Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
This week Buzzfeed examines how to process the Louis CK allegations. Photo: AFP
Louis C.K. Told Us Who He Was, But That Doesn’t Make It Better, by Scaachi Koul, Buzzfeed
“C.K. was supposed to be one of the good ones. He was self-aware, routinely talking about how easy it is for men to indulge (or at least fantasize about) their worst instincts around women. “I just look at women like they’re cakes in windows,” he said in one set. He recounts following two attractive women in order to hear what they’re saying. “Like that’s going to help me in any way. Don’t you wish the guy walking in front of of us would squeeze our tits for like one second?” C.K. pantomimes grabbing breasts and tipping his hat. “It’s rare to touch one tit. It’s like a four-leaf clover. The only time you touch one tit is when it was an accident or you didn’t have permission.”’
Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies, by Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker
“In fact, “Diana Filip” was an alias for a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces who originally hailed from Eastern Europe and was working for Black Cube, according to three individuals with knowledge of the situation. When I sent McGowan photos of the Black Cube agent, she recognized her instantly. “Oh my God,” she wrote back. “Reuben Capital. Diana Filip. No fucking way.”’
Johnstown Never Believed Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway, by Michael Kruse, Politico Magazine
‘“You know, we’re sort of a depressed area,” she said. “We’re just a little area, you know—but it’s a good area. Good people here. And I think he would, if he knew of a place that had a lot of problems, I think he would try to help. I don’t know what he could do, or would want to do, for Johnstown, you know?” He said he was going to bring back the steel mills. “You’re never going to get those steel mills back,” she said. “But he said he was going to,” I said. “Yeah, but how’s he going to bring them back?” “I don’t know,” I said, “but it’s what he said, last year, and people voted for him because of it.” “They always say they want to bring the steel mills back,” Frear said, “but they’re going to have to do a lot of work to bring the steel mills back.” He hasn’t built the wall yet, either. “I don’t care about his wall,” said Frear, 76. “I mean, if he gets his wall—I don’t give a shit, you know? But he has a good idea: Keep ’em out.”’
Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And Harass Women, by Lindsay Adler, Deadspin
‘“As time went on, he got much hornier and drunker,” Sarah told me. Sarah said that she worried Ryan would hurt himself, and that “it got to the point where I felt like I had to send him pics when he’d ask.” The person Sarah was dating while Ryan was harassing her told me he found it unsettling that Ryan would DM and tweet about cheating on his wife and staying up all night getting drunk and playing Xbox, ignoring his responsibilities as a parent. “If you’re going to make up an entire false identity, why would you make yourself into a shitty person?” he asked.”
Taylor Swift, Entering a New Era, Sticks to a Safe Space: Tumblr, by Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times
“Even in an age of unprecedented connection between stars and their public on social media, Ms. Swift goes beyond typical interaction on Tumblr, a niche blogging platform that, with its multimedia flexibility, including images, GIFs and text posts, is conducive to obsessive fandoms. She follows some 5,000 blogs, where users can upload original creations or “re-blog” the work of others with or without adding their own two cents. While Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become largely promotional megaphones for the singer (outside of a few sly surprises), she has posted more than 100 times on her Tumblr since October, often re-blogging content from Swifties and adding her own commentary (typically including their first name and a string of excited emojis).”
Listening to What Trump’s Accusers Have Told Us, by Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
“I reread the piece I wrote last year about all of this, and it felt a little humiliating. It was clear that I had been so upset, and so full of trust in the weight of moral narrative, that I felt sure Trump would not be able to win the Presidency. And, over the past year, I realized, I had also allowed myself to forget the sheer repulsiveness of some of Trump’s offhand comments about women: that he told his friends to “be rougher” with their wives, that he seemed to regularly joke about dating teen-agers. I recently shared the piece on Twitter and received more than two hundred replies, many of which asked the same sort of question: Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this? Why don’t these women press charges against the President? Why don’t they get together and sue him? Where are all these accusers now?”