@jpodhoretz Was that the real life? Was that just fantasy?
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Conor Friedersdorf
82K posts
Conor Friedersdorf
@conor64
Omni-American, staff writer at The Atlantic, founding editor of The Best of Journalism–subscribe here: https://t.co/z6wyUHjoSp
Katılım Şubat 2008
3.5K Takip Edilen88.4K Takipçiler
This is your occasional reminder that Rami Malek won an Oscar for BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. What the hell was that about?
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California government: incompetent at almost everything latimes.com/california/sto…
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@RangerDave2001 Very hard to persuade a species that has eaten meat for much longer than recorded history and that has biologically evolved to do so that it is immoral.
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@LauraPowellEsq @wil_da_beast630 My mentions are full of personal attacks no matter what I say about any subject. Such is X, unfortunately
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@conor64 @wil_da_beast630 I said that because my mentions are full of personal attacks simply because I questioned the timing of the allegations.
x.com/LauraPowellEsq…
Laura Powell@LauraPowellEsq
For example, my post questioning why the allegations Cesar Chavez are being publicized at this particular time received tons of unhinged vitriol. x.com/LauraPowellEsq…
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Takes?
John Ziegler@Zigmanfreud
Why the adult rape allegation against Cesar Chavez is VERY clearly not credible… 1) The woman is 96 years old with a “hazy” memory 2) She waited over 60 years to go public 3) She had 2 kids with him but only had sex with him twice (🤔) and neither time was 100% consensual 4) She also had 4 kids with HIS BROTHER! (Which the @nytimes conveniently leaves out) 5) She worked with him until he died and she praised him on X multiple times, decades after he died (see below) 6) She has plenty of incentives to lie, particularly so that her career doesn’t look like it was carried by her having extensive sexual affairs with him AND his brother, and the fact that Cesar accused her of stealing money from the organization This story is not only not credible, it is completely irrelevant to the uncorroborated allegations of child rape, which the NY Times desperately conflates with it in order to give the appearance of there being significant evidence here. I have ZERO love for Chavez, but this story is completely unfair, especially since he has been dead for 33 years.
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@megbasham If you're saying that you *did* know about this why didn't you report it?
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@conor64 Actually, I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley around the ag business. Plenty of those guys would’ve told you that Cesar Chavez was not a good guy.
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I have no problem believing that Cesar Chavez was a sexual abuser. I have a very hard time believing that the legacy media just discovered this.
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@ChrisFried78 @wil_da_beast630 illegal immigration, easier to cancel him for me too
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@LauraPowellEsq @wil_da_beast630 This is a thread inviting people to question them by referencing a thread of someone questioning them. So it seems like it is in fact allowed.
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@wil_da_beast630 Apparently people are still doing the "believe all women" thing, so you are not allowed to question either the veracity or the possible political motivations of the accusers and the media. 🙄
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@wil_da_beast630 The other woman claimed to be raped on Cesar's "yoga mat."
Not really a thing in the 1970s.
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Very good @Yascha_Mounk interview of Ibram X. Kendi
writing.yaschamounk.com/p/ibram-x-kend…
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@champayatollah @conor64 Zero chance none of the legacy journalists covering Chavez back in the day didn’t know.
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@awstar11 @foster_type I am less confident in your judgement of his character than you are.
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@conor64 @foster_type Because I’ve been paying attention for the past decade. There are plenty of bad things about Trump’s character. But, I’m not part of the TDS coffee klatch who can only make extreme and ridiculous predictions about what insane thing he’ll do next.
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I'm seeing a lot of my friends take this position but I think three things:
1) it's revisionist and an attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance over one of the most inexplicably bad things the administration has ever done.
2) it's a canard to say "the invasion threat wasn't serious, therefore this is a non-issue." The threat was a huge issue whether it was credible or not.
3) Denmark was absolutely right to take it seriously regardless, and their moves to that effect helped force the administration to back down, not out of fear of losing an armed confrontation, but by forcing key contingents who were quietly tolerating Trump's antics to get serious about pushing back
Fusilli Spock@awstar11
This is unintentionally hilarious
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I can't speak for literally every last journalist, but in broad strokes, you know about Weinstein because legacy media institutions and journalists invested probably millions of dollars investigating the story and risked being sued and other retaliatory tactics to tell it. Insofar as outlets held back information, the main reason was fear of lawsuits. Meanwhile, the left and right alternative media spheres were perfectly free to break the story of their own accord. Instead, the legacy media broke it. To twist all that into a "the legacy media knew and suppressed the truth" narrative is absurd.
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@conor64 @megbasham There was a much better story, I think in Vanity Fair, that went into many writers knew about Harvey Weinstein but ignored it all because they were hoping a magazine feature they wrote might get movie rights poynter.org/newsletters/20….
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@awstar11 @foster_type What if you underestimate how bad his character is?
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I respect your opinion but disagree here. Where I completely understand Trump’s willingness to remove Maduro and put an end to the threat of Iran, thinking he would actually invade / attack a NATO ally is a “bridge too, too far” even for him. Trump talks lots of shit for dramatic effect and no one seems to recognize this negotiation style even after a decade of his bluster. Taking Trump seriously but not literally is correct response.
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@thackerpd @megbasham What specifically are you talking about?
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@conor64 @megbasham While I don't believe it was commonly known that Cesar Chavez was an abuser, it is quite common for legacy media to hide and help cover things up. We know this happened with Harvey Weinstein, for example.
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Conor Friedersdorf retweetledi
'He operates in a fiefdom with almost unlimited power and he’s smart enough not to overstep—a very dangerous combination for such an opportunistic hardliner.' Disturbing @thedispatch article about @StephenM's influence despite failure of his policies. thedispatch.com/article/stephe…
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@SohrabAhmari It was a good piece. I didn't mean that to come off as directed at you
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Perhaps it was never a caricature...
Edward Feser@FeserEdward
From @SohrabAhmari: “Trump…has now fully given way to his liberal caricature: venal, erratic, childish, a chaos agent…The scale of [his] failures...return[s us] to the character problem that first gave rise to the Never Trump movement” unherd.com/2026/03/trump-… via @UnHerd
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@RichardHanania This story has brought out a lot of truly insane beliefs about the press.
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Look at the responses. Rightoids default to conspiracies, it’s fun to watch them try to understand the world. It’s like watching children discuss world events.
Laura Powell@LauraPowellEsq
The key questions about the Cesar Chavez allegations are: Why are they only emerging now, many decades after the alleged events? Why did the accusers withhold this information until long after his legacy had been formally honored? What changed?
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