20 Comments
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Rick Massimo's avatar

I don’t know anything about her but (and?) I take the opposite attitude: Looking at who’s trying to destroy her, I figure she must be OK.

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Freddie deBoer's avatar

Elon Musk and Steve Bannon are mortal enemies. Which of them do you figure must be OK?

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Rick Massimo's avatar

What a clever boy you are!

On the off chance that this is an actual question seeking an actual answer:

“Mortal enemies” lol — I know enough about both of them to know that they’re sect leaders who worship the same orange manchild god and are squabbling over who is most perfect in his sight.

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Baylor Heath's avatar

Great post! I’ve been following Lorenz since she started Power User with Vox last year and quickly began to see the hate & be baffled by it too.

Rachel Gilmore gets similar treatment.

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Daniel Solow's avatar

I don't condone harassment, but she is pretty annoying. NPR reports on her time at The Washington Post:

> Lorenz’s professional fate at the paper was in doubt even prior to her announcement. Since August, its editors had grappled with the disclosure that Lorenz had labeled President Biden a “war criminal” in a selfie from a White House event in which Biden was visible in the background. She had circulated the picture to friends in a private social media post.

It's just a childish thing to do. She initially claimed it was a joke, but then said, “What I’ll say, on the record, is every single President that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is a war criminal.” As a Democratic voter I am really tired of the kind of left-wing person who says stuff like this.

Furthermore she has positioned herself as a proponent of the kind of "extremely online" behavior that has pretty clearly made the world a much worse place.

You state that "powerful men are trying to destroy her," but it's really more symbiotic than that. She provides them with a hate object to whip their followers into a frenzy and she gets to claim that her message is so righteous that shadowy figures are trying to suppress her. So I think they really help each other.

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Angie Schmitt🚶‍♀️'s avatar

Yes they’re both grifters that secretly love this really toxic culture war inside baseball and profit from it

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A Rancor (rancor)'s avatar

Daniel, the “war criminal” screenshot was leaked by someone in an Instagram private group chat, and it's a clear parody of a post the pop singer lucy dacus replied to Barack Obama months earlier: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/where-did-the-war-criminal-meme-come-from-and-why-is-it-so-controversial-the-commentary-meme-explained

Is she “annoying”, or are you just a know-nothing asshole who will find any ignorant reason to hate on her? Jury's out, I think the latter. I'd hate to see the kind of slop YOU post in private chats, Jesus. Clearly it's you who is “childish”.

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Daniel Solow's avatar

She failed to keep it private or it wouldn't have gotten out. As far as it being a joke, was she also joking when she said "What I’ll say, on the record, is every single President that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is a war criminal?" Doesn't sound like a joke to me, but it's hard to tell with these extremely online individuals, they're very insincere.

Your comment strikes me as poorly thought out and ill-tempered.

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A Rancor (rancor)'s avatar

"every single President that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is a war criminal" is an objectively correct statement, and the real joke is the level of thought you consistently display. Get a grip. "U seem mad, actually" is yet another way you're trying to avoid knowing or looking into a single thing, this is clearly a pattern.

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Daniel Solow's avatar

I wonder what planet you and she live on where that's an "objectively correct statement." Anyway, thanks for your contribution to this discussion.

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A Rancor (rancor)'s avatar

This stops at 1990, but the logic therein will make it easy to see how it's an "objectively correct statement", even for your lost, lazy brain, if you simply add Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine: https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/

I don't pretend to think you care, I doubt you're capable of challenging yourself to understand, in the first place. I wish you had the capacity.

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Daniel Solow's avatar

I've read Chomsky, and I agree with him on some things, but not on this. Your inability to engage without childish insults really doesn't do you any favors.

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Angie Schmitt🚶‍♀️'s avatar

Counterpoint from someone not conservative, she really sucks. Her covid stuff was frankly insane and embarrassing for her employer. Constantly flaming more rational voices in the most hysterical possible terms. Everyone was going to be permanently disabled by long COVID. Even so this whole thing is probably fucked and misogynistic but the idea that her content was really benign is not accurate. It was really wild and out there imo

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Freddie deBoer's avatar

Saying that s public figure drawing criticism for blatant errors of fact in your work, well, you might be a….

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Freddie deBoer's avatar

"First things first: Who gives a shit?"

Beginning your defense of an extremely influential journalist by saying "who gives a shit if she tells an obvious lie, then proceeds to double down on that lie relentlessly after she's called out on it" is not really doing you any favors here. I suspect that your yadda yaddaing this point stems from the fact that you know you don't have a leg to stand on. Journalists have a responsibility to report true facts. She not only failed to do so but refused to correct the record until she was put under extreme pressure to do so, then parlayed that mistake and minimal accountability into a victim narrative. IT DOESN'T MATTER that Andreesen is a bad guy. You have a responsibility to tell the truth. And what's at play is exactly what you're engaging in here - the notion that if someone is your political enemy they have no right to the truth or basic integrity. It doesn't work that way.

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S Peter Davis's avatar

Something I'm learning about you, Fred, from the surprising number of times you've chosen to respond to my work, is that you will read until the second you find something you object to, then stop, and respond to the whole piece. Do you think maybe there were more words in this article and that maybe the subheading "first thing" was a clue to that?

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A Rancor (rancor)'s avatar

I've noticed a negative knee-jerk negative reaction to bringing up Taylor Lorenz is a good litmus test of shallow-thinkers and, often, outright misogynists.

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