Tag: Ian Buruma

More on Ian Buruma’s departure from the NYRB, in the National Post:

A former editor at the New York Review of Books says he stands by his decision to publish a controversial essay written by disgraced former radio host Jian Ghomeshi.

Ian Buruma has told Vrij Nederland, a Dutch magazine, that it is ironic that he has lost his job after publishing a theme issue about #MeToo offenders who had been convicted on social media, but not in court.

Well, you could also say it is ironic that a man decided to run a story about a man who, several women claimed, got a good deal too rough during sex. You can say anything is ironic. I for one keep finding it “ironic” that so many men are more interested in the complaints of men who are told to stop assaulting women than they are in the women who say they were assaulted. I say potato, you say hasn’t he suffered enough.

The essay sparked an online backlash who said the former CBC radio host should not have been given such a prestigious platform to write an unchallenged first-person piece.

Buruma says he was not fired from the prestigious literary magazine, but felt forced to resign after it became clear that university publishers who advertise in the Review of Books were threatening a boycott.

The BBC:

Ian Buruma, 66, had been editor of the New York Review of Books for 16 months.

His interview with Slate magazine defending the publication, drew outraged on social media.

He told the publication: “In a court of law he was acquitted, and there is no proof he committed a crime.”

He continues: “The exact nature of his behaviour – how much consent was involved – I have no idea, nor is it really my concern.”

Mr Buruma says the point of the article is to discuss the fallout and “social opprobrium” that follows such a case.

He says: “My interest in running this piece is the point of view of somebody who has been pilloried in public opinion and what somebody like that feels about it. It was not run as a piece to exonerate him.”

Not to exonerate, but to invite sympathy, interest, concern…while ignoring the women he got a little too forceful with. We do wonder why so much curiosity about him and so zero about them.

Ian Buruma has left the NYRB. It’s not currently clear if he was pushed or not.

Ian Buruma, the editor of The New York Review of Books, left his position on Wednesday amid an uproar over the magazine’s publication of an essay by a disgraced Canadian radio broadcaster who had been accused of sexually assaulting and battering women.

“Amid” – thus not ascribing causation. Careful.

After rumors about [the piece] began appearing on social media, it was published online last Friday, causing immediate furor, with some criticizing what they saw as a self-pitying tone, and soft pedaling of the accusations against him, which included slapping and choking, and had ultimately been brought by more than 20 women, rather than “several,” as Mr. Ghomeshi wrote.

In an interview last week with Isaac Chotiner of Slate, which was posted not long after the piece, Mr. Buruma, who was named top editor of The New York Review of Books in 2017, defended his decision to publish Mr. Ghomeshi’s piece, noting that while “not everyone agreed,” once the decision was made the staff “stuck together.”

In his interview with Slate, when pressed by Mr. Chotiner about the several accusations of sexual assault against Mr. Ghomeshi, Mr. Buruma said: “I’m no judge of the rights and wrongs of every allegation. How can I be?” He also noted that Mr. Ghomeshi had been acquitted and said there was no proof he committed a crime, adding, “The exact nature of his behavior — how much consent was involved — I have no idea, nor is it really my concern.”

That was the really infuriating remark. I think what he meant was that he’s interested in Ghomeshi’s take, regardless of how badly behaved he was, as opposed to general indifference to how violently he may have abused women…but that still leaves unanswered the question why take such an abstract interest in a guy accused of treating female human beings as things to manipulate for his own pleasure? Why be so interested in the man accused of abusing women and so shruggy about the women who say he abused them? Why do women always come in a very distant second?

I suppose Bari Weiss will do a think piece on the foolhardiness of believing what women say about all these talented men.