The House Of Gawker Is Burning

[Joni-san]

So, it has come to my attention that Gawker is in a lot of trouble after possibly outing and/or blackmailing the CFO of Conde Nast.

Here are some archived versions of the article and relevant articles. I'd post them with names and content, but archive.is has been blocking Finland as of this morning.

https://archive.is/CkDI7
https://archive.is/EUkg0
https://archive.is/WLmaI

A TL;DR by Anonymous:

Show

Gawker makes a post last night alleging that the CFO of Conde Nast Publishing (and brother of former US Treasury Secretary) tried to hire a male porn star for a night of steamy sex.
The CFO in question is married, with children, not openly gay, and has never made any public statements about gay people or gay marriage in general. The story states that the porn star threatened to go public as a blackmail attempt if the CFO didn't give him help with a legal/administrative issue.
If Gawker was telling the truth, they just publicly and unwillingly outed a closeted gay man, which goes against everything progressives claim to stand for, and Gawker claims to stand for progressives. If they were telling the truth, they also aided in a blackmail scheme, which might very well be a prosecutable criminal offense.
If Gawker wasn't telling the truth, it's straight-up libel to print a story claiming that a guy illegally solicited another guy for sex. Names were named.
Whether or not Gawker is telling the truth, there does not appear to be any legitimate justification, no public interest served by the airing of this dirty laundry. In short, it's extremely harmful gossip, the kind that could destroy a family and ruin a career, for no reason other than the pursuit of clickbait. Even Gawker's usual defenders are pissed at this, since it targets someone on their side of the fence.

So, to recap. Gawker either:
Outed a gay man and possibly destroyed his family, while being an accessory to blackmail;
or
Just plain libeled him as a patron of male prostitutes, while being accessory to blackmail.
They're fucked no matter what happens. But perhaps the best thing is that the guy is Timothy Geithner's brother. They fucked with Beltway people this time. Gawker is in deeper shit than any of us can imagine.

More archive stuff: https://archive.is/uWkhj

Gawker did this before with an Apple CEO
https://archive.is/kY3M8

Apparently folks are resigning
https://archive.is/vO5g0
https://archive.is/Nqjaj
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/20...tors-resign-following-conde-nast-controversy/


Vox wants Gawker staff
http://tweetsave.com/zpower/status/623176428528488448


Oh and remember that time Gawker leaked nudes and Sex tapes?
https://archive.is/FW3EG
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/03/gawker-hulk-hogan_n_7721190.html

And accused the FBI of working for Hulk Hogan, who is suing Gawker:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...hulk-hogan-sex-tape-lawsuit-article-1.2296774

Thread theme:
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhrY2JJqkiI[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Metaphor]

If Gawker is telling the truth, they did not ruin a man's family. If telling the truth ruins your family, your life was a lie and your family's happiness was false.

If Gawker is lying, the truth will set Geithner free.

In my day, children were encouraged to tell the truth. Telling the truth was seen as morally virtuous.

Times do change, aye?

 

[Bronzeage]

Blackmail is when you demand money in exchange for concealing damaging information. Reporting personal information about a person is sleazy, but unless they called him up and said, "give us your money, or all your dickpics are posted in the morning," it's still just sleaze.

 

[Jarhyn]

If Gawker is telling the truth, they did not ruin a man's family. If telling the truth ruins your family, your life was a lie and your family's happiness was false.

If Gawker is lying, the truth will set Geithner free.

In my day, children were encouraged to tell the truth. Telling the truth was seen as morally virtuous.

Times do change, aye?

No. Not every wife has an entitlement to know their husband is gay and doing gay things. Sometimes people need a chance to get their head in order and then to talk things with the spouse through in private. People can have perfectly happy lives with the acceptance of a social fiction, and not every (or even most) domestic partnership need be founded on romantic love. Hell, look at Freddy Mercury. He loved Mary Austin AND was gay.

This kind of outing is destructive and vindictive, and not every telling of the truth is ethical.

 

[ksen]

I thought the mass resignations were due to some of the Conde Nast stories being pulled by the business staff over the objections of the editorial staff?

 

[Archimedes]

If Gawker is telling the truth, they did not ruin a man's family. If telling the truth ruins your family, your life was a lie and your family's happiness was false.

If Gawker is lying, the truth will set Geithner free.

In my day, children were encouraged to tell the truth. Telling the truth was seen as morally virtuous.

Times do change, aye?

Do you think telling the truth is inherently virtuous, regardless of the truth being told or the reasons for it being told?

It's trivial to think of situations where lying is the noble thing to do or where keeping your mouth shout instead of spouting off something that happens to be true is also the right thing to do.

How have times changed?

 

[ksen]

If Gawker is telling the truth, they did not ruin a man's family. If telling the truth ruins your family, your life was a lie and your family's happiness was false.

If Gawker is lying, the truth will set Geithner free.

In my day, children were encouraged to tell the truth. Telling the truth was seen as morally virtuous.

Times do change, aye?

No. Not every wife has an entitlement to know their husband is gay and doing gay things. Sometimes people need a chance to get their head in order and then to talk things with the spouse through in private. People can have perfectly happy lives with the acceptance of a social fiction, and not every (or even most) domestic partnership need be founded on romantic love. Hell, look at Freddy Mercury. He loved Mary Austin AND was gay.

This kind of outing is destructive and vindictive, and not every telling of the truth is ethical.

You don't think the guy's wife has a right to know if he's having sex with someone that's not her?

 

[Metaphor]

No. Not every wife has an entitlement to know their husband is gay and doing gay things.

Which wives are entitled to know such things? Why some and not others? How have you decided she doesn't need to know? I like to know about the product I'm buying before I've bought it, and I hate being lied to about it.

Sometimes people need a chance to get their head in order and then to talk things with the spouse through in private. People can have perfectly happy lives with the acceptance of a social fiction, and not every (or even most) domestic partnership need be founded on romantic love.

If she already knew her husband was gay and used rentboys and it was an agreement between them, then nobody's been deceived that matters. But if she didn't know, I doubt that she was happy (on a philosophical definition of 'happiness').

 

[Metaphor]

If Gawker is telling the truth, they did not ruin a man's family. If telling the truth ruins your family, your life was a lie and your family's happiness was false.

If Gawker is lying, the truth will set Geithner free.

In my day, children were encouraged to tell the truth. Telling the truth was seen as morally virtuous.

Times do change, aye?

Do you think telling the truth is inherently virtuous, regardless of the truth being told or the reasons for it being told?

It's trivial to think of situations where lying is the noble thing to do or where keeping your mouth shout instead of spouting off something that happens to be true is also the right thing to do.

How have times changed?

No: whether telling the truth is virtuous depends on the situation, but it always should be an absolute defence against libel and slander

 

[Bronzeage]

If Gawker is telling the truth, they did not ruin a man's family. If telling the truth ruins your family, your life was a lie and your family's happiness was false.

If Gawker is lying, the truth will set Geithner free.

In my day, children were encouraged to tell the truth. Telling the truth was seen as morally virtuous.

Times do change, aye?

Do you think telling the truth is inherently virtuous, regardless of the truth being told or the reasons for it being told?

It's trivial to think of situations where lying is the noble thing to do or where keeping your mouth shout instead of spouting off something that happens to be true is also the right thing to do.

How have times changed?

It's never been considered squeaky clean ethical to damage someone for profit. This is basically what Gawker has done. They need eyes on their web pages, and everything they post is intended to bring them revenue. They can't really claim any great public interest is served.

This is a true case of glass houses. I don't know if Geithner is a vindictive man, but he is a wealthy man. Certainly wealthy enough to hire a private investigator who might find all kinds of private details about the lives of the editors of an online gossip site.

 

[Joni-san]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVP8OE3ORog[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Jarhyn]

No. Not every wife has an entitlement to know their husband is gay and doing gay things. Sometimes people need a chance to get their head in order and then to talk things with the spouse through in private. People can have perfectly happy lives with the acceptance of a social fiction, and not every (or even most) domestic partnership need be founded on romantic love. Hell, look at Freddy Mercury. He loved Mary Austin AND was gay.

This kind of outing is destructive and vindictive, and not every telling of the truth is ethical.

You don't think the guy's wife has a right to know if he's having sex with someone that's not her?

Not necessarily. It would depend on a lot of different factors. How controlling she is, if she is controlling, if she is (crazy) religious, whether or not he still actually loves her, whether or not she loves him, whether they spend time doing things with each other, how long it's been since they slept together, whether she is vindictive or not, and a bunch of other things.

The fact of the matter is, if her finding out from a revelation in the media causes them more harm than waiting to tell her/never telling her, then she shouldn't be told. Marriage isn't magical; it doesn't suspend the laws of nature to create a mechanism where such fictions magically bring harm.

That said maybe she deserved to know, but there is no basis to declare that this is that case. Relationships on the level of marriages can't function, or at least aren't healthy when each person absolutely insists on knowing EVERYTHING that is going on with the other person.

And to Metaphor, neither wuves nor husbands are a product. They are not in any sense owned by their spouse. They can and should work to make each other happier, and if living in an illusion does that, if some kind of trivial ignorance (and regardless of your hyperbole, sex is more trivial a thing than most in a good relationship) is better than open knowledge, then that's alright. And you don't hate being lied to about anything that you don't know you're being lied to about. You have clearly decided that she needs to know about him being unable to find real gratification with her, despite not knowing the details of the relationship. MY point is that neither of us knows, and a disproof of the 'she always should be know' by providing examples where maybe she shouldn't. There are a lot of situations that could be in play where this 'reveal' is just entirely destructive with no silver lining other than the few things it didn't manage to fuck up, and making a declaration that it was good is premature and nieve.

 

[dismal]

"She has a right to know" maybe justifies sending her a private email.

Don't see how it justifies any thing else that was done here.