January 22, 2014

More on Dr. V

To give you some more evidence of the New Conventional Wisdom that has rapidly congealed that privileges for the amorphous class of "the transgendered" is suddenly the Crucial Moral Issue of Our Time (a.k.a., World War T), here are some more articles denouncing Grantland for publishing freelancer Caleb Hannan's fine piece of investigative journalism: (with one admirable exception at the end):

From The Atlantic (can't some billionaire with a sense of history feel offended enough by the Gawkerization of this property founded in 1857 to buy it and lose money on it running something other than clickbait for liberal arts majors?):
Dr. V, Sports Journalism, and Why Sensitivity Matters 
What Grantland could have learned from a past decision at Vanity Fair before publishing its controversial story about Essay Anne Vanderbilt
... The second troubling aspect of “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” is that it survived the editorial layers of a major publication like Grantland, which ultimately bears responsibility for running the story. In a lengthy mea culpa published yesterday, Grantland editor-in-chief Bill Simmons took responsibility for publishing the story, relating how several members of his team failed to flag the troubling aspects of Hannan’s writing. (To its credit, Grantland yesterday also published a stinging criticism by Christina Kahrl, a transgender woman who writes about baseball for ESPN.) Grantland didn’t publish Hannan’s story because it wanted to run a sensationalistic piece, privacy and sensitivity be damned. It published the story because its editors didn’t realize that writing about the transgender community required special sensitivity—and didn’t bother to ask. 

From Poynter, the website of some sort of foundation devoted to journalism education:
Lessons learned from Grantland’s tragic story on Dr. V 
by Lauren Klinger and Kelly McBride 
Published Jan. 22, 2014 2:23 pm 
By editor-in-chief Bill Simmons’ own admission, ignorance was the biggest mistake Grantland made in reporting and publishing the story of Dr. V and her innovative golf putter. Ignorance about one of the most vulnerable minority groups — transgender people.

Jamie Kirchik, who was the last of Marty Peretz's Bright Young Men (a lineage that includes Andrew Sullivan and Al Gore), dissents from the conventional wisdom in the Daily Beast:
Pressuring Journalists Won’t Protect Transgender People 
When Grantland revealed the inventor of a golf putter to be a fraud, a mob attacked the site as bullying a transgendered woman to death. They demand a double standard that is the antithesis of equality for trans people.

49 comments:

Eric Ruttencutter said...

The Atlantic used to be great. Now it's pathetic. What a shame.

Henry Canaday said...

I thought the BLT Community just wanted free bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. You mean there’s more?

Anonymous said...

RE: The Decline of the ATLANTIC:

"On September 27, 1999, ownership of the magazine was transferred from Zuckerman to David G. Bradley, owner of the Beltway news-focused National Journal Group. Bradley had promised that the magazine would stay in Boston for the foreseeable future, as it did for the next five and a half years.
In April 2005, however, the publishers announced that the editorial offices would be moved from its long-time home at 77 North Washington Street in Boston to join the company's advertising and circulation divisions in Washington, D.C.[16] Later in August, Bradley told the New York Observer, cost cutting from the move would amount to a minor $200,000–$300,000 and those savings would be swallowed by severance-related spending. The reason was to create a hub in Washington where the top minds from all of Bradley's publications could collaborate under the Atlantic Media Company umbrella. Few of the Boston staff agreed to relocate. Bradley embarked on an open search for a new editorial staff.[17]
Bradley, who has described himself as "a neocon guy" who came to regret his support for the Iraq invasion,[18] hired James Bennet as editor, who had been the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. He also hired writers including Jeffrey Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan.[18]" (via WIKIPEDIA)


MMMMM, the dread hand of the neocons strikes again. THE ATLANTIC definitely lost its soul when it moved from Boston to Washington.

Anonymous said...

When this idiocy ends and the shoe is on the other foot, I'm not going to have the least bit of sympathy for the G's and the T's. It can't last forever.

Steve Sailer said...

As Ali G asked Pat Buchanan, "Is it morally right to invade Iraq over sandwiches?"

Steve Sailer said...

When the Atlantic was based in Boston, it had a distinctive tone: "genteel foreboding." I'm not sure that I cared for the tone, but it was certainly different from all the NYC-DC magazines. And, for historical reasons, it seemed fitting that one major national voice was based in Boston.

Anonymous said...

"As of 2012, its writers included James Fallows, Mark Bowden, Jeffrey Goldberg, Megan McArdle, Jeffrey Tayler, Robert D. Kaplan and Ta-Nehisi Coates." (via WIKIPEDIA"

Quite a comedown for a magazine that published work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Mark Twain, George F. Kennan (both his memoirs and his diaries were serialized in the ATLANTIC), Hemingway, Emerson, Vannevar Bush (his classic AS WE MAY THINK), William Dean Howells, Charles W. Eliot, etc.

Anonymous said...

V for Vendetta

Anonymous said...

Hitler committed suicide because the Red Army rolled back the Nazi tide.
Why couldn't Stalin and his minions have been more sensitive? Had they not resisted the invasion, Hitler would have lived.

Anonymous said...

The Atlantic also published articles by Lillian Hellman, the Stalinist writer of lies.

It published plenty of garbage in the past.

Anonymous said...

RE: The Founding of THE ATLANTIC:

"It was this concern that brought a handful of men together, at about three in the afternoon on a bright April day, at Boston's Parker House Hotel. At a moment in our history when New England was America's literary Olympus, the men gathered that afternoon could be said to occupy the summit. They included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and several other gentlemen with three names and impeccable Brahmin breeding —men from the sort of families, as Holmes once noted wryly, that had not been perceptibly affected by the consequences of Adam's fall. By the time these gentlemen had supped their fill, plans for a new magazine were well in hand. As one of the participants wrote to a friend the next day, "The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually that I have ever had." Soon the new magazine acquired an editor, James Russell Lowell, and a name—The Atlantic Monthly."

As you said, Steve, the old ATLANTIC was very much a product of the Boston Brahmin worldview, its messenger to the world, as it were. Something was definitely lost when the geography changed, and Washington was swapped for Boston, and the New England mind was exchanged for Washington-New York group-think.

Another sign, I suppose, of how the old "monocultural" America was actually more intellectually diverse than its multicultural replacement.

syon

Anonymous said...

Rather, fun searching through old issues of the old ATLANTIC.As HBDers, it's interesting to note the role that it played in transmitting Darwin's ideas to the USA. For example, here is Asa Gray*'s 1860 review of THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1860/07/darwin-on-the-origin-of-species/304152/

* Asa Gray was the leading American botanist of the 19th century and a close friend of Darwin's.A letter outlining Darwin's theory of natural selection sent from Darwin to Gray was used to help establish Darwin's priority over Wallace.

Dave Pinsen said...

"As of 2012, its writers included James Fallows, Mark Bowden, Jeffrey Goldberg, Megan McArdle, Jeffrey Tayler, Robert D. Kaplan and Ta-Nehisi Coates." (via WIKIPEDIA"

Quite a comedown for a magazine that published work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Mark Twain, George F. Kennan (both his memoirs and his diaries were serialized in the ATLANTIC), Hemingway, Emerson, Vannevar Bush (his classic AS WE MAY THINK), William Dean Howells, Charles W. Eliot, etc.


Mark Bowden has done some great work (e.g., Blackhawk Down; his article about Desert One), but overall, the Atlantic has certainly declined. I used to subscribe to the hard copy mag and look forward to reading it. Now I don't even read the free version online.

Re Steve's suggestion, maybe the Guggenheims could buy it. If they class it up, they could recoup some of the cost by publishing ads for Guggenheim Partners. Move it back to Boston, ditch the bloggers, maybe hire Tyler Brûlé as editor, commission articles from Charles Murray, Tom Wolfe, Stephen Pinker; poetry by Frederic Seidel, etc.

Art Deco said...

What's disconcerting about the discussion of this story is that the meat of it - that Stephen Kroll (alias Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt) conned a mess of people into investing in his company by pretending to academic training and employment he never had - is considered of no account when weight against an injury to one of the Anointed's newer mascot groups. Hormone treatments, mutilating surgery, and kinkiness mean you're immune to condemnation for the long con.

Anonymous said...

OK iSteve due to you I've been reading the rad fem lit on the net. If a woman should not be judged by her vagina, then neither should a man be judged by his vagina. WWT is pointless and futile. Get it!

FredR said...

Howells's memoir of writing for and then editing The Atlantic "Literary Friends and Acquaintances" has some beautiful scenes about what the magazine used to be like.

2Degrees said...

One of the defining characteristics of the transgendered is that they are self-centred. It's all about how they feel. Those that I have know(too many)often do highly masculine jobs before they turn. Why do their feelings matter more than those of their wives or, in my case, sons? If they can live a lie doing interesting jobs like flying aeroplanes, why do they suddenly have to tell the truth when they retire at 53?

I would like a voice in this debate, but I won't get one. Screw sensitivity. Tell it how it is.

Anonymous said...

Wait, is Al Gore possibly gay? I hadn't heard that, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Kibernetika said...

Anon @ 14:22 mentioned Vannevar Bush (yeah, "As We May Think" was a big f'in deal, as our most distinguished and eloquent VP Biden, esq. would say). Cool. I'd like to have a chat with Kennan today, too. I don't think that Kennan would attack modern Russia so much as the current US government does.

Jus d'orange said...

If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1914 and woke up today, he'd think this country lost its f'in mind.

Special privileges for transgenders? What's next? Why not give let criminals out for the weekend, invite third worlders with no discernible talent in by the boatload and pay them money from the pockets of hard working citizens to sit on their a** and have babies, or persecute white men into oblivion for the success of their ancestors?

Of course, by reading or watching the news, he'd fail to realize that the majority of the people are actually against it.

Ichabod Crane said...

It feels like The New Republic went through a decade of decline, until the rich billionaire kid bailed it out. It now seems better than it was in 2007, but worse than it was in 2003.

The National Review was in decline over the last ten years, but in the last year or two, it has been a getting more interesting.

Are the good magazines coming back?

Anonymous said...

In the 1981 The Atlantic published James Q Wilson;s landmark "Broken Windows" article on crime. During the mid-nineties it published articles by Roy Beck of NumbersUSA on immigration.

Now the Atlantic is just another Left-liberal/libertarian rag owned by the Wash DC NeoCon establishment.

From Roy Beck to the hilariously pro Open Borders Molly Ball. What a downfall or should I say SHONDA!! I was a reader through out college. Was a subscriber from the mid-eighties to 2002.


Anonymous said...

I just noticed that PC cant becomes a lot more straightforward when you replace the smarmily ubiquitous word "community" with "soviet". Thus:

It published the story because its editors didn’t realize that writing about the transgender soviet required special sensitivity—and didn’t bother to ask.

That's better.

Big Bill said...

I don't get it.

Dr. V dressed in drag.

That's all anyone knows.

Dr. V lied about being a Vanderbilt, a doctor, a graduate of MIT, a Star Wars expert, everything.

So why do they assume Dr. V (who never said anything about transsexuality) was a transexual?

Some guys like pink panties and make up.

Some guys dress in chadors to rob jewelry stores.

Who knows?

Nobody.

Steve Sailer said...

"Wait, is Al Gore possibly gay?"

No, but he has a tiny lisssssp that intrigues gays with the hope that this handsome man might be playing for both teams:

http://www.isteve.com/2000_Does_Al_Gore_Lisp.htm

Gore's slight effeminacy (sighing, etc.) cost him the first Presidential debate in 2000 because voters who hadn't been paying much attention were kind of weirded out by it in contrast to the regular guy GWB. Gore got it under control in the last two debates.

Anonymous said...

"Blogger Steve Sailer said...

When the Atlantic was based in Boston, it had a distinctive tone: "genteel foreboding." I'm not sure that I cared for the tone, but it was certainly different from all the NYC-DC magazines. And, for historical reasons, it seemed fitting that one major national voice was based in Boston.

1/22/14, 2:38 PM"

The neoconservatives did not care for the genteel tone either, Steve. The tone smacked of the Piping Rock Club and other assorted villains who will grace the silver screen in good time.

Luckily for us the publication now hosts Seinfeld-esque personalities including an American who did a stint as an IDF prison guard.

Anonymous said...

I like to think of Megan McArdle as the "Elaine Benes" character when she was at The Atlantic.

Ian said...

This whole story still smells kinda fishy to me... wouldn't be surprised if the story is just a hoax to draw attention to the 'plight' of transgender freaks.

Reg Cæsar said...


No, but [Albert Arnold Gore, Jr] has a tiny lisssssp that intrigues gays with the hope that this handsome man might be playing for both teams.


Reminds me of a letter from a frustrated stereophile to Stereo Review in the late 1970s. He couldn't eliminate the sibilance emanating from his pricey system when he played his Al Stewart albums.

The experts' advice? Maybe Stewart just sings with a lisp.

Stewart, by the way, is straight, even though he's bookish, a lifelong œnophile (a victim, he says, of a "vast red wine conspiracy"), and married late. Like Andrew Jackson, he was born after his father's death.

Anonymous said...

That Bill Simmons grovel is truly sickening. Straight out of the Moscow Show Trials.

Art Deco said...

I like to think of Megan McArdle as the "Elaine Benes" character when she was at The Atlantic.

Why? "Elaine Benes" was chronically dating, and, as women with that habit do, chronically dissatisfied and irritating in her conversation. McArdle married late in life but has been married for a number of years, is a rather sanguine character in her public presentation, and is not irritating at all.

Luckily for us the publication now hosts Seinfeld-esque personalities including an American who did a stint as an IDF prison guard.

Oh, well. If dumb analogies please you.

sunbeam said...

Dude, you live in an echo chamber.

Not the usual ideological one assigned to democrats and republicans, ala Dick Cheney and his requirement for tv's to be tuned to Fox News.

But another one. This one requires that you know what Grantland published. As far as I know they only exist on the internet, and not in real print.

Additionally, I have no idea whether the NY Times shapes what decisionmakers decide.

Or whether they are told what to publish.

But one thing is clear: In low-class, or low-taste, or however you classify it society;

No one knows what is published in the NY Times, The Economist, or gives a flaming shit about any of it.

Whether we in the hinterlands are your people or not, well we have survived much worse.

But it's cool if you are appealing to equals or some shit like that.

But relate whatever you write about transvestites (come on, you think there is a real effort to "legitimize" something with such a small base?)

You apparently see some super-powered worldwide conspiracy. I see the ramblings of a demented lunatic, whose erstwhile efforts aren't going to reach much further than the reach of his own culture.

Kind of curious. Besides music have we had much success exporting culture?

Anonymous said...

To join in the fun, NFL Network chose as their subject for their popular series, "A Football Life, " Jerry Smith, the non-prototypical excellent tight end for the Washington Redskins in the 60s and 70s. It aired last night and will re-run this week.

Of course, in promoting it, they explained that Smith led "a secret life" as he was homosexual. It was actually a well-done presentation, concentrating both on his greatness as player and on the reasons he never came out, with interviews with familiar names who were Smith's teammates--Sonny Jorgenson, Billy Kilmer, and many more as well as interviews with Dave Kopay, the first former NFL player to come out (Smith never did), and one of Smith's gay friends.

The show itself was, in content and in style, really no different from all the other profiles of people important to the game of football, but was was unusual was that there was an hour for "special discussion" following the show itself.

I decided this was the NFL Network's political offering to the gods of diversity and tolerance and I changed the channel so I can't report what was said, but of course, when they went to commercial they let it be known that one of the questions the guests would be discussing was "Is there really any reason a gay football player today should not come out during his career?"

Roger Goodell won't be happy until he gets a few gay boys to announce. He'll be the toast of the town in Manhattan.

He reminds me of John Roberts in many ways--yeah, THAT John Roberts.

Anonymous said...

"Art Deco said...

Why? "Elaine Benes" was chronically dating, and, as women with that habit do, chronically dissatisfied and irritating in her conversation. McArdle married late in life but has been married for a number of years, is a rather sanguine character in her public presentation, and is not irritating at all."

Elaine was not irritating. She was actually the more normal one of the bunch which says a lot about the others.

"Oh, well. If dumb analogies please you."

My dumb analogies please me and then some, Mr. Deco! I am thoroughly pleased, thank you.

But yes, I do find our current elites - who kicked out and mock the Brahmins, mind you - to be very, very Seinfeld-esque.

Speaking of TV sitcoms, did you know Dick van Dyke was one of those dreaded "Mayflower People"?

From Wikipedia:

"He is of Dutch descent on his father's side; his mother was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Peter Browne from England."

Anonymous said...

Speaking of the Atlantic: "Teen killer George Zimmerman has a new painting..."

From the Atlantic Wire:
http://news.yahoo.com/george-zimmerman-goes-shepard-fairey-latest-piece-39-032131672.html;_ylt=A0SO8yDmy.BSok8Aal1XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB0b3Jnamt1BHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDMzNF8x

As Greg Gutfeld would say, check it out, check-it-outers.

PropagandistHacker said...

World War T is part of the new regime of diversity-based leftism.

Diversity-based leftism is cool and hip. Don't you want to be one of the cool kids?!

Economics-based leftism is old and staid and unhip. That's bad!

They are substituting diversity-based leftism for the tried and true economics-based leftism.

Economics-based leftism tells us to control the rich because otherwise they will use their money to control the government.

Economics-based leftism is concerned with wages and monopolies and supply and demand of labor and labor unions and other boring things. You would rather have the cool, new diversity-based Leftism, wouldn't you? Labor unions are uncool and nasty. People of color and cross-dressing gender-queers are cool and hip. You want to be cool and hip, right?


Diversity-based leftism tells us that the white, hetero-straight majority is evil and that we must atone for our evil past by accepting diversity, which just so happens to include accepting millions of nonwhite immigrants who want to come to america and work and shop in our malls. Oh, boy, more workers and consumers in america! Growth uber alles! Our GDP will dominate the earth!

You are not a xenophobic, homophobic racist, are you? Accept diversity!

You wouldn't let your racial and sexual prejudices stand in the way of getting more workers and consumers into america so we can increase our GDP, would you? You have to accept people who are different from yourself, steve, and that includes millions of peasants from central america and africa and programmers from india. GDP uber alles, steve!

Boy, but what a coincidence that diversity-based leftism just so happens to increase corporate profits by increasing the supply of labor and thus lowering real wages (or at least slowing the increase of wages) and increasing the number of consumers with more money.

And what a coincidence that rich folks happen to own the vast majority of corporate shares and successful businesses.

Hey, an even bigger coincidence--the supplanting of economics-based leftism by diversity-based leftism also helps the rich folks keep more of their money because the working class majority is now too busy trying to conform to the dictates of diversity-based leftism to bother taxing the rich as they should be taxed.

Seems like everything CorpGovMedia pushes on us via the educational system and media and hollywood happens to help the rich.

Strange, that.

But it's all just a big coincidence, though. Just a big coincidence.


Anonymous said...

So what's Jason Collins of the NBA been up to recently?

Reg Cæsar said...

Roger Goodell won't be happy until he gets a few gay boys to announce. He'll be the toast of the town in Manhattan.

That would follow family tradition.

His father Charles was a reliable Representative for his district in the Alleganys, but once lifted to the Senate upon Bobby's death, he seemed equally beholden to the man who put him there-- Nelson "I think I'll cut short my out-of-state vacation and fly back in my private plane just to veto this reactionary abortion-repeal bill" Rockefeller.

Charles became such a bleeding-heart joke that he lost the seat to James Buckley, Bill's brother.

Big Bill said...

"Hormone treatments, mutilating surgery, and kinkiness mean you're immune to condemnation for the long con."

Partially true. None of the Dr. V articles say anything about Dr. V having hormone treatments or mutilating surgery.

Go back and re-read the article. All we know from Grantland et al. is that Kroll/Dr. K dressed in drag.

Steven Kroll was a "transsexual" the way George Zimmerman was "white".

Is RuPaul a transsexual because he dresses in drag?

Nope.

Is Ellen DeGenerees a transsexual because she dresses in drag (e.g. suits).

Nope.

Art Deco said...

Elaine was not irritating.

Sorry. I spent the latter part of the 1970s listening to the table talk of a chronic dater / pub crawler. I know the type and never wish to encounter another one.

Art Deco said...

But yes, I do find our current elites - who kicked out and mock the Brahmins, mind you - to be very, very Seinfeld-esque.

What does this observation have to do with Megan McArdle, whose heritage is 1/2 Irish Catholic and 1/2 small town non-ethnic; or James Fallows, who is also non-ethnic; or Ross Douthat, who is also non ethnic; or Andrew Sullivan, who is Irish Catholic by way of England; or Clive Crook, who is British; or Ta-Nahesi Coates, who is a slum black from Baltimore?

You all would make more sense if you would lose your Jew fixation.

Ichabod Crane said...

>can't some billionaire with a sense of history feel offended enough by the Gawkerization of this property founded in 1857 to buy it and lose money on it running something other than clickbait for liberal arts majors

I will soon be a billionaire myself in one of my delusions of grandeur. In my delusion, I will try to make you the editor of a big, money-losing magazine. If you are interested, you should know my delusion may not pan out. So in the meantime, I suggest that you directly ask billionaires to launch a magazine with you at the helm. You don't have to be a great administrator to be a good Editor-in-Chief. The New Republic had the best output when it was headed up by beta males who knew how to find talent, and whose most important decisions were governed by their taste rather than their beta-ness. I seriously think you should get in touch with rich people to try and make this happen. Promise them Marty Peretz-like/God-like oversight, in which they get to write sloppy, drunken opinion pieces whenever they want.


It looks like a disastrous organizational structure, but it works. It worked for Peretz, and it also worked in Renaissance Italy: think of all those masterpieces in which the patron's enemies were painted in with devil horns, or Moses had the patron's face.

Jess said...

Anonymous wrote:
"That Bill Simmons grovel is truly sickening. Straight out of the Moscow Show Trials. "

Yet the most danger he faces is loss of income or perhaps social status. Simmons will not go to the Gulag for this. Someone else would likely hire him even if at less pay. His cowardice resembles that of a eunuch. He will sacrifice his dignity for some material comforts and country club membership? So depressing.

American men like Simmons are willingly becoming the shock troops for this monstrosity. Why?

Hunsdon said...

Art Deco said: You all would make more sense if you would lose your Jew fixation.

Hunsdon wondered: Is sauce for the goose sauce for the gander? Should, maybe, Jews lose their gentile fixation?

If----as it seems to me---Jews tend to be vastly over-represented in movements that attack "traditional America" does it not make sense to pay attention to them, even if it is in somewhat poor taste?

Svigor said...

If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1914 and woke up today, he'd think this country lost its f'in mind.

Yeah, I think about that in the context of the War of Northern Aggression from time to time. As in, does anyone think a southerner who fought for the Confederacy would look at America 2014 and think, "wow, sure glad we lost!"?

ben tillman said...

Speaking of the Atlantic: "Teen killer [sic] George Zimmerman has a new painting..."

That's awfully ... misanthropic. Philanthropes would describe Z as a "crime victim", if we too were to use that incident as the sole basis for our description of him.

And I suppose I can't ignore the omission of the crucial hyphen that changes the meaning of the sentence so dramatically.

Once again we see that the mass media are both evil and stupid.

ben tillman said...

Hunsdon wondered: Is sauce for the goose sauce for the gander? Should, maybe, Jews lose their gentile fixation?

I thought you were going to ask whether he might lose *his* Jew fixation. Does he ask us to modify our thoughts on other subjects?

Art Deco said...

If----as it seems to me---Jews tend to be vastly over-represented in movements that attack "traditional America" does it not make sense to pay attention to them, even if it is in somewhat poor taste?

No, it makes sense to break the back of the legal profession, the educational apparat, and the media, not sticking your upraised middle finger in the face of Jewish dentists.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Honestly I think Ta-Nahesi Coates might actually be one of those Jewish black guys