Editors Gone Wild - Jezebel.com's 'Elephant in the Room'

Something happened in a basement theater in Soho in New York City just over a week ago that has caused a buzz on the internet. In many ways it represents the generational divide that separates women of varying ages who are passionate about the changing roles of females in society. In the words of Jess, a twenty-year-old NYU student woman who witnessed the event and wrote about it on her personal blog:

What I expected to be a simultaneously light and enlightening conversation about sex and feminism turned into one of the most horrendous displays of girl-on-girl crime I’ve ever witnessed....

I was shifting in my seat and people started heckling...some people were drunk and others (like me) were stone cold sober...some didn’t even know anything about feminism while others appeared to be Gloria Steinem in costume. I feel like I can’t even really wrap my head around it yet because it was just so...intense.

What essentially happened is that the gloves came off and this idea, this basic idea that drives the notion of feminism - that women and men are equal - became so lost in the friction of fractionalized opinions, splintered conflicting ideas that became so convoluted that everyone lost sight of the fact that we can all be feminists - we can all be women - without thinking the same exact things. And instead of coming together to celebrate being women it completely became this Old Guard Feminism...vs. this New Wave Feminism....It was as if all of the recent generational clashing in the feminist sphere came to a head and exacted its cruel, bloody revenge right in front of me at 10pm on a Monday night in SoHo.

What happened that night during an interview show called Thinking & Drinking moderated by the co-creator of The Daily Show? Lizz Winstead, the show's host, writes about the bizarre experience in an article at the Huffington Post which includes clips from the show.

The incident involves two editors from the popular website Jezebel.com who were apparently drunk during the interview and said a number of things the host found disturbing - as did the audience. Jezebel's Managing Editor Anna Holmes unhappily discusses what she calls 'the elephant in the room.'.

And here's another take on it from one of the two guests that night; a woman identified on Jezebel's masthead as Editor Tracie "Slut Machine" Egan provides an uncensored account on her personal blog.

I've tried to write about this complex, painful, humiliating, and sad incident several times, but I can't add anything to the narratives of those involved. So read their stories told in their own words.

The blogger whose words I find most powerful is Jess, the innocent bystander. From her first post, Gloria Steinem is a Dinosaur to her later one, What I Know (For Now), she's gone through a remarkable evolution of thought. I want my 14 and 16 year old daughters to grow up to be just like her.

Jezebel should show the door to the two editors involved and hire Jess instead. I doubt the website would ever have to apologize for anything she'd ever do.