Kat Rosenfield

Vance, I would be curious to see what he, what is he like when he is not kind of in that shadow of Donald Trump?

And that's, you know, I'm approaching this from the perspective of literally, I just kind of want to see what happens.

I'm watching it like a soap opera.

You know, it's,

At this point, I mean, it's my luxury as a culture writer to not actually be a particularly political person.

I don't really understand a lot about, you know, for instance, geopolitics, economics, you know, all of that stuff.

And so I don't have to weigh in.

I can just watch.

Jay Asher.

Sure.

So, I mean, this story is an incredible example of the power of weaponized gossip, groupthink, witch-hunting dynamics.

Jay Asher was accused anonymously by persons unknown or maybe just one person posting repeatedly in the comments of a blog post on schoollibraryjournal.com of being a, quote, predator.

No further details were given.

No evidence surfaced of him having done anything predatory, of him ever having harassed or harmed anyone.

No woman ever came forward to say that he had harmed her.

And yet, as a result of these accusations, because it was at the peak of this moment when vague gossip was being treated as though it carried an enormous amount of weight,

this institution that he was a member of the society of children's book writers and editors announced that he had been found guilty of violating their harassment policy and expelled and this not to put too fine a point on it completely destroyed his life he has not

He lost his agent.

He has not published a book in eight years.

He has not worked in eight years.