"What Really Happened at Current Affairs" — TLDR the staff lied. Article was posted in a thread on here but it deserves its own post.
"What Really Happened at Current Affairs" — TLDR the staff lied. Article was posted in a thread on here but it deserves its own post.
“More Mean Girls than Norma Rae.” On August 18, 2021, five people posted a public letter claiming that they had been unceremoniously fired from their jobs by Nathan J. Robinson, the editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine. The following is a full account of what actually transpired at the public...
@HarryLime@hexbear.net and @DayOfDoom@hexbear.net already posted this article in this thread https://hexbear.net/post/1596532?scrollToComments=false
The author says that a lot of people made hay about "this is what the left is really like", but, honestly, in my experience, this is what the left is really like: catty and self-sabotaging
- I can't believe I read the whole thing
- Robinson really messed up by sending out that email asking for resignations, and I understand people lashing out and burning bridges after that. You'd hope for less of that coming out of a leftist project, but people are humans first
- If you tend to fall on your sword, you can really fuck yourself when the initial sword-falling doesn't work and you just keep stabbing yourself until everyone's happy. This shows in Robinson's proposal to pay severances out of his own pocket. Some problems just can't be solved with ever-increasing self-flagellation! Ask how I know! (just kidding please don't ask)
- It's nuts how much the board was willing to throw Robinson under the bus in their statement; that actively hurt the magazine
He did capriciously tell a bunch of people who worked for him to leave in a fit of anger, and that was wrong, as he repeatedly acknowledged. That the story is more nuanced than popularly understood is probably true, but "did nothing wrong" is an absurd oversimplification that not even he claims.
It's ultimately a bunch of mundane workplace drama that nobody not personally involved should devote any energy to. None of the people in this story are saints or villains: they're ordinary people who tried and failed to grow a business.