Sachelle Babbar/ZUMA
In the Guardian today, former Bookslut editor-in-chief Jessa Crispin takes on Hillary Clinton:
Hillary Clinton is still trying to sell herself as a feminist icon. Don’t buy it
It was clickbait, and I clicked. I was a little surprised to find that the entire piece contained only one paragraph related to Clinton, but I was even more surprised when that paragraph contained a grand total of two allegations, both of which were linked to other sources. Here’s the first:
Hillary Clinton is still trying to sell herself as a feminist icon — as a “gutsy woman,” as she puts it in an interview she did to support the new four-part documentary about her life and career, Hillary, soon to debut at Sundance….“How could we have known?” Clinton asks, when questioned in the same interview about her longstanding friendship and political relationship with alleged sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. Never mind the fact that Ronan Farrow has publicly accused Clinton’s publicist of trying to kill his first story about the accusations against Weinstein.
That’s the exact opposite of what Farrow said. In the link that Crispin herself provides, Farrow says that although he did get an email from Clinton’s publicist, “The allegation here is not that Hillary Clinton was seeking to squash the Weinstein story.” So let’s move on to allegation #2:
Or that Lena Dunham has said she discussed Weinstein with Clinton in private.
Again, it turns out that this is exactly the opposite of what Dunham said. She never claimed to have spoken with Clinton at all:
In March [2016], Ms. Dunham, a vocal Clinton supporter, said she warned the campaign. “I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point,” Ms. Dunham said she told Kristina Schake, the campaign’s deputy communications director….Ms. Dunham says she has “an incredible allegiance to Hillary,” and does not believe the reports ever traveled to Mrs. Clinton.
This is Crispin’s own link. It’s not like I had to go digging for anything.
How can people write stuff like this? If you want to go after Hillary Clinton for being naive about Weinstein—or for misstating what she knew and when she knew it—that’s fine. Go ahead and make your case. But if you do this, why would you back it up with two false allegations and then provide the very links that demonstrate they’re false? Is this just life in Donald Trump’s America? A demonstration of poor reading skills? An assumption that you can get away with anything because no one ever clicks on the link?
Whatever it is, it’s bizarre behavior.
