Media and Journalism

New York Times Spews A Lot Of Hot Garbage About Jeffrey Toobin

Intellectual masturbation about masturbation is so very meta!

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Toobin in the days before Zoom. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

Hey, did you hear that Jeffrey Toobin lost his job because he took his dick out and seemingly masturbated during a work meeting? You might have missed it while the entire world was on fire this year, but it happened. In the annals of inappropriate behavior, there are worse things out there. That said, it is still wildly inappropriate and just because he didn’t assault someone or burn the office down doesn’t make it any more acceptable. It’s sexual harassment. Full stop.

But the New York Times felt the need to devote some 2,300 words to lamenting Toobin’s fall from grace in one of the most vapid displays of the media’s obsession with itself and its luminaries of all time. This is just mind-bogglingly bad.

Now that name was a punchline, a headline, a hashtag (#MeToobin) — and a point of debate. For as many people were excoriating Mr. Toobin for lewd and inappropriate behavior in a virtual workplace, others were thinking, or even saying, “there but for the grace of God go I,” acutely conscious of all the private or potentially embarrassing moments they’d stolen in this odd new zone where we now meet our colleagues.

Wait, what?

“There but for the grace of God go I” really only applies if one has hitherto successfully jacked off while on a work call. Assuming — hopefully correctly — that very few people are doing that, they actually have nothing to be afraid of here.

The fragile boundary between screen and reality was showcased on, of all places, the cover of the Dec. 7 New Yorker, which features a woman at her computer, crisply attired above the waist; in casual disarray below.

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Forgive me if this is a nuanced distinction, but I feel as though “wearing sweat shorts” on a call is not the same as “touching your penis” on a call. Maybe my failure to recognize the similarity is what’s keeping me from writing for the Times.

Still, as Condé Nast, the publisher of The New Yorker, has along with other media organizations faced criticism of elitism and tardiness around diversity, there is little room for error from even its veteran VIPs.

In June, the editor of Bon Appétit, Adam Rapoport, stepped down after a picture of him in brownface surfaced on Instagram….

Little room for error. Brownface.

I’m kind of hoping this is a stylistic bit, where the authors are penning these insane juxtapositions for effect. They do also blithely note that “Mr. Toobin also has a younger son, Rory, with Casey Greenfield, a lawyer” which is burying the lede so deep it would survive a nuclear attack. If playing coy was the intention, I’d have recommended against it.

But masturbation at a remotely conducted work meeting was a new order of business.

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To be clear, masturbating at a work meeting will always be a “new order of business” because most employers don’t provide the opportunity for a repeat performance. Seriously, despite all the glowing pablum about Toobin’s career in this article, he is not a special snowflake. He’s done some good work. He’s done some bland work. A network or magazine could replace him with any of a number of my cohort of legal analysts. We all went to elite law schools and worked at prestigious Biglaw firms or the government. There’s nothing but old boys’ networks and stupid inertia limiting legal commentary to Jeffrey Toobin. And it’s exactly that insular media fascination with “oh, his parents were journalists and he attended only the BEST private schools” that engenders a nonsense profile like this. An industry that wasn’t rotten to its core would have moved on from Toobin without a thought and called “next person up” from some other publication.

Besides inviting mockery of a magazine whose dignity and restraint has been part of its brand since the William Shawn years, it presented an urgent, if very 2020 human resources issue.

Good. Fucking. Lord.

I know they’re saying “very 2020” because of Zoom, but it reads as if jacking off in a meeting wouldn’t be a human resources issue if the doggone millennials weren’t so sensitive!

Speaking of the Lord…

Malcolm Gladwell, one of the magazine’s best known contributors, said in an interview: “I read the Condé Nast news release, and I was puzzled because I couldn’t find any intellectual justification for what they were doing. They just assumed he had done something terrible, but never told us what the terrible thing was. And my only feeling — the only way I could explain it — was that Condé Nast had taken an unexpected turn toward traditional Catholic teaching.” (Mr. Gladwell then took out his Bible and read to a reporter an allegory from Genesis 38 in which God strikes down a man for succumbing to the sin of self-gratification.)

Of course they found a way to jam Malcolm Gladwell into this trash heap. And of course he couldn’t engage the discussion without trying to create some pretentious Biblical connection. Looking forward to Gladwell’s next book “Wanking Point,” an overwrought listicle about eight times Western Civilization was changed by masturbation.

And that’s not even an accurate description of that passage. Theologians have interpreted that story as a prohibition on “self-gratification” but God actually was striking Onan down because he refused to impregnate his brother’s wife, which was the sort of thing Old Testament God was into.

“I think it’s tragic that a guy would get fired for really just doing something really stupid,” [Masha Gessen] said. “It is the Zoom equivalent of taking an inappropriately long lunch break, having sex during it and getting stumbled upon.”

It’s nothing like an inappropriately long lunch break. It’s like taking a lunch break, coming back to the office, going to a meeting, and waving your penis around the conference room table. How are these writers all so terrible at analogies?

Several of Mr. Toobin’s longtime associates feel he was unfairly punished. “You are a fine person and a terrific journalist and did nothing here to hurt anyone outside of yourself and your family,” Jonathan Alter, a friend of Mr. Toobin’s for 40 years, tweeted after Mr. Toobin announced his exit from The New Yorker.

“I don’t like Twitter mobs, and I don’t like bullies from the left or the right taking part in cancel culture,” Mr. Alter said later by phone. “I have trouble with the conflation of offenses. I don’t put Al Franken in the same category as Harvey Weinstein.”

Yeah, no one does. That’s why Al Franken lost his job as a United States Senator and Harvey Weinstein is going to prison for the rest of his life. THAT’S HOW YOU DON’T CONFLATE OFFENSES.

And, frankly, Jeffrey Toobin might actually understand this:

But Mr. Toobin may not want anyone’s pity. Amid the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the journalist scoffed on CNN at Republicans who said white men, as a demographic, were being mistreated. “Garbage,” Mr. Toobin said. “All this whining about the poor plight of white men is ridiculous.”

Indeed. Jeffrey Toobin, who has multiple bestselling books, some of which have been optioned in Hollywood, will be alright. He’ll start a navel-gazing (hopefully stopping at the navel) Substack and live and work comfortably for the rest of his days. Or maybe an OnlyFans. Whatever it is, he’ll be fine.

Writing for the New Yorker and going on CNN to explain what a summary judgment is to confused viewers is not a God-given right as much as they may think it is at Bumblyfuck Friends Prep Academy. “A second chance” is just a phrase the uber-privileged use to justify living with no consequences for any of their actions. What people are entitled to are second acts — to emerge from mistakes and start something different. Their old job should not be waiting for them on the other side because they done screwed up. Deal with it and move on.

And Jeffrey Toobin doesn’t need the media ecosphere bending over backward to hand him his next gig. If he wants to go out there and earn it, he’s got the skills and every advantage he needs.

Earlier: Jeffrey Toobin Makes A Great Poi–OH MY GOD, HIS DICK’S OUT!!!

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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