But making art doesn’t necessarily mean earning constant praise and wealth. Someone could come back from an experience much less successful but doing better, more important work (if they put the effort into dealing with their shit and making amends).

Good point.

I am not at all surprised to hear that the environment on that set was toxic.

Totally agree. Restorative justice doesn’t end with the offender in exile. It means true accountability, true rehabilitation, true healing for the victims. I would actually love to see a man with Louis CK’s talent really tackle his sexual entitlement and compulsions in his work and the audience can decide if they want…

Remember how Kim argued with...who was it?...that she didn’t sleep with married men?

That is so awful. My heart goes out to her.

Ok. I think I understand what’s happening here. You don’t actually know how newspapers or (reputable) magazines work. Just for background, you have a sales team that reports to the publisher, who is basically the head of sales. The edit team reports to the editor-in-chief. We have what is called a Church-State…

I don’t contact brands and ask for free stuff in exchange for positive coverage. You do. I work anonymously with only the reader in mind. You don’t. Journalism evolved over generations to separate the business side from the editorial side. Blogging evolved in the past 20 years as a free-for-all. Many of your…

Actually, my boss knows nothing about my area of expertise. He only knows what I’m assigning or writing when I have to coordinate with the art team. Total editorial independence.

So these brands don’t cut you checks?

Yes it is, grabby. Again:

You don’t understand how business works. Readers subscribe to our publication. Advertisers buy adds. Those are the main sources of income. I have literally no interaction with the sales staff. They tell me nothing about their clients. They have no say over what I write. You cannot say the same thing. And the fact that…

There is a wall between me and the places I review. There is no wall between you and the places you review. I am free to say whatever the hell I want, to go where I want, to ignore who I want. You are not. I am paid for writing well and serving our readers. You are paid for saying what brands want you to say. That is…

Ok, you are officially a hopeless case.

Keep reaching. My employer pays my expenses so that I have the freedom to make informed decisions and judgments free of pesky pr people or quid pro quo arrangements. You are trying so hard to justify yourself by saying, “Nobody has any moral code, so the fact that I don’t is fine!” Totally Trumpian logic.

Uh, yeah, Anderson Cooper gets his trips paid for by CNN. You seriously don’t know that? And yes, bad journalists take freebies. We established that. Meanwhile you keep justifying yourself to yourself.

And if a reader, who gets 1 week of paid vacation per year, went to that town based on your recommendation and wrote you to say, “Hey, yeah, that cafe and hotel are cute, but the rest of the town is kind of a dump and I’m really bummed that we wasted our money when we could’ve gone to Seattle,” would you feel the…

Well, I’m a journalist and I don’t take free stuff. I write about food and travel and I go anonymously and pay my own way because I worked my ass off for 15 years to get to the level where I have a plum staff job with an expense account. I turn down free meals and trips daily because I know I’d never be able to give a…

You are willfully ignorant. Yes there are lots of would-be freelancers who take free shit but it’s not actually ok. It makes me sad that you don’t even care about ethics. You’re using all kinds of logical fallacies to justify doing something that you know is fundamentally indefensible: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03…

And yet do you present yourself as an ad rep or pr rep to your followers? I doubt it. You present more like a journalist.