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Woman Falls 17 Stories to Her Death; AP Implies She Deserved It

Every urbanite’s worst nightmare came true for one New Yorker this week: Jennifer Rosoff, leaning against the railing on the balcony of her Upper East Side apartment, suddenly fell 17 stories to her death after the railing gave way. This is obviously horrifying and tragic. Rosoff was a media executive with stints at The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan on her resume. It’s outrageous that the owners of her building were so remiss in their balcony inspection duties. But if you skimmed the beginning of the Associated Press’s account of Rosoff’s accidental death, you wouldn’t get much information about Rosoff’s promising career or about the structural inadequacies of her balcony. Here are the first two paragraphs of the AP’s article about Rosoff:

A 35-year-old media executive on a first date plunged to her death Thursday after the railing on her 17th-floor New York City balcony gave way, police said.

Jennifer Rosoff went outside for a cigarette around 12:50 a.m. when she either sat on the railing or leaned on it. Her date told her that she probably shouldn't do it, and then moments later, she apparently fell backward and landed on construction scaffolding at the first floor, authorities said. Police spoke to the man and no foul play was suspected.

Let’s break this down. According to the AP, the crucial facts you need to know about Rosoff right off the bat are that:

1. She was 35 and single.
2. She was a smoker.
3. She invited a man back to her apartment late at night on a first date.
4. The man warned her not to lean against the balcony, but she did it anyway.

The implication being that this smoking slut totally had it coming.

That's exactly what I was thinking. You nailed it. You and Andrew O'Hehir should get together and open a nail salon called Utter Nailures.

A reader is left with the distinct impression that if Rosoff hadn’t invited her date inside, hadn’t gone outside to smoke a cigarette, and hadn’t defied the advice of the wise and logical man she was with, she would still be alive.

Exactly. As the Bible said, "Gravity is just the comeuppance for red-painted whores."

Not the Bible. Some Tijuana bible I had said something like that.

According to the AP story’s subtext, the problem wasn’t that Rosoff’s balcony railing was shoddy and unsafe—it was that Rosoff defied gender norms by being unmarried at 35, by being sexually liberal, and by insisting on making her own decisions instead of deferring to men’s logic.

Of course.

This is an AP story, by the way. The archliberal AP has now joined the #WarOnWomen.

You may accuse me of overreacting...

I accuse you of nothing. This is a safe place. I'm here to help. Now tell me: Who did this to you? Who robbed you of your capacity for lucid thought? Who took out your brain and stuffed your head full of bubblegum and sillystring?

I'd like to focus on this claim:

But if you skimmed the beginning of the Associated Press’s account of Rosoff’s accidental death, you wouldn’t get much information about Rosoff’s promising career or about the structural inadequacies of her balcony.

So much here is stupid, and dishonest. Note what she says: if you skim the beginning of the article, you wouldn't find out these things.

Well no, you'd have to read all the way down to short paragraphs 6, 7, and 8 in a very brief 8 paragraph article. Slightly more fluffed up than a stub.

I don't understand what sort of retard she thinks will read the first 200 words of an article and then say, "Well, that's it for me. No way in hell I'm reading the next 250 words. My work is done for the day."

I'm also curious about why this idiot thinks the most important news information in a story about an accidental death is this woman's super-fabulous career. She believes, and you see this in her "rewrite" of the article, that the headline news bites in this article are, in approximate order of importance:

Independent Working Woman Makes Good, Has Promising Future In Media Career

This Sister Is Doing It For Herself!!!

Also, She Fell 17 Stories to Her Death Due to a Faulty Balcony

The Balcony Was Probably Built by a Man

Probably a wife-beater too. If they're not cheatin', they're beatin'... Amirite, Ladies? Give me a round of applause if you know what I'm talkin' about

For some ludicrous reason I don't even think she could sufficiently explain, she actually thinks "35 year old woman poised to Shoot Across the Sky Like a Star in the lucrative magazine article-writing market" is the lede here.

It's a very weird thing. First of all, it's classist; she thinks the Big Story is that someone of her class -- the New Class -- existed, and should be celebrated for that alone. You would not hear her screeching so shrilly had the victim been a construction worker. She would not demand that we drop everything in order to ponder that man's career.

In fact, later in the article, a death of a male social worker who fell to his death due a faulty balcony is similarly hastily recounted by AP. This gynarchist bozo doesn't mention him at all, and doesn't ask why his promising career is also given short-shrift by AP. (Hint: Because it's not the career that is the story here.)

For another thing, it's self-condescending: She still wants to treat the phenomenon of women working in, and succeeding in, the workplace as some sort of Compelling and Arresting Exotica which we must all deeply ponder due to its Man Bites Dog nature.

35 year old woman in New York City works in the media world, specifically the magazine world? This is what she insists the Big News Take-Away is?

Now, don't notice whatsoever at all that she herself is a female magazine writer (well, an amateur webzine writer, as far as I know). And don't even think for one hot second that her cloying pitch for attention is fundamentally a cry of

"I matter, Dad! I'm somebody too, Dad! And I have ideas! Good ideas, Dad! Good ideas about rolling back the patriarchal cryptotexts present in toss-off AP blurbs!"

Yeah it's not All About You at all. It just so happens that newspapers are required to drop everything to Celebrate Women very similar to yourself on the same approximate career track and talk up how super-amazing a career in magazine writing is.

So much Dumb. So much Dumb.

It's important to read stupid shit like this because Dumb People rule the fucking world. We need to know what Dumb People are thinking, because their stupidity will end up harming us eventually.

That's what the Stupid do -- they fuck shit up for everyone else.

By the Way: New podcast up.

posted by Ace at 03:22 PM

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