Michael Calderone quotes me , via the magic of Twitter, in a piece about Gawker’s stupid and bottom-feeding story about Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell.
Editor Remy Stern told The Upshot that Gawker ran the item because it’s “a great story” and pushed back against the misogyny charge, arguing that the alleged incident was worth noting because O’Donnell’s private actions, according to the anonymous writer, run counter to her public persona as an advocate of Christian conservative values.
“If it was any politician whose private life diverged from his public life in such an interesting way, we’d be interested in that.” Stern said. “It had nothing to do with her being a woman.”
Couple of things here. One: If “guy gets drunk with girl, doesn’t sleep with her” is a great story, James Cameron is really wasting his time with this Pandora stuff. Two: Calling out political hypocrisy makes sense when a candidate is trying to use his/her power to legislatively punish an action, or if that action is already illegal. I’m a candidate who wants to make my country dry, and I get drunk. I want to put sex offenders in prison, but I seek out illicit underaged sex on the side. I’m aware that Christine O’Donnell’s public commentary career started with her going on TV to talk about how kids shouldn’t have sex or masturbate before marriage. But not only has she never called for that behavior to be punished legally, I’m unaware of her ever coming out against the actions mentioned here – which, let’s remember are drinking, fooling around, and
not having sex
. There is no hypocrisy being exposed here. This is anonymous creep shaming a woman who wouldn’t sleep with him, and doing so because she’s a celebrity now.
Headline reference:
Here.
