Totalitarian Rag, The Atlantic, Hates and Permablocks Anyone Right-of-Center, While Demanding That All Journalism on So-Called Transgenderism be Halted, in the Name of “Sensitivity”

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Years ago, The Atlantic was an important magazine. But now, the most apt and succinct judgment of it was made by my VDARE colleague, Steve Sailer, who spoke earlier tonight of its “Gawkerization.”

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?

[More on GRANTLAND and Transgendered Fraudster Dr. V, VDARE, January 22, 2014 at 9:09 p.m.]

Of the first 63 comments permitted through by The Atlantic’s thread Nazis on the screed below, not one criticized the whole con job that is “transgenderism,” and only one brought up pc. Intelligent, skeptical conversations are banned there.

JonOMD to Charles

Yeah, the take away I got is that journalists should spike articles if they cast members of certain protected groups in a negative light. I mean, the whole credibility of the company was based on the claims of the founder being an MIT grad and military designer. The entire basis of the company was a fraud. That would seem to be well within the appropriate bounds of investigative journalism for a FREAKING GOLF MAGAZINE. Political Correctness once again raises it's ugly head....

There is no such thing as “transgenderism.” There is a form of insanity, whereby someone who is a physical and chromosomal member of one sex deludes himself that he is “really” a member of the opposite sex, and desires to have his body butchered, and to ingest hormones and possibly other drugs, in order to pass as a member of the opposite sex.

And there are political opportunists, much greater in number than the actual basket cases, who find it profitable to support this delusion.
 

Dr. V, Sports

Journalism, and Why

Sensitivity Matters

What Grantland could have learned from a past decision atVanity Fairbefore publishing its controversial story about Essay Anne Vanderbilt

Matt Schiavenza
Jan 22 2014, 12:20 P.M. ET
The Atlantic


Dr. V's putter in action. (Yar Golf)

It isn't every day that an article about golf—or more specifically, golf equipment—explodes into controversy. But that is precisely what happened with Caleb Hannan's Jan. 15 Grantlandpiece on "Dr. V," a woman whose creation, the Oracle GX1 putter, became the talk of the golf world.

The gist of the story is this: Hannan first encounters the putter when he sees Gary McCord, a veteran golf broadcaster, endorse the club with great enthusiasm. But even more interesting than the putter—which features a unique, counterintuitive design—is its creator: a mysterious physicist named Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt. An MIT graduate [false!] who once worked on top-secret weapons programs [false!] for the Department of Defense, Vanderbilt was an eccentric figure who initially resisted Hannan’s inquiries into her [sic] personal life, but then consented to an interview after Hannan pledged to keep the focus on the putter. When Hannan began to dig into Vanderbilt’s background, he discovered that she [sic] had fabricated her [sic] academic and professional credentials, and, in fact, had not been born female: Vanderbilt spent much of her [sic] life as a man named Stephen Krol. Vanderbilt begged, threatened, and cajoled Hannan to omit these details in his profile of the putter, but the journalist demurred. Last October, one month after Vanderbilt cut off all contact with Hannan and accused him of intentions to commit a “hate crime,” she [sic] took her [sic] own life.

Hardly anyone is suggesting that Hannan's reporting is directly responsible for Vanderbilt's suicide; she [sic] struggled with depression and had previously attempted to kill herself in 2008. It’s also easy to see why Hannan chose to focus so much attention on her [sic] background. Putting is golf's purest form of psychological terror. The slightest mistake—in grip, touch, or motion—can ruin a perfectly good performance. Serious players invest enormous time and money in finding the best equipment, and club makers earn fortunes from even the smallest technological advancements. McCord, a longtime professional, was so taken with Vanderbilt because he believed her [sic] distinguished background lent the putter a certain scientific legitimacy. If Vanderbilt’s past was a lie, then, could we trust the science behind her [sic] putter?

Left alone, this would make for a fascinating article, one that neatly fits Grantland’s unique blend of sports, culture, and society. But instead, Hannan’s focus pivoted from Dr. V’s professional deception to her [sic] status as a transgender woman, a fact he clearly viewed with discomfort. Upon discovering that Vanderbilt was born male, Hannan writes that a "chill ran up [his] spine." Later, he elides the wrenching psychological trauma of gender reassignment by referring to Vanderbilt as a "troubled man who reinvented himself,” as if choosing to become female were a typical reaction to a mid-life crisis. Worst of all, he disclosed Dr. V’s transgender status to an investor in Yar, the parent company that owns the Oracle putter.

What’s striking isn’t so much Hannan’s personal fascination with Vanderbilt’s transgender identity, but his inability to separate professional and academic deceitfulness from an issue for which she [sic] had a legitimate right to privacy. [Wrong!]

***

The controversy over “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” isn’t the first tragic intersection of sports journalism and the transgender community. In 2007, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner stunned his readers by announcing that he planned to live as a woman and that, henceforth, he would be known as Christine Daniels. With the support of the Times’ editors and readers, Daniels detailed her [sic] experience as a transgender person in a much-praised column. But the next year, the column disappeared. Daniels halted her [sic] physical transition, and withdrew from public life. Quietly, she [sic] re-appeared in the Times as Mike Penner. In 2009, Penner committed suicide.

Grantland published the story because its editors didn’t realize that writing about the transgender community required special sensitivity—and didn’t bother [sic] to ask.

Following Penner's death, both the Times and The LA Weekly ran long stories about Christine Daniels, and traced the same tragic arc of her [sic] life: After an initial period of euphoria, Daniels slid into depression when her [sic] pre-surgical efforts to pass as female were met with difficulty. One episode, in particular, was painful. After encountering Daniels at a work assignment,San Bernardino County Sun columnist Paul Oberjuerge wrote with shocking insensitivity:

She [sic] looks like a guy in a dress, pretty much. Except anyone paying any attention isn't going to be fooled—as some people are by veteran transvestites. Maybe this is cruel, but there were women in that room who were born women in body, as well as soul. And the difference between them and Christine was, in my mind, fairly stark. It seemed almost as we're all going along with someone's dress-up role-playing.

Following public outcry, the Sun removed Oberjuerge’s column from its website, but the Times and Weekly both reported that the incident greatly upset Daniels. Again, the language is telling: Caleb Hannan’s use of “personal reinvention” may be nowhere near as offensive as Obajuerge’s “dress-up role-playing,” but the basic sentiment—that transgender people are somehow weak and self-indulgent—is shared between the two.

Vanity Fairmanaged to preserve the dignity of a transgender person by spiking a story it had invested significant resources in—something Grantland did not do.

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 [sic] to ask.

[The idiot keeps talking as if there were a person named “Christine Daniels,” as opposed to simply, Mike Penner!]

Here, too, the story of Mike Penner and Christine Daniels has relevance. In 2008, Vanity Fair commissioned a profile of Daniels, complete with a photo gallery intending to show the sportswriter's successful transition to female life. But when Daniels saw the photos, shot by Los Angeles-based photographer [sic] Robert Maxwell, she [sic] became so upset that Maxwell reportedly asked the magazine to spike the story, fearing that Daniels would commit suicide. This detail is disputed—according to the LA Weekly, Daniels claimed that Maxwell wanted to proceed with the story but that, ultimately, she [sic] persuaded the magazine not to publish—but the result was the same: Vanity Fair judged that the profile of Christine Daniels did not merit publication. Tragically, this decision was not enough to save Penner's life. But Vanity Fair managed to preserve the dignity of a transgender person by spiking a story it had invested significant resources in—something Grantland did notdo.

Nevertheless, the basic problem is that, in 2014, an explosive story involving a transgender person turned into a story about being transgender itself, as if this one fact about Essay Anne Vanderbilt’s past eclipsed the relevance of all else. If transgender people are to achieve greater tolerance in society, this perception will have to change.

[But not if you’re on our ever-growing whitelist!] 60
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