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- Oct 22, 2010
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Anyone else read the story about taibbi+Ames and can explain it to me? It just popped up in my twitter feed. It's already a few month old, but I've never saw it anywhere getting traction. Is it legit or nonsense?
tl;dr:
Ames and Taibbi were in the collpasing Russia of the 90s as journalists. They wrote in something called the Exile. Accordin to them it was a blend of satire and reporting. In it they reported themselves doing sexual assault and other crimes. Ames claimed to force a woman into abortion at knife-point. Taibbi IIRC talked about groping. There were many more examples, these are two I remember. They put these "exaggerated/satirical" experiences together in a book where many more of these claims are found. These are all their own words.
They claimed that in the Russian collapse, which led to women in particular losing jobs, desperation for money meant that women threw themselves at men, especially foreigners and oligarchs. Their writing was found online recently, and they were attacked for it for the last few months, but only by a handful of feminists,1-2 leftists and Gavin McInnes-style fascists, most of the world was unaware of this. It seems to have become a bigger issue after Weinstein.
In response Ames wrote this: https://exiledonline.com/about-those-exile-smears/
Their claim is that there has been no complaint against them (in fact a female staffer backed them on this) and that since their reporting was always a blend of satire and truth, this was the satire element. However, there is also this interview (thread):
and
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