Mary Trump shared her theories after a series of incidents involving her uncle and female journalists
In the most recent incident Thursday, the president lashed out at a journalist who asked him about the D.C shooting suspect, asking if she was a “stupid person”.
Just one day before, Mary Trump had addressed her uncle’s previous run-ins with female reporters on her show, Mary Trump Live.
“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she said. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks,” she continued, before reeling off a list of targeted groups. “There’s no hiding it anymore.”
The president’s niece also theorised that the sharp rebukes he delivers when questioned could be a sign that the pressure is getting to him in his second term.
It’s a misuse of the term. The Streisand Effect is when the rich or powerful try to supress something that no one knew about, calling greater attention to it.
The term was coined when Barbara Streisand tried to go after a guy for taking pictures of her home as part of a large aerial coastal photography project.
No one knew where her house was until she went after the guy, who also didn’t know. It blew up massively, and now anyone can see Barbara Streisand’s old house.
Do you think she’s the only wealthy person to go after a photographer for taking photos of her house? Or are they usually successful when they do?
The point of the Streisand Effect is the attempted suppression backfiring. The attempted suppression draws more attention than otherwise would have happened.
I think you’re missing that in your understanding.
Oftentimes, they are successful. There are certainly times when a wealthy person who tries this ends up failing in their attempt, but it doesn’t stand out much because there’s a certain level of rich-people-assholey that’s almost expected, where people will disapprove, but in an unsurprised way.
Streisand’s case was absurd to the highest degree, which was why it blew up. The photo wasn’t even of her house, but an aerial shot of the coast which also captured many other houses. Her house was just incidentally in the image, and even if you zoom in close enough to try see details of the house, the resolution is so low that I can’t fathom anyone genuinely believing it was an invasion of privacy.
What’s more, the purpose of the aerial photos was to document coastal erosion as research for policy making. Especially back in the early 2000s, I’d bet that the majority of photographers sued under invasion of privacy laws were paparazzi, and this is completely different circumstances. People found Streisand’s response offensive because she was obstructing a project that was for the public good. It’s likely that there were other people whose homes were included in photographs from this project who wouldn’t be keen on that prospect, but sucked it up because it’s not like they were actively trying to photograph people’s houses, and coastal erosion is a pretty big deal for people living on the coast.
Though I imagine most people would be unaware their homes were even captured. I remember that the photo in question had only been downloaded 6 times — two of those times were her attorneys.
Though actually I just learned that her beef was actually far more reasonable than I’d realised — unlike other homes that were labelled anonymously, with latitude and longitude coordinates, hers was labelled as belonging to her. Given the awfulness of paparazzi and stalkers, I actually think wanting her name off of it was reasonable. Since then, she’s made it clear that this was all she wanted, and one of the legal documents I just skimmed aligns with that. I can’t imagine why the photographer wouldn’t have just acquiesced to that request before it got all the way to court (by which point, he’d accrued $177k in legal fees). I wonder if perhaps the initial cease and desist sent to the photographer framed it more like a request to remove the photo entirely.