There are two authors whose fans I absolutely dread - Ayn Rand, who was just smart enough to rationalize her own creepy selfishness, and then packaged and that relentless self interest for a much dumber group of assholes to consume and adopt. And David Foster Wallace, who is to pretentious faux-existential nonsense…

“Thank you. Everybody in America owes me a dollar who read Infinite Jest.”

Díaz “cornered and forcibly kissed” her and that she is not alone. Carmen Maria Machado added that he “went off” on her when she asked about his book’s protagonist’s “unhealthy, pathological relationship with women.”

So over the tortured-genius-male-author bullshit.

Sure, he stalked her, beat her, and threatened her life as well as the lives around her, but he wrote some stuff that seems kinda cool. So....

Well, there is a shade of victim-blaming in there. My opinion in this regard goes beyond this incident and this accuser, the details we have are insufficient to have a halfway reasonable opinion; but I reserve the right to have an opinion on a grown-ass person who says “I was a wide-eyed 26 year old”. YOU’RE A FUCKING…

For reals?

Not sure what to do with the Machado, Byrne stories. Granted it shows a pattern of chauvinist behaviour to women but it’s not sexual assault. Despite what these men’s friends and families say, these men tend to be all round jerkholes to everyone (see allegations of Weinstein, Spacey, Lauer’s general assholery).…

This feels like victim blaming, regardless of her age. I question how many of these accusations qualify as ‘sexual misconduct,’ as opposed to being a sexist prick and not getting punished for it until now, but forcibly kissing falls into those parameters as far as I’m concerned.

I am not cool with it. I don’t think any good can come of that.

I’m not on board with with wrapping aggressive or asshole behavior in with sexual misconduct, it’s going to nothing but dilute the impact of the latter.

Mmm... I guess. I personally just think it’s weird to put her statements under the sexual misconduct allegations, which is what this article is implying. Labeling a sexist rant from some author as “sexual verbal abuse” seems like stretching things a bit.

What’s happening in the world where a 26-year graduate student is so helpless?

No question that cornering/forcible kissing is crossing a line that can be uncrossed. That alone should cause people to think differently about his role as an advocate for progressivism and gender equality.

Forcibly kissed as a 26 year old? That poor child. There’s no way you ever recover from that. She should be ashamed of herself by elevating this story to the coversation about real sexual violence and abuse. F her.

What is the Machado woman accusing him of exactly?? Being a self-important asshole? I’m sorry, I’m sure having to hear some jerk go off defensively about his work for 20 minutes is the pits, but I fail to see how this is sexual misconduct.

She lost me after her rant about the attack on blue collar workers because they’re forced to smoke outside in the elements.

I find this fascinating, but she completely loses me on smoking. (She talked about this in more detail in Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/barbara-ehrenreich-says-smoking-bans-are-a-war-on-the-working-class.html) My dad started smoking as a working-class teenager. He died a torturous death at 55 of…

I’ll go ahead and be That Nerdy Person and point out that Liv Tyler played Arwen the Elven princess (or I guess 3/4 elven, or like “mostly elven but also a teeny bit human plus a dash of Maiar”), and I thought she was good? However, I HATED Miranda Otto as Eowyn the shieldmaiden of Rohan / Karl Urban’s sister, and…

May he die surrounded by nobody, loved by no one.