I feel like this writeup requires prior knowledge of the ball. I took a look at the Atlantic article and it seems like it was envisioned along the KKK aesthetic and is exclusively for upper class white St. Louisians.

I don’t know anything about the new corporate culture. But Gawker media had a long and well documented history of misogyny and slightly less well documented history of racism.

I appreciate Jezebel’s coverage of this but it makes me wonder. If this is so prevalent across every industry, what is the culture like at Jezebel and other Gawker channels (besides The Root)?

As a queer person with a wide variety of friends with vastly different transitioning stories, the part that angers me the most about this “regret” narrative is that it’s not at all reflective of the actual experiences of people who start transition and change their minds (a small population, but a real one). I know…

I’m not for bringing up extraneous b.s. that is only relevant to wealth in analyzing Tara Reade’s allegations. However, lying multiple times under oath in court is absolutely relevant to whether or not we should believe her story now. It’s a standard jury instruction: if you find that the witness has lied in a portion…

The fake concern trolling is so gross, but so expected. The worst part for me was her use of retrograde patriarchal language to paint the increasing visibility of trans men as emotional, deluded, mentally disturbed and possibly abused teenage girls; she might have been a 19th century man decrying “female hysteria.” Way…

Her dad was a sports reporter and a corporate PR executive, with a military pension.

The number of things that were left out of this is interesting. She didn’t just miss constituent meetings, for instance: she claimed she had attended them when she had not. She didn’t just ask for her rent to be reduced, she made her ex-husband out to be a much more immediate threat than he was to score a rent…

It’s pretty sick of her to use her status as a victim of abuse to legitimize or excuse her utterly shitty views on trans people.

yeah, I agree with this read of the situation. Like you could get to the end of this Jezebel piece and feel reasonably sure she grew up dirt poor, even though there’s nothing to really indicate that. Like... she was working for Joe Biden very early on in her career. This isn’t a normal sign of being held back.

There is a definitely a conversation around how victims are portrayed and class intersects that, but it would be nice if Jezebel or any other outlet that pushes that narrative would at least be honest about some of their framing around Reade. It’s not that “she had economic issues, so clearly she’s lying”, its the…

You know, I can understand how, at first glance, the NYT piece can read as classist.

Huh, I’m not sure what to make of this. I really don’t know much about Reade’s background, but I was never under the impression she was poor/working class. My impression is that she seems to have come from a relatively middle to upper-middle class background, but abuse, money troubles, and grift can happen to anyone…

Caroline, I’m a big fan of your column (and romcoms in general) and I adored Sleepless in Seattle. But I must confess I loathed You’ve Got Mail – it simply did not read for me. I found the juxtaposition of saccharine sentimentality and tyrannical corporate venality jarring. I couldn’t track with the emotional…

Yeah, when I saw this film originally, it was the closest I ever came to standing up and yelling in the theater. The grossness of Joe’s behavior is the least of it—the way Katherine’s life choices are demeaned just made me nuts. Maybe she wants to run the bookstore she inherited from her mom because she loves the…

Like, if she owns that little shop, then selling it at the prices that were available in the Upper West Side commercial property in the late 90's would have set her up for life.

Or are they Sorkin’s Ephron-esque dialogue quirks? She perfected the fast-talking, snark-covering-for-emotions, back and forth dialogue. Sorkin added walking and smugness.

You mean a romantic comedy didn’t take into account the economic realities of living in New York? The hell you say!

I tihnk AOL was pretty prevalent as the main means that most Americans accessed the web back then. Not that they didn’t clearly benefit from the exposure, but to many (especially those first venturing online) AOL was essentially synonymous with Internet.   It helped the movie sell its setting to just use AOL as the…

This is a great review. I think it glosses a bit over just how creepy Tom Hank’s character is during the film, but now I’m curious to see it again. Joe completely grossed me out when I first saw it. I guess that means I’ll never fall in love with a Republican.