Reply to Bad Art Friend

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "Bad Art Friend"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?[/quote]

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.[/quote]

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort. [/quote]

While that is true (lawyer here), people aren't talking about the pleadings in this case. They are talking about the evidence, i.e. the record of emails/texts both between Dorland and Larsen, and then between Larsen and others.

They outline several factual issues that are not mentioned or obscured in Kolker piece. These are facts not in dispute, not legal arguments. Stuff like the timeline and places where Larsen was clearly lying to Dorland. There's no nuance there -- Larsen was saying one thing to Dorland while saying the opposite to her friends, and in some cases telling her friends that she was in fact lying to Dorland.

Kolker is an investigative journalist. It is frustrating that he took Larsen's account of her motivations and the sequence of events as factual, when there was evidence available that undermines that narrative. And I'll also note that most of what is in the court evidence back sup what Dorland says about her own motivations in a way that makes them more understandable, but Kolker chose not to include that evidence (and thus made it seem like Dorland was the one obscuring the truth).

When I read those emails between Dorland and Larsen in full, as opposed to the snippets and descriptions in Kolker's piece, my conclusions were completely opposite. That's a huge problem! It means he inaccurately represented this key exchange between them in a way that is, in your phrasing, a distortion. Why would he do that? If the goal was to present "both sides" and let readers decide, why present that key exchange in a way that supports Larsen's narrative, when the emails themselves show that Larsen was being duplicitous. I don't get it.[/quote]

Interesting …  non lawyer here … even just reading Kolker’s article without reading all the emails exchanged led me to change my view from early in piece that Dawn was neurotic needy stalker to Dawn being a fragile human who was actually being gas lighted and trivialized by Larson.

To know that she requested arbitration and wanted to settle the matter in a mutually agreeable way but was rejected adds more authentic credibility for Dawn.

I agree with you in general that often the media tries too hard to appear neutral and does not provide all the relevant info in the process. I see that on news apps purporting not to give both right and left wing stories - the right wing outlet stories are often quite absurd unsubstantiated opinion pieces while the left wing outlets try much harder to let the facts speak for themselves.

That said, I am encourage that so many people here are willing to consider things from the perspective of Dawn, however flawed she may be.

[/quote]

I read the NYT article first, without reading anything else prior, and I came out of it Team Dorland, with maybe some reservations, as in:  "unless there's some info missing, I'm on Dawn's side."

So I think there was enough there, because I wasn't predisposed, though I might have biases.

THEN, I read all the other stuff and I was like, holy hell, what upside-down hell are we living in, that Sonya Effing Larson is treated as a victim when she 1) plagiarized and 2) was a horrible human being? I went from Team Dorland with reservations to Team Dorland and mad as hell.

[/quote]

The Times owes Dorland a massive apology![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics