It has been discovered that Louise Mensch made false allegations based on a hoaxer’s claims. Why is anyone surprised?
Louise Mensch is a hack, and always has been. This is not news at all.
The only reason that this is worth mentioning is that she was telling lies about the progress of investigations into Donald Trump, asserting that Trump was in even bigger trouble than he actually was, a story the left wants to hear.
The hoaxer, who fed the information to Taylor by email, said she acted out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Taylor and Mensch. Their false stories about Trump have included a claim that he was already being replaced as president by Senator Orrin Hatch in a process kept secret from the American public.
“Taylor asked no questions to verify my identity, did no vetting whatsoever, sought no confirmation from a second source – but instead asked leading questions to support his various theories, asking me to verify them,” the source said in an email.
Louise Mensch is a fake news source, and her work reinforces the false claims by Trump that his opponents are all liars, even as she disseminates anti-Trump stories. Seriously, people, she is a discredited source. What are you going to do next? Express shock that the Daily Mail and Weekly World News are garbage newspapers?
That seems a rather unfair characterization of the Weekly World News, they never pretended to be actual news.
Daily Mail is not an acceptable source on Wikipedia. Little wonder.
Mensch was a hack well before she jumped to the defence of Tim Hunt. She deserves to be called out for this and all her subsequent actions.
One suggestion PZ?
I would feel happier if the push back came from one of your women bloggers. Mensch is a problem – but the general rule of men putting women in their place is a bigger one. Even feminist ally men. Perhaps especially then. I don’t see the problem in passing the request along to Caine or another appropriate commentator. As I said suggestion only. The points you made are rolled gold.
I can just hear the rightit wingnuts crowing about this.
re: comment #3
Yeah, PZ.
Get one of your women on that.
I miss the Weekly World News every time I’m in the grocery story check-out line. What is the alien who endorsed Bill Clinton for president doing now? Still hanging out with Elvis? Its fake news was of the purest bogosity.
Of course, we still have the Globe, which is in color! Did you know that Queen Elizabeth is going to make Charles king and “betray” Will & Kate? Yeah. Sure she is.
http://www.globemagazine.com/sites/globemagazine.com/files/globe-cover-issue36.jpg
That’s just sad. It’s not even a plausible fake news story. By what mechanism could Orrin Fucking Hatch be made president?
Orrin F. Hatch is President pro tempore of the Senate. That places him in line after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. He could become president when there is a vacancy in all three offices ahead of him, simultaneously.
chigau, I’m intrigued that’s what you chose to take from my comment.
It is not controversial to note that PZ has an implicit (not explicit) leadership role in the network. I am asking the man to delegate some of his critiques to bloggers he has recruited.
The possessive “your” in this context is very weak and “business” related.
Cartimandua
I am not by you at all. I’m just waiting for the meds to kick in.
I would controvert that statement.
If he aten’t a leader, how do he delegate?
@Cartimandua:
Did you check to see if anything on Louise Mensch was posted to Affinity or by any other woman on FtB? I will honestly say I haven’t even looked. There’s a reason for that: I only frequent Pharyngula, though I do sample other bloggers on occasion. If he handed it off to someone else, then I would have no idea who Louise Mensch is.
I will say this: Caine is wonderful. Pharyngula is just more my cup of tea, at least at the moment. I understand what you are saying about men telling women to stop, but that’s not what PZ is doing here. He’s telling the world that she is a hack, and that anything you read from her could be, and likely is, made up in some way. At the very least not very well fact checked. There’s a not-so-subtle difference there.
chigau You seem very angry at me and I’m not sure why so I’m letting it go.
Methuseis, I also enjoy reading Caine’s posts, plus her photos are amazing. I didn’t see anything on this over there. I agree entirely with PZ’s points, but the optics are rightly or wrongly unsettling to me. I’d much prefer if he presented a stub pointing to a post elsewhere – that would be an uncontroversial win-win.
@Cartimandua:
So men are not allowed to issue valid criticism of Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Marine Le Pen, Betsy Devos, etc, because, … feminism? Are you a dumbass or what?
Cartimandua
You are very bad at evaluating other people’s emotional states.
I’d never heard of Mensch or Taylor before reading this. I must live under a rock ? Or perhaps I vet my news sources more carefully.
It’s worth noting that the Weekly World News was clever and funny and rarely meanspirited, which makes it all the more depressing that it went out of business while the National Enquirer lives on.
chigau: maybe.
Btw I said I was intrigued. I don’t really know what you are thinking, despite trying to parse your responses.
Leadership is received not demanded. It denotes character, vision and aptitude. I believe PZ has earned this respect and receives it. It’s fine that you disagree.
PZ can exercise this implicit respect by taking the initiative and asking a women on the network if she would run the story. Simple.
It’s odd that you find micro- gotchas as more important than addressing how a man can firmly push back against a woman (even an odious woman) without the appearence of entrenching broader power imbalances. As I said. I didn’t really understand where you are coming from.
@Cartimandua
[insert obligatory Assuming Facts Not in Evidence caution here about your ability to accurately gauge how any of this appears to an outsider]
Explain how PZ is “entrenching broader power imbalances” by sharing an opinion about Mensch, over whom he has no control or influence. Then explain why you are asking that he exert control and influence over the women that blawg on this platform by ‘assigning’ or “delegating” them the work of expressing his thoughts rather than their own. There’s no dearth of women on the interwebs analyzing Mensch and finding her a fool, there never was, so why aren’t you linking to them? What, apart from Mensch being a woman herself, compels you to advocate for a little pink ghetto where female public figures like Mensch can’t stand up to the scrutiny of a man but instead must only be engaged by her fellow women? Women in general need bigger, broader spotlights on them — need men to more automatically accept them as peers, as colleagues, and as opponents worthy of notice and close reading — not fewer ones.
PZ seems to be taking Mensch seriously — as seriously as one can take a theatrical but otherwise garden variety troll — whereas you seem to be wanting to pigeonhole her into a subordinate role deserving only of responses from women whom you are characterizing in ways that indicate they are similarly subordinate in your mind.
You need to re-think what you’re doing here if your intentions are actually benign.
@Cartimandua #
That’s a fallacious assumption that people (mostly critics) continually make about FTB and PZ Myer. While he does have a say, the network operates on democratic principles and PZ definitely doesn’t “delegate” topics to write about to other bloggers. You’re assuming a hierarchy that just isn’t there. In fact from my experience it’s more common for PZ to *defer* to other bloggers here, pointing out their excellent pieces and recommending people go read them.
Whether or not it’s controversial, it’s just plain wrong and a common and boring misconception/criticism levied against PZ. No masters, no leaders!
=8)-DX
I think if PZ had equal or better name recognition and his platform had equal or broader reach compared to Mensch, Cartimandua might have a point about the optics thing. I’m definitely leery of men’s attempts to criticize their female peers, even if said peers are scum of the earth.
But PZ doesn’t have the clout that Mensch does. More importantly, his criticism wouldn’t read any differently if you swapped in a male name and pronouns. Too many liberal dudes end up working contempt for women into their criticisms of a woman. Or they pretend to be tearing her down in defense of whoever they have decided is the “right kind” of woman. Then they get whiny about how women shouldn’t be “off limits” if you confront them over it. So pieces like the OP make for a good example of what gender-neutral criticism of a woman should look like.
I know this is true of (too) many on the Left, and it’s disturbing. She makes claims about the actions of investigators/officials that if true would be totally unconstitutional and undemocratic. It’s one thing to respect the secrecy of the Mueller investigation (which is as much for the protection of the people under investigation and witnesses as anything), and quite another to be cool with this nonsense.