Sunday, March 8, 2015

Breaking: That Times of Israel Hate Speech Blog Post is a Fake




"Dinah Silverstein"

In the previous post I wrote, "I'm leaving open the possibility that Ms. Silverstein's blog post is a parody or a test or a piece of performance art or whatever."

Well, it turns out it is a fake. Or rather, there's at least something fake about it, though at this point, it's not clear what it all means.

See The Times of Israel post by "Dinah Silverstein".

A commenter on the original post revealed that the picture of "Dinah Silverstein" is actually Nancy Goldstein, a journalist and blogger who has written for for The Guardian, The Huffington Post and others. Since she is a quasi-public figure, I think it's safe to show the links. There's no evidence that Nancy Goldstein is Dinah Silverstein. It's just as possible that someone stole her picture. No doubt Ms. Goldstein will comment one way or another.

UPDATES:


March 8: 10:38 PM (Central) Opinion (before I take a late night run): I don't think it's Ms. Goldstein. or if it was her, it was intended as tongue-in-cheek or some such. The whole thing is just too over the top. I think we've all been had by Bill Maher.

March 9: 7:54 AM, (Central): The Times of Israel has removed the blog post.

March 10: 7:43 AM (Central): Miguel on Gun Free Zone blogged yesterday that, "we have been trolled like a boss." In the comments, Cargosquid reveals that much of The Times of Israel piece was lifted or paraphrased from two recent blog posts by one Tanya Cohen--Here Is Why It's Time To Get Tough On Hate Speech In America and Why Do Americans Reject Human Rights When The Whole World Embraces Them?.

3 comments:

  1. Except there is nothing "over the top" about it. I deal with people who sound like this all the time. Watch a video by Zombietime or Steve Crowder and they'll interview college students who sound no different.

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  2. This raises the question, is Tanya Cohen trolling? One paragraph in on the second article, and it seems plausible. What a waste.

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  3. As much as I would love to be mean to Tanya Cohen (because she wants to put me in jail), if she is at all a sane person, I can't imagine why she would have written that piece for The Times of Israel. After all, she already got her message out. And why would she steal Ms. Goldstein's picture, knowing (if she were sane) that it would be discovered?

    I think now it was done by a troll, perhaps a non-political troll, trying to stir things up or just to see if they could get away with it, or whatever. Perhaps we will never find out who did it. I would love to hear, however, what Nancy Goldstein or Tanya Cohen think of the whole thing. I assume they both know about it by now and after all it was their stuff that was stolen.

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