There Are No Girls on the Internet - The internet thinks Lena Dunham did something awful to her sibling. Why? Part 1

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

In Part 1 of this 2 part episode, Bridget sits down with producer Mike to explain the origins of a particularly sticky piece of misleading online information about actor and writer Lena Dunham.   The Lena Dunham child abuse controversy, explained: https://www.vox.com/2014/11/8/7157065/dunham-child-abuse Ben Shapiro sings WAP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZYzauhOJcQSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed.

You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's a Shanti Plummer from Fudderound and Find out. This week, Azee Fud and I sat down with Step and Curry. Step talks pressure, confidence, and what it really? takes to stay great. There's different categories, I guess, so I'm like conditioning, shooting drills where you try to simulate kind of games. Look at her face. We have a love-hate relationship with those

because you know you can get something out of it. You don't look forward to those days. Listen to Futter Around and find out on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Just a quick heads up. Today's episode talks about sexual violence. We're also recording on 4th of July evening and I happen to live in a neighborhood that is very festive where folks really enjoy their

illegal fireworks. So we will do our best to have the sound, not sound like I'm recording in a place where fireworks are going off every couple of seconds, but I am recording in a place where fireworks are going off every few seconds. So just keep that in mind. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I wanted to talk to a topic that I've been dying to cover for a very long time. It's also a little bit controversial. You know, I have made episodes about everything involving white supremacists,

QAnon cultists, big name companies who have asked me to cease and desist talking about them. You name it. However, this is still one of the only topics that I have been a little bit worried about diving into because I know folks have really strong opinions about it. So to help me talk through today's topic, I am joined by There Are No Girls on the Internet, producer and chief science officer, Mike. Producer Mike, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I'm glad I can be here to help make this episode. Me too, me too. Did you do anything fun for Fourth of July? Nothing too exciting, just hanging out in my apartment, listening to the constant fireworks outside. I feel it's like a new thing the past couple of years that fireworks just start around noon and then go until midnight. And I'm here for it.

It's pretty exciting. Yeah, pretty exciting. Not the best conditions for recording a podcast, but we'll make it work. So I know that you are a fan of podcasts where the the hosts kind of revisit a story about a public figure, usually a woman like Monica Lewinsky or Courtney Love, and point out all of the unfair ways that this person has been maligned by society and the media. And we all kind of have this public reckoning about the ways that the media can be unfair

or sexist or all around harmful. I love podcasts like that. And Mike, I know that you do as well. It's true. I think it's a great format. I think it really works well with the, classic podcast dynamic of like one person explaining, one person listening. And I also think that it's a format for which there's many great examples because, you know, society just loves to smear and

besmirch a woman. So I love podcasts like that as well. But I want to be very clear, this episode is not going to be one of those podcast episodes, even though I am the person who did all the research and I will be explaining the situation to you, Mike. So it's a little bit like those. But today, we are not trying to sort of demonstrate the way that the media unfairly maligned somebody. We are zeroing in on one specific misleading claim about none other than Lena Dunham. I am in no way making a larger point about the way that the media and society has portrayed her broadly. But I do want to zero in on this one specific claim. And analyze how it became to be this very sticky, persistent lie that still endures online today,

and what that lie says about our culture. Yeah, so why Lena Dunham? Why this one specific thing? Great question. So a little bit of background about how I came to be making this episode. I used to work on the social media team at MSNBC.com, and one of our kind of tried and true digital engagement tricks was to post about someone a public figure that we knew our audience would engage with, positive or negative. This is back in 2015, and our audience used to love to hate on Putin. And so, whenever we posted something about Putin that cast him in a negative light, we could always expect that people would really engage with it a lot. They'd be leaving, like, mean comments, like, yeah, we hate him. They love to hate on Putin. But hands down,

no question, the public figure that got the most hate on all of our social media pages was Lena Dunham. I think, if I'm recalling correctly, I think people disliked Lena Dunham more than they disliked Putin, which is really saying something. And I worked on this podcast project where Lena Dunham was one of our guests. And again, you know, we had posted episodes with all different types of public figures and celebrities. But when we posted our Lena Dunham episode, it was instant unanimous negative feedback. And so I noticed whenever we would publish about her or post about her or feature her online,

commenters would always repeat like a laundry list of reasons they don't like her. You know, sometimes it would be the garden variety things that you would expect, like, oh, she's a spoiled brat, I hate her. Or, you know, oh, she's gross, which is pretty much just kind of fat phobia. But by far, the most common thing I would see commenters say about Lena Dunham online was this particularly persistent claim that she's a, quote, sexual predator who admitted to molesting her younger sibling. And, you know, I'm always very interested in what I refer to as sticky pieces of disinformation or misinformation or lies, you know, things that really just seem to cut through and persist.

You know, I'm very interested in why these things stick and to what end and what their stickiness tells us about our culture. And in that regard, you know, this misleading claim about Lena Dunham is fascinating to me because I think it tells us a lot about the ways that our political and social climates intersect, which is particularly important in today's climate. And I just want to make it super, super clear because I can already hear people who are listening, thinking, why are you defending Lena Dunham? She's awful. You know, what are you doing? Let me be very clear. There are plenty of valid reasons to not rock with Lena Dunham, some of which we'll be talking about in this episode. So this is not me

trying to get anyone to think that Lena Dunham is good, or it is not me saying that every single claim about her is unfair or untrue. But the claim that she sexually abused her sibling, I believe, is a pretty nasty thing to repeat about somebody. And I don't know that people who repeat this particularly nasty lie know that it initially started as a right-wing attack on a prominent liberal voice. But because of Lena Dunham's overall, I guess, will say, vibe, this claim has really taken root, not just in right-wing circles, but more generally, too. Like, people who I believe probably would never read a right-wing blog, you know, for any legitimate reason, should probably be aware that they are repeating a lie that was really cooked up in the right-wing

blogosphere. And I think that should be really concerning. I think the ways that this claim has sort of become true, that's scare quotes around that, and has persisted for so long, should really be concerning for all of us. So let's talk about how and why that happened and what it means. So for people like me who don't really know anything about this, who is Lena Dunham? So if you don't know who Lena Dunham is, I will give you kind of a quick and dirty summary of her background. Lena Dunham is an actor, producer, and writer. She's the daughter of visual artist Lori Simmons, who is a very big deal in the art world because her art is incredible. Lena rose to fame after making a really strong film debut called Tiny Furniture, which is basically a semi-aunche.

autobiographical movie about a young woman portrayed by Lena who has graduated from college and is trying to navigate adulthood. Lori Simmons, her real-life mom, plays her mom in the movie. And in the movie, her mom is also a visual artist and photographer who stages of these pieces with tiny dollhouse furniture, just like her mom does in real life. And Lena's real-life sibling, Cyrus Grace, plays Lena's character's sibling in the movie, too. So it's very semi-autobiographical. In 2012, she created a starred in HBO's Girls, which also explores kind of similar themes, young white women trying to navigate young adulthood post-college in Brooklyn, New York. Lena was born in 1986, so she is what you would call a millennial. And when Girls was debuting, it was kind of peak, like, what are the millennials up to content time, right?

And so Girls was this huge success pretty early on. It got a lot of criticism for how white the show was, because just like shows like Sex in the City and Friends before. it, it's just for white people who are not really encountering a lot of diversity that I know that you would find in a city like Brooklyn, New York. But regardless, positive, negative, whatever you thought, it was the kind of show that people were talking about a lot. Like, it was in the discourse, which I think creates a certain kind of gravitas around anything. And just as a side note, in case you're curious, I actually watched and enjoyed the show. I'm not going to sit here and

act like I have not seen every episode, or I am not going to sit here and act like I did not immediately go to AV Club to read reviews immediately after watching episodes, because, like I said, it was part of a discourse, you know, the show created discourse, and I will never deprive myself of discourse, okay? If people are talking about something, if there's articles and reviews to be read, I'm reading them, I'm engaging. So Girls Explores themes of sexuality, gender, and female friendship, and its highly anticipated third season comes out in January 2014. Now, in September of that same year, Lena releases a memoir, essay collection, called Not That Not That Kind of Girl.

Lena was having a really hot moment, and so the book was a highly anticipated one. Random House purchased the rights in October 2012 after a big bidding war, and bidding was reported to have risen past $3.5 million. So it's one of those very hot, very big deal book publishing projects. This was all happening against the backdrop of a particular climate politically, culturally and socially in the mid-2010s. If I had the ability to clear music rights on this podcast, which my producer, Tari can tell you I bug her about pretty much every day. This is where we'd be playing like maybe Katie Perry's Roar or shake it off by Taylor Swift, you know, some other 2010 hit to really set the scene. Mike, do you, what were some other like 2010 hits?

Like hits of the 2010s. Rihanna, maybe. Rihanna was in there. I feel like Tame Impala was in there. Maybe I'm getting a little late 2010s. So just imagine that some kind of music from that era is playing as I paint a portrait of what it was like in the mid-2010s. So in popular culture, the film 12 Years a Slave won best picture at the Oscars in 2014, which was hosted by openly gay Ellen DeGeneres and was the most watched Oscars since the year 2000.

By 2014, waves of states are passing marriage equality legislation. The Supreme Court decides not to hear cases on marriage equality appeals, thus immediately legalizing marriage equality in Virginia, Utah, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, before it sent back to the courts and ultimately legalized nationwide a year later. The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013. and was really picking up. You have the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin in Florida, Mike Brown in Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York, and the subsequent uprisings all over the country shows that this movement has real momentum

and really it creates a national conversation that is basically impossible to ignore. You'll remember that when President Obama was asked about Trayvon Martin, he answered, if I had a son, he would look a lot like Trayvon Martin. Obama gave a televised speech announcing his plans to use executive action to grant citizenship to about 4.4 million immigrants. So I have my own feelings about Obama's immigration policies,

which is a podcast for another day. But the point is Republicans and right-winger absolutely fucking hated this. We also get Obamacare in 2010, and for the next few years, Republicans were fighting it tooth and nail, including Obamacare's birth control coverage mandate. Mike, do you remember that Georgetown law student

and feminist activist Sandra Fluke? Boy, I've forgotten, but now it's coming back, back to me. What was the deal with Sandra Fluke? Why did we know her name? So in 2012, Sandra Fluke was barred from testifying about birth control during a hearing. And instead, the only people who testified about birth control was an all-male panel of clergy. And then Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut basically just for advocating for birth control. You know, these were the times where the phrase, we were using the phrase, quote, war on women a lot. Like that was a phrase that we were using, which I think captured something

about what it was like to live through that era. But in a way, kind of almost seems quaint now when you look at everything else that is sort of going on. It does seem quaint now. I remember that war on women phrase. And boy, if we thought that was a war on women, buckle up for 2022. This is full on assault. It's funny because I wanted to do this episode because I thought it was like a little bit of a departure from everything happening in the news. But it's so funny how it always comes back to this, you know? I feel like every time I look backwards to the period like five, 10, 15 years ago, I'm confronted with how quaint my concerns felt and how the things I was alarmed about seem so much smaller than the things that are just like normal shit in the news. today. Oh my God. Tell me about it. Let's take a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor. me with Robert Smygel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster,

IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-heart to get started. That's 844-844-I-heart. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate

midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanging. happening on my I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with a new guy?

That one's kind of hard. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter, and dive into it unfiltered and unbothered. and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva

as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level.

that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup,

he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying.

He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So we're talking about this war on women. But back in 2014, you also have Beyonce performing in front of the word feminist. in giant letters like decked out in light at the MTV VMAs,

paired with a sample of Chimamanda Ngozio Odigier's speech on feminism and expectations for women and girls. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. And this, I remember this. I remember coming into work the next day after this aired, and it felt like a big cultural moment for women and feminism. You know, I think I've been a feminist, I've identified, like, vocally as a feminist for most of my life since I was a child.

But I think for a lot of people, when you were asked, like, are you a feminist? It was something you had to be a little bit wishy-washy about. And I feel like this moment with Beyonce, it felt like a cultural moment where people wanted to say it with their whole chests. Country, pop, sensation, Taylor Swift famously came out as a feminist in 2014. in an interview with The Guardian where she credits her friend, none other than Lena Dunham, with her feminist awakening. And I guess my point is this. This era really feels like a time where things like progressivism

and diversity and feminism are becoming increasingly mainstream and that they're becoming attached with a kind of social currency. You know, it's not cool to be aligned with old men dragging their feet and blocking marriage equality or calling college girls' sluts for wanting to be on birth control. None of that is cool. But what is cool is being a feminist. It's cool to be a feminist. It's cool to be an ally. And in 2014, Lena Dunham was a huge part of this climate. So culturally, Lena Dunham's hit show girls and her writing explores, you know, themes of sexuality and gender in these really frank ways. So that alone, you know, creating work deposits that young women have an interiority that is worthy of serious exploration and respect is a thing that is really taking off in the culture. You know, Nina Dunham is not a size four, and yet she is nude on screen and has these sex scenes. She does a really great job of highlighting the sort of humor and awkwardness that can accompany

exploring your sexuality when you're young. You know, what she's doing on screen, it feels a little bit daring. After the success of girls, Lena starts Lenny Letter, a feminist newsletter where, you know, you have celebrities getting really, really raw, but also talking about feminist issues. You know, you have Jennifer Lawrence writing about the gender pay gap in Hollywood, and Kesha writing about her abuse at the hands of her producer, Dr. Luke. This also translates politically. Lena positions herself as a vocal feminist and a champion for feminist causes. Another familiar trip down memory lane back around 2014, Planned Parenthood was facing a lot

of BS political attacks. Mike Pence was not just someone who was being threatened with hanging and agallows by his own constituents. Back then, he was the governor of Indiana, and he made attacking Planned. Parenthood and threatening to defund Planned Planned Parenthood, a big part of his whole overall thing. And we also had these deceptively edited Sting videos from anti-abortion extremists. You know, they would do things like have somebody dress up like a pimp and then go in with women to a Planned Parenthood and try to get services. Basically, right-wing types were really trying to make Planned Parenthood and abortion and the kinds of exploration of sexuality and gender that Lena really does in her work.

they were really trying to brand that as something toxic that nobody would want to be affiliated with. Only, it wasn't really working. Isn't it funny how Mike Pence built his whole career on like attacking people and making people seem like evil villains? And then he arguably rode out his career with members of his own party chanting to hang him.

You know, isn't that funny? you reap what you sow. You know, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. What can I say? Yeah, exactly. You live by the ginned up outrage. You die by the gallows. So in the wake of all these attacks on Planned Parenthood,

Lena becomes the face of a campaign to fight back called Women Are Watching. She designs a hot pink shirt that says Lena loves Planned Parenthood in support of Planned Parenthood, and she gets other A-list celebrities like America Ferreira and Gabrielle Union to join in. Lena made this kind of cheeky, kind of wink-wink ad for the DNC in support of Obama in 2012.

Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy with beautiful, someone who really cares about and understands women. A guy who cares whether you get health insurance and specifically whether you get birth control. It was funny. Yeah.

So it's playful. It's kind of funny. It's a little edgy. So probably unsurprisingly, right-wing types did not like this ad. Ben Shapiro, who remember that name because he will be important later, said that the ad mocked versions. His whole screed about the ad is pretty amazing. So he writes in Breitbart. So Lena chose to do it for the first time with Barack Obama, since he, quote, cares about

and understands women. In fact, he understands them so well that he exploits them for insane commercials comparing losing your virginity with voting. Obama has young daughters, but that didn't stop him from releasing this commercial, because this is what Obama thinks of your daughters. This is Obama's official campaign ad paid for with his campaign money distributed by his campaign. If this ad were any more demeaning to women who apparently care only about having sex, if you listen to Lena, you want to do it, Dunham. It should be produced by Bill Marr and star Bill Clinton. Oh, wait, that's Obama's actual campaign. According to Barack Obama, this campaign isn't about the economy or foreign policy. It's about free birth control as advocated by unbelievably wealthy

celebrities. If Obama goes any smaller in this campaign, we're going to need a microscope to find him. It's so over the top. I just need a minute to choke down this vomit. It comes up anytime Ben Shapiro's words appear. You mentioned that he's going to be important later. When is that? Like 20, 25, 2030? When will he be important? We're still waiting. I'm sure he's still waiting. I'm sure he's been waiting his whole life to feel important. So they did not like Lena's Obama ad in 2012. And actually, I find it so interesting how Shapiro uses Lena's involvement to really shrink the issue of birth control coverage. Like, it is simultaneously a small issue that is so small that it's unbecoming of Obama to align himself with.

And it is also an issue that the right wing was actively exploding and melting down over, you know, holding hearings about it and making it a huge deal. So, you know, the math isn't really mathing on that one. Like, which one is it? Is it so inconsequential that nobody should ever care about it? or is it this huge issue that you need to hold a million hearings about, you know, which one? That's such a good observation. I never thought about it like that, but you're absolutely right. It's like so consistent with their whole hypocrisy thing. We're on the one hand, when they're on the attack, like, oh, it's so inconsequential,

it's insulting to even bring up the concept of birth control and then, you know, flip the screen, and the only thing that matters is abortion restrictions and preventing women from having abortions. It's like two sides of the same coin, but like one side is life or death for society, and the other side is like trivial and brass. Yeah, it's almost like some of these folks are not genuine actors. It sounds like some of them are completely disingenuous.

Yeah, it does seem almost like that. I mean, that can't be it. There's got to be something more. I'll keep thinking about it. Keep thinking on it. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy. Not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for. banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart. Heart, streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com.

Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a parameda apostle chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my GenX squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS.

All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with a new guy? That one's kind of hard.

Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter. And dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds.

Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series

because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash will get that thing. That man, hell get the flying.

He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball, like, after you go through a training camp with that, IZE, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's get right back into it. Anyway, so at this point, Lena is really proving herself to be somebody, with a certain kind of cultural cachet with millennial young women and somebody who seems to really know how to leverage it for, you know, big D democratic causes in a way that actually cuts through. Like, even though right-wingers did not like that ad,

people talked about it, people wrote about it. So lover or hater, Lena Dunham knows how to wield her own specific kind of political, social, and cultural power. And the vibe around that is that it's cool to care about politics and it's cool to care about feminism. Importantly, this is actually largely a phenomenon on the left. There aren't really a lot of cool, young, culturally relevant political celebrities on the right in the same kind of way.

Not to go on too much of a tangent, but for a long time, people, myself included, assumed that Taylor Swift was a silent right winger because she pretty much never spoke up about politics. In interviews when she was asked if she was a feminist, she would say things like, oh, I don't call myself a feminist because I never believed in men versus women. But her friendship with Lena Dunham gets tailored to be this loud and proud feminist who actually speaks up about politics after a decade of staying quiet. And it's basically almost like a right-wing bogeyman come to life. You know, your sweet, blonde, conservative, country-loving young woman will become corrupted

by a tattooed feminist with green hair and will be pulled in to identifying as a liberal feminist. So, you know, say what you will about Lena Dunham. That is a certain type of cultural power and Homegirl knows how to use it. And, you know, when it comes to the culture, it was people like Lena Dunham who had the relevance. And I can see how this would be really threatening to right wing types who historically have had a lot of political power, but they aren't cool, they're not young or hip. And that is a problem for them. So all of this is the backdrop on which a website called Truth Revolt comes to exist. And to understand this misleading claim that Lena Dunham sexually abused her sibling and where it comes from,

we have to first start by talking about Truth Revolt. Wait, so I was following along the whole way, but all of a sudden, now we're talking about a website called Truth Revolta. What is Truth Revolt? Truth Revolt is a right-wing website that was launched on October 7, 2013. According to C-SPAN, Truth Revolt is a politically conservative media watchdog and activist group founded by conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and David Horowitz of the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a counterpoint to the politically progressive media matters for America. Yes, Ben Shapiro is the same person who wrote that breathless piece about Lena's 2012 ad for Obama.

And side note, a lot of y'all probably know Ben Shapiro. He is pretty famous for being, you know, he's a lot of. young, I think he's 38 now. He's pretty famous for being this right-wing media figure, and he's been at it since he was 17. I personally just find him awful. Like, the fact that I'm even talking about him on this show is slightly annoying to me because I just like don't like talking about him. You know, I think one of the reasons why I dislike him so much is because his whole thing is culture war stuff, right? And so he's the guy with a huge platform complaining about Disney making a woke remake or something like that. Or, you know, he's the person who's always

complaining about culture because culture tends to be a space where, you know, people who are traditionally marginalized can have a little power and have a little bit of a voice. And so he's constantly complaining about culture. The thing that always comes to mind when I think about Ben Shapiro. I will always associate him with trying to lead a moral crusade against Megan the Stallion and Cardi B's song of the summer, wet-ass pussy, and kind of self-owning himself by saying that the only reason, so he says, oh, I'm married to a doctor, I talk to my doctor wife, and she assures me that the only reason that a woman would have a WAP is if she had a vaginal infection, which is just hysterical. I think about it all the time and laugh.

Yeah, it's the funniest thing about him It's the only thing I think about when I think about him It's like perfectly summarizes his whole Culture War thing where There was like a video I don't even think it was really edited Of him like doing spoken word Of the lyrics of that WAP song

And then Him like commenting about Yeah, exactly he said of his wife Who apparently is a medical doctor saying that the only reason it might happen is because of an infection. It was sad and shocking, and I almost feel like he was setting us up, but like it's just too much humility. I think it just truly is that embarrassing for him.

Yeah, if folks have not seen, so the video that you're talking about, I definitely watched it 100 times. He is reading the lyrics on his show in disgust. And so he's reading the lyrics to wet-ass pussy. but then somebody, and I think he's trying to demonstrate, like, this song is so immoral and like this is what our girls are listening to and yada, yada, yada. But then somebody puts it to a beat. Somebody puts it to the WAP beat and it kind of slaps.

I'm not going to lie. It's hilarious. Like, look it up. I'll link it in the show notes because I watch it. It's giving me great joy. I'll put it that way. Yeah. And I think it's the best way to really understand Ben Shapiro as a person and as a

man. Exactly. And obviously this is, it sounds so silly and it is silly, but it's also really important to this particular story because turning culture into a political battleground is a big part of how we got here with this one persistent claim about Lena Dunham. So Truth Revolt's Mission Page states that its goals are to, quote, unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding basis. So essentially, truth revolt was created, per the co-creator David Horowitz's own mission statement, to manipulate media for political means. Here's what he wrote on the site. The media win elections for the left. It's not the left's competence in office. Leftists have demonstrated none. It's not the left's ideas.

Leftist ideas have failed everywhere they've been tried. The left wins for one simple reason. Leftists control the information distribution system in the United States. And they use that system to pillory conservatives, heartless bigots, intent on harming the poor and targeting minorities. The media must be destroyed where they stand. That is our mission at Truth Revolt. The goal of Truth Revolt is simple. Unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding basis.

Truth Revolt focuses on high-profile media members and holding them accountable. Truth Revolt also steaks to stop the left dead in its tracks when it comes to training the next generation on our college campuses. Truth Revolt works to make advertisers and funders aware of the leftist propaganda they sponsor and bringing social consequences to bear to create pressure on such advertisers and funders. So pretty obviously from their own statement, Truth Revolt specifically is looking to, quote, unmask leftists and target specific leftist public figures in the media to make them toxic for brands and funders to be associated with. And they're kind of modeling themselves after places like Media Matters for America,

who monitor disinformers and bad actors and extremists like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon to pressure advertisers to drop them. They're also specifically focused around winning over young people, like college students, who we know are Lena Dunham's biggest audience demographic. So obviously, I think it goes without saying

that Truth Revolt is not just some, you know, run-of-the-mill media outlet reporting the facts. From their own statement, they are a right-wing outlet with a political axe to grind. They are out for vengeance. They are out to dismantle people, take them down by their own admission. This idea that, like, leftists are supported by this great funding apparatus. I know so many broke-ass leftists, like, separating to me.

Separating from their funding is, like, not even a thing. Like, so many of them are broke. You know, like, what is this, like, big leftist funding in the media that they're talking about? I mean, nothing that they say is accurate. You know, they say that, like, oh, the media is a tool. Like, the media, like, the idea that that mainstream media is a tool propping up leftist agendas. It's just, I mean, it's such an unsurious claim. I don't find it worthy of a retort.

It's just, it's just like you can just, just. read the newspaper in the wake of the fall of row read the newspaper in the New York Times today I mean I don't even want to get into it but yes it's such an unsurious claim that it's not even worthy of a response yeah it's like ludicrous it's like who who owns the media we've got you know NBC

you know Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post like these are not leftist people No, it's horseshit. Okay, so you might be wondering, this website sounds sketchy as hell, but what is it up to do with Lena Dunham? Well, the claim that Lena Dunham admitting to molesting her younger sibling

was initially started on Truth Revolt. Oh, shit. So that's the connection here. This Truth Revolt started this claim about Lena Dunham. I should have seen it coming, but somehow they snuck it in on me. It's true. And I should probably say that something that we know about disinformation and the way that it spreads,

oftentimes it contains some element or nugget of truth that can be easily manipulated or taken out of context. And that is definitely what's happening here. So let's look at the facts. In September 2014, Lena Dunham released her memoir, not that kind of girl. Now, I have read the memoir a couple of times, so like I'm pretty well versed. on what it says and what it doesn't say. And it does include passages of Lena describing sexual situations around her younger sibling. I should say right now, Lena's sibling is called Cyrus Grace Dunham and uses they-them pronouns.

But that was not the case when this memoir was published. But as I read some quotes from the memoir, I'm going to amend the quotes to reflect that. So Lena writes about trying to get her younger sibling to kiss her on the mouth and lay on top of her. As Cyrus Grace grew, I took to bribing them for time and affection. One dollar and quarters if I could do their makeup like a motorcycle chick. Three pieces of candy if I could kiss them on the lips for five seconds. Whatever they wanted to watch on TV, if they would just relax on me. Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying.

The memoir also includes this passage. Do we all have uteruses? I asked my mother when I was seven. Yes, she told me. We're born with them. and with all of our eggs, but they start out very small, and they aren't ready to make babies until we're older. I look at my Cyrus Grace, now a slim, tough one-year-old, and at their tiny belly.

I imagine eggs inside of them, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte's Web, and their uterus, the size of a thimble. Does their vagina look like mine? I guess so, my mother said, just smaller. One day, as I sat out in our driveway in Long Island, playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Cyrus Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between their legs and carefully spread open their vagina. They didn't resist. And when I saw what was inside, I shrieked.

My mother came running. Mama, Mama, Cyrus Grace has something in there. My mother didn't bother asking why I had opened Cyrus Grace's vagina. This was within the spectrum of things that I did. She just got on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Cyrus Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently, while Cyrus Grace cackled, thrilled that their prank had been a success. So the book actually does contain content that involves her describing these sexual situations with her sibling.

That is true. But she writes about doing this at age seven with her sibling who was age one. On October 29th, 2014, about a month after her book had come out, truth revolt, the passage that I just read about the pebbles and the vagina, under the headline, Lena Dunham describes sexually abusing her little sibling. Now, as Vox points out, Truth Revolt did two very misleading things in their post calling Donham a sexual abuser. One, they really keyed in on this phrase, they didn't resist, which obviously becomes a lot more loaded when paired with the headline about sexually abusing her sibling. Two, and this is really

important. Truth Revolts article originally stated that Dunham was 17 at the time when Dunham, in actuality, said that she was seven. So obviously, if you have a 17-year-old describing these kinds of interactions with a one-year-old, it is a very different situation than if you have a seven-year-old, which she actually says was her age, doing them with someone who is one. Yes, 17 and seven are pretty different there. Pretty different. So Truth Revolt, a very different. So Truth Revolts, a does say that it was a typo, I guess that that's fine. The story is then linked to by the Drudge Report, which if you don't know what that is because you're not older like myself, it's basically a right-wing news aggregator that can really blow up stories. It was the first

place to publish the Bill Clinton scandal involving intern Monica Lewinsky back in 1998. Once it's picked up by the Drudge Report, the story gets a ton more traction. It makes the rounds on, you know, truth revolts is kind of a niche site. It makes the rounds on the wider right-wing blog and infosphere. And much bigger right-wing outlets begin to pick it up. The National Review's Kevin Williamson, for instance, declared, there is no non-horific interpretation of this episode. And the Daily Caller, another conservative outlet writes, Dunham had admitted to the, quote, gleeful sexual abuse of her infant sibling. Now, that is initially really what seated the whole Lena Dunham sexually abused her sibling narrative.

And now it's out in the wider right-wing blogosphere, infosphere, and now it is a thing. It's so salacious. It almost feels like tailor-made for these kind of right-wing outrage aggregators. I mean, that is such a commonality of disinformation. And it's something that I have to remember myself quite a bit. It's not just folks on the right. I'm speaking about everybody, myself very much included, that when you have these stories that seem almost tailor made to trigger certain things inside you or outrage you in a certain kind of way, those are always stories that you should be a little bit wary

of because it's not a coincidence that they are hitting you in this particular way. Yeah, right. And you've mentioned that, a guest have mentioned that on the show, talking about ways to combat disinformation. Like when you're feeling that emotional reaction, that should almost be a signal to like step back and evaluate like, who is writing this? Where am I reading this? Is this something that I want to share? Exactly. And that's one of the elements about this that I find so fascinating is how obviously if you are Ben Shapiro or a right winger who has endured the last few years where it seems like progressivism and diversity and feminism and sexuality are all things that are becoming more and more salient and you're feeling less and less in control and less and less

relevant and these things are becoming more and more relevant. I can see why that would prime somebody who is a right winger who feels kind of threatened by this. I could see how that would prime them to believe and amplify and spread this particularly damaging lie about Lena Dunham. However, what I find so fascinating about this is the way that didn't just stay in right-wing circles. It made the rounds. And it still persist today. And so I think, you know, this might be a good place to take a little break and we'll continue this conversation in the next episode. So next week, we'll get into Lena and her siblings' response and why this particular claim got such traction and was so sticky with so many people, not just the right-wing online spaces where it started.

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