “good friend” Weigel such a long suspension and doing nothing to her, management is only encouraging her and other Post employees to put their colleagues on blast more, which she has indeed been doing.
Airing internal workplace disputes in public like this is not okay, even when you are right on the merits. My statement isn’t just obvious, it’s how almost all organizations work. If you think your coworker sucks, you don’t tweet about it. That’s unprofessional. If you disagree with management’s personnel decisions, you don’t decry them to the public. That’s insubordinate. Organizations full of people who are publicly at each other’s throats can’t be effective. Your workplace is not Fleetwood Mac.
Even before the Times’ collective meltdown over Tom Cotton’s column in 2020, there were similar comparisons made about its own high school-like nature, such as Matthew Continetti’s 2014 Washington Free Beacon column:
Gossipy, catty, insular, cliquey, stressful, immature, cowardly, moody, underhanded, spiteful—the New York Times gives new meaning to the term “hostile workplace.” What has been said of the press—that it wields power without any sense of responsibility—is also a fair enough description of the young adult. And it is to high school, I think, that the New York Times is most aptly compared. The coverage of the Abramson firing reads at times like the plot of an episode of Saved By the Bell minus the sex: Someone always has a crazy idea, everyone’s feelings are always hurt, apologies and reconciliations are made and quickly sundered, confrontations are the subject of intense planning and preparation, and authority figures are youth-oriented, well-intentioned, bumbling, and inept.
Unexpectedly!
And as Glenn Greenwald noted over the weekend about the Post’s twitter spat:
Finally, note that the Fast Times at Ben Bradlee High drama at the Post this week is a distraction from what should be the real story emanating from the offices that once led to Watergate: Twitter saga obscures the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz scandal. “But the key point is this: Either Lorenz or her editors engaged in direct fabrication or a willful disregard for journalistic standards. The broader challenge is that those who run the Post have decided that Lorenz, and her continued shoddy reporting and broad generalizations, are worth the headache. Why they have decided as much is anyone’s guess. But as Lorenz continues to stretch the boundaries of ethical journalism, her Post colleagues will be the ones who share in the reputational damage.”
THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR SACKING THE PEOPLE WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN SACKED HAVE NOT BEEN SACKED: Legal YouTuber: The Washington Post correction to Taylor Lorenz’ story is still not correct.