The core problem to me is that Merlan doesn’t like this “grifter”, doesn’t feel she’s earned her status and wrote a massively long hit piece about a drunken email.
It’s jealous gossip wrapped up as, what, truth-seeking?

I appreciate that the main point of this article is Lauren Duca in general, but hold on:

I’m trying to see what she did that’s so horrible, beyond calling someone at work fat and some shitty tweets she’s apologised for.

Everyone fails a purity test at some point.
Constantly purging everyone for some evermore exacting standard of ideological purity seems self-defeating and a waste of energy, badly needed…

Lauren Duca (maybe) got drunk at a work party and did some stupid shit in 2015. It (probably) led to her moving on from HuffPo.  Since then, she’s gone viral and moved up in the world, but “everybody” (the media cliques running around on the east coast) still subtweets about her stupid shit. Jezebel’s tired of the…

I’m really not 100% sure what the back-and-forth tone is doing here. “Is publishing this a good idea or a bad idea, who knows; she has publicly demonstrated a desire to change but is change even possible; cancel culture is bad, she’s canceled; I don’t want to insult her, she’s a grifter.”

She did dumb shit when she was 21 (or 20?!) and has perhaps...grown in the time since? And I know you acknowledge that but it’s a throwaway line in what sort of feels like a needless hitpiece? This isn’t Tucker Carlson being a racist misogynistic manbaby at 40 or whatever.

Cosby and Woody got similar indulgences from me, that I regret all the more now that I believe the evidence against them - and the insincerity that drips from their later denials and excuses.

Bruh...

Watched most of the doc last night and it’s pretty chilling. I have complicated feelings about it, but I believe these victims’ stories. More to your point, this morning I remembered the Chappelle’s Show skit that, especially in retrospect, highlighted (intentionally, I think) the general public’s willful ignorance/…

The issue of MJ and the current movement of calling out abusers is so difficult, personally. Young people do not understand how impactful Michael was to us old folks and how his music transcends time.

I think the sad truth is that a lot of his defenders are also victims of sexual abuse in their own lives. They have to call it a lie otherwise they have to come to terms with what was done to them.

We all saw Michael with them kids and knew it was creepy and problematic AF.

It is terrifying.

Maybe because I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, but for some reason I have always believed he was guilty. Always. I loved Michael as a musician; grew up on the Jackson 5; had a total crush on him; was in total breathtaking awe when Thriller came out, and I saw the video; and still to this day talk about his…

What terrifying are the people still defending him. Every article I read about this documentary fills up with people defending him (with some pretty odd syntax). I don’t know what the point is of that but his defenders are hardcore.

When this Black man put on a tuxedo dress, it caused my wife to leave me and my dog to run away. Also, I’m pretty sure that I’m gay now. Thanks Obama.

“it’s that it’s irrelevant if they do”

Being “white” is not just a matter of skin colour. It’s a middle-high clique of people who are “in” or “out”. When racists talk about “white” people, they mean groups from Western Europe who lived close to, intermarried with, and shared common cause with, the English. England/Britain is White Central. The generations…

It is NOT irrelevent if white women have body hair. We get fucking SLAMMED for it. Where have you been?

“ it’s IRRELEVANT BECAUSE they are white, and are therefore otherwise invisible to this sort of criticism.”