Yeah, this is the ONLY place I’ve seen the “creepy uncle joe” meme…and it’s being pushed hard.
I am assuming this is because TPM has been enlisted by the Clintons to help quash Joe in the invisible primary - stick a knife in him early with an ugly whisper campaign.
Joe Biden makes Gaffes and can be reasonably teased for being a buffoon sometimes, but even then, it’s because he’s being almost indiscreetly honest about something. I’m not sure I really consider that a venal sin.
Knifing people in the back with a whisper campaign, is, on the other hand, a pretty ugly and slimy character trait - the kind I expect to see from the GOP.
Is there going to be any TPM response to lech-gate other than we make hideous comments and we’re liberal sexists for bringing up the fact that the piece wasn’t backed by any proof and the editorial comments went way beyond the pale?
The TPM-sliming-Biden-for-Hillary thing sounds like absolute tin foil hogwash to me but unless there’s some sort of discussion of the issues with that piece and the editorial framing of it, it’s going to gain momentum.
I thought the original piece was horrendous myself, but it’s an opinion piece and I could see several of my 20-something feminist cousins sharing. I appreciate the follow up article which reveals how an actual act of kindness and encouragement can be so horribly misinterpreted. I think it shows the original writer may still be too close to her own teenage years to appreciate that teens often react with apparent withdrawl to adults providing unsolicited assistance. Or who knows, perhaps the writer was projecting memories from one of her own teen experiences which she still feels very acutely. It doesn’t mean the adult (Biden) was being irresponsible or was sexually harassing the teen.
I am glad that Josh stands up for his writers when they’ve been erroneously called out for what they’ve written.
But in the case of the original article by Alana Levinson, Josh erred egregiously by defending the swill that she passed off as an “opinion piece.”
It was a hit piece—without any question—and didn’t contain even a scintilla of fact to back up her contention.
If Josh is serious about what TPM publishes, he should post an apology for allowing that garbage in the first place, and if she’s going to stay employed at TPM, Josh should pay for Ms. Levinson to take some classes in responsible journalism, which seems like foreign territory to her, judging by her article.
There was a video from CNN posted to Youtube with a nearly identical header. That seems to be what’s passing for journalism these days: “OMG lk at ths vid!”
Thanks - I missed that. I honestly just ignored the first piece a bit, but when I saw “more” being made of it (keeping it alive in the cycle), I just had to comment.
Oh, FFS! Two weeks after the 2008 Presidential election the Huffington Post ran an article reporting/alleging then President-elect Obama was going to dump then Vice President Biden from the ticket in 2012, replacing him with Hillary Clinton. The article further alleged the move was being planned to grease the skids for Senator Clinton’s 2016 Presidential run. That stupid and ignorant article was jeered about, laughed about and HP was ridiculed for even running it. The article disappeared from the pages of HP but for some, “assuming” the Huffington Post had “been enlisted by the Clintons to help quash Joe in the invisible primary - stick a knife in him early with an ugly whisper campaign” was gospel. Your comment deserves the same amount of ridicule the HP article received back then.
Don’t forget that Biden wasn’t the only target of the garbage. After failing to back up charges of sexism and sexual harassment of Biden, and after admitting in the piece that nobody has come forward to claim that Biden sexually harassed them, Levinson then accused liberals of giving Biden a pass on his sexism and sexual harassment just because he is on our side.
On TPM’s Facebook page, TPM took the accusations against TPM commenters a step further, stating that our strong objections to Levinson’s nonsense was proof that she was right. The fact that we offered substantive reasons for our objections (Joe touches males and females alike, the touches are not forced or sexual in nature, sexual harassment has definitions not in evidence in Levinson’s piece, etc.) was ignored by TPM.
Levinson has gone beyond declaring that Biden (and, therefore, liberals) are guilty as charged. She is declaring that Biden is guilty even though there is nobody claiming to be a victim.
And then Alana, accuses TPM’s readers of “trolling” her - Alana Levinson @alanalevinson · 6h 6 hours ago what if in ten years i’m stilling being trolled about the biden piece.
So I guess now all we’re all sexist liberal trolls, and not merely sexist liberals. Three, two, one until TPM bans and hides the comment thread from this article as well…
And for the record, the link to Jezebel Alana tweeted leads to an article that itself is followed by lots of (undoubtably sexist liberal troll) commenters objecting to the premise that Joe Biden is some sort of sexual deviant that we’re all too afraid to confront on his lecherous behavior. And most of those commenters are (evidently self-hating) women. This was my one of my favorite posts by a commenter there (again, I repeat, on Jeze-frikkin-bell), written by a woman:
Between this and the whole Sia/Elastic Heart controversy, this line from Thou Shalt Always Kill feels more relevant than ever: “Thou shalt not think any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a paedophile. Some people are just nice.”
Yeah, awesome. This is the writer who claimed that men can’t tell women what makes them uncomfortable. She has no problem telling people who met Joe Biden that their feelings about the encounter are not valid and should be replaced by her feelings.
You got a winner, Josh. She’s everything TPM didn’t used to stand for.
Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying men get to define what is and isn’t comfortable, just that it is wrong to disqualify them from the conversation.
There is no coordinated Clinton/TPM conspiracy but individual preferences may always be in the mix.
TPM ran a anti-Warren piece by Erin Matson that did not disclose the author’s efforts in helping Hillary’s primary campaign in Iowa, nor her previous Clinton-supportive tweets.
It was definitely gone - I doubled-checked before posting, but I am glad to see its back. There should be some sort of visible historical record that people fought the smear and didn’t stay silent.
Let’s pick up Alana Whatsit’s poison pen and see what it has to say about that revelation.
Me: Well, poison pen, ready to retract some of your nonsense?
PP: Biden is even worse than I thought. Add elder abuse and incest to his list of crimes overlooked by liberals. The picture proves also that he is an emotionally stunted man-child living in his mother’s basement. If he isn’t a serial killer yet, he will be soon if liberals don’t denounce him.
Me: Uh, I hate to embarrass you again, poison pen, but his mother died a few years ago. That is an old photo. You have nothing.
PP: Add necrophilia to the list. Get me Limbaugh’s producer and tell them I have an exclusive!
