to find Jon Ronson a bit disingenuous?

[shillyme]

Been listening to the new series of Things fell apart on BBC Sounds and in some ways its an interesting show but on several occasions its quite apparent where he glosses over things like how Schools in Florida were putting together support plans for trans identifying pupils without informing parents, saying their were only a small number of plans in place and that it was really just the right wing whipping up a frenzy about trans identities to win votes and stoke the culture war. The issue was that the mother clearly stated her daughter went from being a normal girl who never expressed any distress over her gender to wanting to identify as non binary and even talking about hormones in a very short period of time at a young age under the influence of her new friendship group she was keen to fit in with. Ronson didn't look into any of this but did have a quote from an lgbtq activist who spoke against the idea that trans identity was contagious.

In another episode a quote on the BLM website (now removed) was mentioned by a the guy who made the plandemic films. The quote was something like " we exist to disrupt the western proscribed nuclear family" So the plandemic guy mentions this as an example of BLM plan to destroy the american way of life that he loves. Jon Ronson then says "they didn't really mean it like that and it just meant that they wanted the community to support each other".

Now I know Ronson isn't stupid and I am well versed in marxist theory having been a card carrying communist at one point but in marxist theory the nuclear family is seen as something that operates as a tool of capitalism and that it should be dismantled so that a new form of society can be created. So he must know that, so why does he fudge it? I am not making any judgement on the concept but he takes a very biased view and fudges the truth to make things fit his own perception which in turn lessens the value of his work.

People seem to love him and I've enjoyed some of his work but noticing his hypocrisy has really lowered my opinion of him.

yeah, and I suspect that Fred West might be a bit of a wrong un'.

Now I know Ronson isn't stupid

Can't say I'm convinced of his intellectual ability...

Yes I also find him a bit disingenuous. I have just listened to season 2 and liked it. I like the variety of stories and nuance and also the different threads he pulls together. Where I find him more fuzzy is that he is light on facts and relies heavily on his own filtering in or out of information and his own creation of narrative. He seems to be claiming a middle ground whilst doing this which doesn't quite ring true. This series has felt quite frothy. I didn't take too much issue with the gender episode except for the fact that this one representation of a parent activist cannot represent the parental side of the story alone (not that he was claiming it did, but the effect of promoting that one pivotal story means that the phenomenon itself was explored only as it was useful in making his point.) The series was also very America-centric.
But on the whole it was fascinating and I definitely felt it opened up avenues I hadn't been aware of. I'd say he makes a valuable contribution if you bear in mind his agenda.

I only managed to listen for a few mins, it sounded really interesting but god his voice is irritating I had to turn it off.

You'll find a very recent thread about him here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4979599-jon-ronson-thinks-were-stuck-in-the-poltergeist-scene-with-qanon?page=1

and A LOT of commentary about him in general:

https://www.mumsnet.com/search/advanced?query=jon+AND+ronson&allTopics=false&topics[0]=Feminism%3A+Sex+%26+gender+discussions

He presents himself as a searcher for the truth but he's simply a spinner of narratives that fit in with how he wants the world to be. Sort of a propagandist of right-think.

I like some of his stuff- So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed was great. But some of his stuff reminds me of Louis Theroux- faux naif persona to suggest he’s giving everyone a chance to represent themselves fairly then a stitch-up in the edit suite.

I find him disingenuous and weak. He doesn’t actually seem to have any scruples and just waifs about writing same old same old stocking filler books about nerdy slam dunk issues without getting into anything meaty. Plus he’s weak on trans issues and is a hypocrite: using people for his docs while conveniently flossing any unsavoury bits that don’t fit his narrative.

I used to really like him. He's been around since the '90s. His old programmes on Radio 4 were some of my favourite listens. Glinner was on one back when they were friends.

But now I completely agree with the comments above. I think moving to the US had an impact on the way he approaches a story and he does create his own narrative. Such a disappointment.

I originally put off listening to Things Fell Apart as I was so annoyed with him but there are some interesting stories in there.

I started to listen to series 2 because I had been interested in series 1 (although if you asked me what it was about I couldn't tell you).

But this series seems to have one gear only. Clever JR flitting in some months / years after events just to show that "ordinary people" (not super clever like him) are constantly being taken in by rumours and falsehoods and "things fall apart".

So he never gets to the substance.

I've just listened to the Florida schools episode and it only skims the surface and by making it about 2 individuals (who may be representative or not) just over simplifies. ie why did the young man who escaped from his step father think that being gay was about being part of some Rainbow coalition of in fact unsimilar identities / realities. He just allowed he to be "right".

I thought how the mother spoke was really interesting, and could on her own have been an interesting programme. How do you as a parent respond / deal with the situation she found herself in.

The reality was that the Rainbow coalition, however well intentioned after the night club shooting, created a division by presuming that what they thought was the answer to discrimination. And the schools in allowing them in were as much part of the problem.

The programme / JR didn't even begin to look at that.

I wonder if anything has any value for him.

He didn't mention the Michfest murders when telling the story of Michfest - I'm with Ginner in thinking he's despicable.

God, he sounds worse than I thought! Yes, his voice is also off putting. He tells some interesting stories but if he just cherry picks what suits him and glossies over the bits that challenge his narrative then its all kind of pointless. He certainly relies on his assumption that his audience are a bunch of useful idiots willing to swallow whatever he throws at them!

I'm off to look at the other thread!

He's gone very odd, listen to how he pronounces "antifa" in the latest series. Mocking and morally superior. It's a shame both he or Louis Theroux are such cowardly men.

His unbelievably self-obsessed column in the Saturday Guardian (years ago) put me off him for life.

Posted this on other threads, but worth a listen
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/when-troubled-people-become-our-playthings-jon-ronson/id1524832743?i=1000578359472

"In this interview, Jon talks with Meghan about that podcast as well as his thoughts about “cancel culture” seven years since the release of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. He reveals what parts of the culture wars he’s still afraid to take on, why the Rachel Dolezal story felt like a missed opportunity for a meaningful examination of race, and why he got so burnt out on the whole subject a few years ago and had to take a break."

Guess which subject he's afraid to talk honestly on!

Must say I liked s1 of Things Fell Apart well enough, it's a good idea for discussion but I never felt I was getting the full picture (especially with the Mitchfest thing). I'd listen to another series, with a critical ear!

in marxist theory the nuclear family is seen as something that operates as a tool of capitalism and that it should be dismantled so that a new form of society can be created

Marx had two things to say about the nuclear family. He said the family for the propertied classes was a mechanism for regulating the inheritance of wealth, and not based around romantic love as they pretended. And he thought that for the working classes, who didn't have anything to inherit, the family was being destroyed by the operation of capitalism, with women and children being forced into paid work. He didn't say that it was a good thing or a model for the new society.

Feminists have done much more thinking about the pros and cons of the nuclear family than Marx ever did (see current "is promoting marriage feminist" thread etc).

I've always thought this about both Theroux and Ronson. They pretend to be investigating a phenomina out on the edges, but you always know what the conclusion is right from the very start. There is no digging deeper and trying to understand what drives the people on the fringes of society, it always seems to me to have this faux veneer of respectability on what is esentially aiming to be a circus freak show without the blowback. I never come away from an episode feeling that I got a tiny glimmer of another world, only that I should pity the individuals and we should all look down on them.

As I've made clear I'm not a fan of Ronson but today's episode was good:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0h24c8j

No stitch-ups. Allowed for wrong on both sides in a very messy case of the state having become fixated on the idea that there was an epidemic of white supremacism.

Exactly my view

I wanted to listen but the voice was too much

I used to like him a lot. Now I think "disingenuous" is exactly the right word for him. It's not that he doesn't understand the issues, or that he's a bit thick. (He's pretty smart.) He has chosen to omit information that is inconvenient to the argument he wants to present. If he's done this on the gender issue, he's probably done it on other issues.

I will never forget when the whole row kicked off between him and Glinner - Glinner had posted a picture of a team of female footballers, if I remember correctly, which included a single male footballer towering over the rest. Glinner was trying to point to the unfairness, but Ronson thought he was being unkind to the male. It tells you everything you need to know about the guy.

Was it the picture of the giant old man basketball player in the middle of a group of teenage girls?

Jon Ronson interview in today's Observer with a mention of Michfest: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/may/12/jon-ronson-things-fell-apart-psychopath-test

That's interesting thanks

'None of that has prevented him from being subject to claims of bias. A number of prominent online activists have taken him to task for an episode in the BBC’s first series of Things Fell Apart, in 2021, that looked at the rise of third-wave feminism and the plight of Camp Trans, a protest against the exclusion of trans women from the all-female musical festival Michfest that ran in Michigan from 1976 to 2015.

His critics accuse him of ignoring the murder by Dana Rivers, a Camp Trans participant, of a lesbian couple and their son in 2016. He points out that he was interested in Camp Trans’s formation in the 1990s, and that the murder took place two decades later and more than 2,000 miles away. “The reason I didn’t mention the murders is that Dana Rivers hadn’t gone to trial by the time my programme went out. And when she did go to trial, Michfest and Camp Trans were not brought up at all in court by either the defence or the prosecution. So I don’t think that criticism was fair.”'

I only listened to that episode recently and he absolutely could have referred to the murder, or tweeted a later explanation as to why he didn't include it. It would of course have thrown shade on the narrative (ie this is why women want women-only spaces) but as a journalist, he would have to acknowledge and deal with that.

Like Louis Theroux and Adam Buxton, though, he does seem to have a genuine guilt over being white, male, middle class etc (whether or not that is a valid viewpoint) and I get the sense this is a genuine driver of why each of them take the position in their work that they do. That women's rights are only a minor/negligible part of their brand of woke is where their faults lie, in this debate at least.

The issue I have with Ronson is that his persona is sort of a geeky bumbler, a non-threatening nerd who has an affable and non-partisan interest in the truth and his public persona it at odds with what we see of him: An interviewer who time and again has a clear personal agenda (usually his own interests as a journo getting access) and a clear view before the piece even begins. It means that any hope of objectivity or even humility is gone. It’s the same for other public figure journos but they ‘own’ it more. Ronson just seems disingenuous. I’d rather deal with Piers Morgan. And he is no friend to women.

Just read the Observer article and see it argues the complete opposite to me 😆- that his is a brand of unaligned journalism. I just don’t see that and for me his brand of gentle left winger probing softly has been used as a way to massage a narrative and omit the ‘confrontation’ he admits he doesn’t like. I just find it infantile.