Literary Clusterfucks 2013

http://liferoar.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/stop-denying-and-unseeing-rape-subculture/

Rape subculture in “alternative” communities is often doubly insidious because our individual and group identities are molded precisely around an idea that we are not that. We are not dumb jocks; we’re poetry freaks! We’re intellectuals! We know the language of feminism! We voted for Barack Obama! We’re vegans! We’re artists! We’re anti-authoritarians! We’re liberal hippies! We’re Buddhists! We’re alternative! And it is precisely this psychological investment people have in being “different” and “alternative” that makes rape subculture all that much more important to be aware of.

i dunno in my limited experience dfw seems pretty otm there
granted the rhetoric is commencement speech but what am i missing?

If you're referring to my post, I picked out those two quotes because they seem to contradict each other. Do we have a choice of what to worship or don't we?

"worship" is a loaded term and DFW asks it to do some heavy lifting but it seems pretty clear he's saying we can choose the object of worship once we acknowledge that we don't get to opt out of the behavior

psychoanalytic types might say "fetishize" w/e

RS publishes the The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report on its botched process on the UVA rape story:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405

As at other once-robust print magazines and newspapers, Rolling Stone's editorial staff has shrunk in recent years as print advertising revenue has fallen and shifted online. The magazine's full-time editorial ranks, not including art or photo staff, have contracted by about 25 percent since 2008. Yet Rolling Stone continues to invest in professional fact-checkers and to fund time-consuming investigations like Erdely's. The magazine's records and interviews with participants show that the failure of "A Rape on Campus" was not due to a lack of resources. The problem was methodology, compounded by an environment where several journalists with decades of collective experience failed to surface and debate problems about their reporting or to heed the questions they did receive from a fact-checking colleague.

Yet the editors and Erdely have concluded that their main fault was to be too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault. Social scientists, psychologists and trauma specialists who support rape survivors have impressed upon journalists the need to respect the autonomy of victims, to avoid re-traumatizing them and to understand that rape survivors are as reliable in their testimony as other crime victims. These insights clearly influenced Erdely, Woods and Dana. "Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting," Woods said. "We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice."

Erdely added: "If this story was going to be about Jackie, I can't think of many things that we would have been able to do differently. … Maybe the discussion should not have been so much about how to accommodate her but should have been about whether she would be in this story at all." Erdely's reporting led her to other, adjudicated cases of rape at the university that could have illustrated her narrative, although none was as shocking and dramatic as Jackie's.

Yet the explanation that Rolling Stone failed because it deferred to a victim cannot adequately account for what went wrong. Erdely's reporting records and interviews with participants make clear that the magazine did not pursue important reporting paths even when Jackie had made no request that they refrain. The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie's position.

wld not have been hard to write a solid story abt campus rape, the allure of the sensationalistic frat gang rape did them in

a solid story abt campus rape w/out the frat initiative rite gang rape hook would not be their most-read non-celebrity article ever

yeah well obvs theres a tension there that got the best of them

even if it were true it prob wouldve been less instructive of the structural issues that allow assaults to happen just via not being a typical example

also is indicative of our need to make criminals monsters so as to distance ourselves from them, this fantastical story was the perfect appeal to people who dont have that much interest in seeing how common and embedded in our culture rape really is

i think probably some of these gang rape cases do occur on campus (i haven't read this book on the subject). in one sense erdely was pretty unlucky to get such a complex, contradictory story when there are probably other more easily reported campus gang rapes (assuming that you want to peg yr story to something like that). on the other hand the report makes pretty clear that she did a pretty bad job fact-checking this story and that even cursory independent research would have brought up questions about its veracity.

their explanation that they were just trying to protect the victim is pretty convenient, yeah and obviously gang rapes do happen

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/04/06/rolling_stone_uva_rape_story_shock_that_no_one_is_fired_for_journalistic.html

CNN’s Brian Stelter points out that what some might see as a failure to hold anyone directly accountable, “others might call a show of loyalty and a second chance for the staff.”

Too bad, though, that Rolling Stone didn’t seem to have that same loyalty toward other staff members who had been forced out of the magazine for offenses that seem downright minor—if offenses at all—in comparison with the UVA rape story debacle. In 1996, Wenner fired senior music editor Jim DeRogatis after he wrote a negative review of Hootie and the Blowfish, which was replaced by a positive review. When the New York Observer asked DeRogatis whether Wenner was a fan of the band he answered: “No, I think he’s just a fan of bands which sell eight and a half million copies.”

Bad party planning can also apparently get you in hot water. Steven DeLuca was fired in February 2006 after a two-year stint as the magazine’s publisher after he got into a tiff with Wenner about a party to celebrate the 1,000th issue. Wenner apparently thought the location that DeLuca had selected for the party was too expensive and changed it. “Mr. DeLuca objected to the move, they argued and Mr. Wenner fired him,” according to the New York Times story from the time.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/rolling-stones-sensational-failure/389718/

Said Rosen, "None of those schools felt quite right. What kind of 'feel' is this? It’s feeling for a fit between discovered story and a prior—given—narrative." What if, he argued, "a single, emblematic college rape case" does not exist? "Maybe the hunt for such was ill-conceived from the start," he wrote. "Maybe that’s the wrong way for Rolling Stone to have begun." And I think he is correct that searching for confirmation of a preexisting narrative is a common problem in narrative journalism generally and a factor that led Rolling Stone astray here.

Still, there is one sense in which Erdely's account of her process seems dubious to me. The story of a fraternity that used gang rape as an initiation ritual for pledges would obviously be worth exposing if it were true. But no one familiar with the reality of rape on college campuses should've construed such a story as emblematic of the problem. Gang rapes absolutely happen. As Robby Soave notes, Rolling Stone could've easily written a story about one that happened at Vanderbilt.

But according to the Justice Department's December 2014 report on the rape and sexual assault of college-aged females, fully 95 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are committed by a single perpetrator. Just 5 percent involve two or more perpetrators—and a fraction of those, if any, involve premeditated, institutionalized rape carried out as part of a formal, ostensibly recurring initiation rite. There's nothing objectionable about a journalist highlighting a highly atypical rape so long as the specific incident actually happened. But any journalist doing so should acknowledge that they're telling the story of a sensational, unrepresentative case, not a case emblematic of campus culture at large.

Isn't this sort of the broader function of the "rape culture" meme? To associate a wider range of acts/speech w/ the more heinous associations we have of the term?

this is sort of the opposite of what the concept of rape culture id attempting to point out in that it went looking for a horrific sensational conspiracy instead of examining at the everyday culture thats all around us

Yeah, it's exactly the opposite.

I meant that it's the ideological kernel of the idiom, and the reason why it could be simultaneously a "horrific sensational conspiracy" as well as being emblematic of "everyday culture."

but its not emblematic of everyday culture, its not even real!

Like when you see people oppose the term "rape culture," they tend to oppose it on the grounds that it is gathering "everyday culture" under the rubric of something most people consider a heinous crime. Here it's the logic in reverse whereas the most horrific crime becomes symbolic of other less horrific crimes, and of the college "culture" itself.

I meant from the POV of the author who went out looking for a sensational story to peg a broader study of the way colleges treat rape. Part of it is "if it bleeds it leads" sensationalist journalism where RS just wants clicks or whatever, part of it is dramatizing poor college responses to rape by showing something horrific (and clear-cut in a way a lot of these other college stories aren't) and directing yr outrage at the institutional response. But I also think part of the issue is the general collapse of distinctions - that W (this story) = X (other college rape stories) = Y (college culture in general) and of course ultimately = Z (our culture at large).

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how someone could take an uniquely horrifying story as emblematic, and I don't think Erdely misunderstands the meaning of the word "emblematic." I think there's a weird ideological thing going on.

i mean if it were true that there was formally institutionalized group sexual assaults at a fraternity then that wld be very emblematic of rape culture but to get to the point where you believe that you have to not understand how rape culture really functions, or at least be lead astray by yr desire for a good story

The people who want to talk horrific single examples are most often the opposite of people who want to talk about broader, everyday issues. Like, take the Walter Scott situation. What is going on there? Is that an example of a single horrific racist who straight up murdered an innocent black man? Or is it the logical outgrowth of municipal policing focusing on punishing broken taillights and back child-pay to get money for small cities without raising taxes? I think a lot of the people who will begin painting the officer as a horrific unique monster are reactionary people trying to avoid North Charleston gets exposed by the DOJ the way Ferguson was.

In the same way, the RS story was always confused. But it doesn't seem to me to be an outgrowth of the ideology surrounding 'rape culture', more like the opposite. More like old fashioned conservative mass scares, complete with the ritualized aspect.

But it's kinda interesting how the two issues can intersect, the left-oriented struggle to shine a light on damaging structural issues, with the right-wing outrage media machine.

It's weird that the emblematic case had to be sought solely at 'elite schools', too.

I agree that mass hysteria is often associated w the right but no one thinks RS published this to be reactionary. They obv thought it was a public service.

their motivations seem pretty muddled

More like old fashioned conservative mass scares, complete with the ritualized aspect.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, April 8, 2015 10:48 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya def thought of the imaginary 80s satan worship cults

well this is much much less of a leap than the satanic panic, c'mon

ppl were crazy 4 the satanic panic!

When Renda told her about Jackie in that first conversation, Erdely found what she was looking for, and she made the decision not to pursue other, less dramatic cases that she learned about. Renda later told the Times that a more ambiguous incident might have seemed “not real enough to stand for rape culture. And that is part of the problem.” Her remark could be applied to narrative journalism as well: extreme, lurid cases are inherently tempting subjects, but they are not the most likely to lead to complex or profound or abidingly true work.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/rolling-stone-and-the-temptations-of-narrative-journalism

this seems like the right thread for this:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/232432/the-new-normal

At the end of March I participated in a panel discussion at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan—a lively conversation on up-to-date themes with Leon Wieseltier and Bernard-Henri Lévy, moderated by Alana Newhouse, the Tablet editor. The discussion made for an agreeable evening, reasonably stimulating and entirely friendly and civilized—except for one problem. At the conclusion of the event, a well-known professor at one of the New York colleges, who is also a columnist at a liberal magazine, came up to me and announced that he was blackmailing me.

The professor’s posture and behavior attracted the attention of the security guards, who escorted him from the building. But he had sufficient time to explain to me what he wanted. He wanted me to publish a denunciation of myself in Tablet. He told me that, if I did not do what he demanded, he was going to humiliate me. He explained that somehow he had gotten hold of an erotic correspondence between me and someone else, and he intended to publish it. “Are you threatening me?” I said.

The security guards insisted on accompanying the members of the panel to our next appointment, which was at a bar, where they left us to drink in peace. I put the incident out of my mind. A couple of days later, however, the professor sent an email:

“Dear Paul Berman,

“Like you, I enjoyed our conversation of the other night but I thought it ended uncompleted.” He explained that I should write a self-denunciation in the style of Augustine or Alexander Hamilton.

“Since you already have a column in Tablet, that would be a great place for it to appear.

“It would also be a good career move. Right now, you are best known to the world for having pimped for George Bush’s disastrous war.”

But this sin was going to seem as nothing, compared to the erotic correspondence.

wish he had named the professor

You left out the "best" part:

I hope that, if he does publish something and attaches my name to it, the correspondence is well-written. Some of my erotic correspondence is quite well-written, I like to think. I am an admirer of Georges Bataille, and an even greater admirer of Juan García Ponce, the Mexican writer, who is unknown in the United States but deserves to be known: a great erotic writer. (I should devote an essay to him. A crazy priapic imagination!) I dedicated myself not so long ago to a study of the artfully obscene poetry of Pierre Louÿs, André Gide’s friend, in the hope of impressing a particular someone. Perhaps there is an amorous tone in some of my more Louÿs-like efforts that belongs more to me than to him, not that I foreswear the vulgar. And Louÿs is a wicked man, and I am not. In any case, if my erotica were ever to appear in print, I would prefer that it did so under my own control. Some of it doubtless needs editing and revision.

simon critchley teaches at the new school and had a column in the ny times, haha. (It was obviously not SC!)

Also this incident repeats a plot point from
The Young Pope.

maybe it was SC? who are some other possibilities

eric alterman has a column at the nation...

http://www.deborahcopakenkogan.com/wp-content/gallery/portraits-individual/eric_alterman__author.jpg

and lookee here: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2011/09/08/10303/think-again-its-not-what-bill-keller-believed-about-iraq-its-who/

In it, Keller recalls his charter membership in what he calls “the I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club,” made up of liberals for whom 9/11 stirred a fresh willingness to employ American might. It was a large and estimable group of writers and affiliations, including, among others, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times; Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek; George Packer and Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker; Richard Cohen of The Washington Post; the blogger Andrew Sullivan; Paul Berman of Dissent; Christopher Hitchens of just about everywhere; and Kenneth Pollack, the former CIA analyst whose book The Threatening Storm became the liberal manual on the Iraqi threat.

the bitchiest wieseltier takedown of all time (not that it's wrong)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/leon-wieseltier-is-a-creep.-hes-also-an-intellectual-fraud./article/2010308#!

i've always thought he was an overrated hack

That dude being a predator was the first I'd ever heard of him so good legacy he's got there

he was an editor + writer for new republic and the atlantic for many years so he's not exactly unknown

15 years ago he frequented a bookstore i worked in; didn't do anything unreasonable, but he was somewhat creepy

i know nothing about writer or writee but that was a joy to read

cosign - not to be slept on imo

I met him once, he seemed like a random old guy and made no impression on me as being either intellectual or creepy

Epstein's finale:

In his middle sixties, now that he has been publicly shamed and self-confessed as a creep, the Leon Wieseltier Show would seem to be over. No comeback for its star, surely, is possible, or so one might think. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

In today's market, I am sure someone somewhere would be willing to pay for a bit of intellectual "tuchus-lecking."

Leon’s reputed cocaine habit, which caused him to load up his Honda with the review copies of books sent by publishers to the magazine and sell them to support his expensive drug habit.

idk how you could afford any coke on that

hagiography