Over the weekend, “Alex’s War,” a documentary about Alex Jones, premiered in Austin, Texas. Writer and cultural critic (and critic of Critical Race Theory) Thomas Chatterton Williams was among those who turned up for the event:
https://twitter.com/Gawker/status/1551619363152830474
University of Austin professor Thomas Chatterton Williams had a busy night in Austin, Texas this past Saturday. The Harper’s letter author took a break from teaching these boys about Black male autobiography to snap some Instagram Stories from the premiere of Alex’s War, a documentary about Alex Jones’s years-long crusade to find out why Richard Linklater stopped casting him in movies.
Actually, the movie combines archival footage and interviews with the Infowars host and Sandy Hook truther into, per the description, “a searching and human character study of one of America’s most infamous, charismatic and divisive public figures.” The film is from Alex Lee Moyer, whom you might remember from the incel documentary TFW No GF. This latest picture doesn’t come out until Friday, so we’ll have to reserve judgment on its cinematic merits. But it seems to have found an audience among some of America’s best and brightest, including Glenn Greenwald, Hotep Jesus, Ice Poseidon, and Mike Cernovich, all of whom evidently enjoyed a nice night out at the movies.
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Chatterton Williams has had some trouble with friends in the past, so it’s great that he has found a community of like-minded companions. To borrow the words of Alex’s War fan Ariel Pink, the chillwave pioneer who was just “peacefully showing support for [his] president” on Jan. 6, we are “so f*cking proud.”
Tarpley Hitt? More like Tarpley Hitt Job.
Because, you see, Thomas Chatterton Williams was, in fact, not at the premiere at all. And yet, he was the main target of Hitt’s piece. Weird, right? So unlike Gawker to get it so wrong about someone they dislike for purely ideological reasons!
Needless to say, Williams is pretty pissed off:
This article is insane and just a lie. @gawker has been harassing me for months now and I just ignore it because it’s not real journalism, but this has to be retracted. I never heard of this movie until now and wasn’t anywhere near Austin at the premiere. https://t.co/bWRxDv1Eqq
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) July 26, 2022
But other than that… https://t.co/UCBJa1EHjV
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 26, 2022
For eff’s sake, Gawker.
It’s astonishing. It seems to me this “reporter” @tarpleyhitt simply did her research by looking at @annakhachiyan’s Instagram stories and mistakenly assuming we were in the same place because she reposted a story of me wearing (a very funny) Red Scare T-shirt. Beyond pathetic
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) July 26, 2022
I like @ggreenwald and @annakhachiyan personally, know nothing of this project or anyone else involved in it, and the idea that that could be erroneously flipped into a published piece of writing and someone gets paid to do this is preposterous.
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) July 26, 2022
Thank you to the people messaging me I have what looks like a straightforward libel case. I’ll happily look into that
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) July 26, 2022
I have the appetite and inclination to pursue legal options. @Gawker has an established pattern of defamation w/ me and @leahfinnegan told @semaforben in the NYT it’s company policy to target me + @ggreenwald—apparently to the point of inventing disparaging stories pic.twitter.com/nVWriIbcKW
— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) July 26, 2022
Seems like he might actually have a case. Guess Gawker figured that out and decided to try to cut him off at the pass by adding a brief “update” at the top of the post:
Rather than taking down the piece and posting an apology, they left it up and tacked on that pathetic little update. Without Thomas Chatterton Williams having been there, the whole point of the piece falls apart. The original headline was “Thomas Chatterton Williams Pals With Fellow Losers at Alex Jones Premiere.”
"Some unnamed person passed us some gossip, which we didn't bother to check before publishing an insult-laden article about the person, putting his name in headlines, only to find out that the gossip was totally fabricated" — a perfect shorthand description of Gawker.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 26, 2022
You keep thinking Gawker can't get any worse.
First sentence. Just a complete falsehood. Characteristically garbage journalism. pic.twitter.com/ia8x1hnGHD
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 26, 2022
This entire Gawker article is about TCW attending a movie premiere he didn't attend. Instead of retracting the entire piece and apologizing, they simply put a note at the top. https://t.co/mCr4qvlvY7 pic.twitter.com/YONUCgB35Z
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 26, 2022
Williams may still want to look into taking legal action against Gawker, because it’s abundantly clear that they’ve got it in for him.
This seems particularly bad even by Gawker standards. (Was once a great site but that’s a very long time ago.) https://t.co/qfpdeXwl5p
— Niall Stanage (@NiallStanage) July 26, 2022
We’ve been around for a long time, but even we can’t remember a time when Gawker was “great” — or even halfway decent.
Who wound gave guessed the new Gawker is just as shameless and sloppy and cancerous as the old Gawker.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 26, 2022
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