The Boy in the Bubble: Peter Daou’s Verrit is Peak Clintonism
A stan for all seasons
Mark Makela / Getty
FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD, was inscribed on the end wall of the barn … When they had once got it by heart, the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim, and often as they lay in the field they would all start bleating “Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!” and keep it up for hours on end, never growing tired of it.
— Animal Farm
Verrit cannot be real. Peter and Leela Daou, professional Clinton fans, launched a strange new site to praise Hillary and provide a safe space for her followers, and my God, it is everything you’d expect. After it was publicized, Verrit was immediately hacked. As it should have been. The break-in added a touch of gilding to an impossibly hilariously situation. Verrit is so empty, so vapid, I actually feel sorry for Hillary: whatever her crimes, surely she never deserved to have stans like the Daous on her conscience.
On its surface, Verrit is a Snopes for liberal facts. Whatever Daou is claiming now, I am sure that was the original plan. What happened was something very different. According to the Post:
Hillary Clinton crusader Peter Daou advertised Verrit, which the former Democratic nominee endorsed Sunday night, as a “media platform” designed for the 65.8 million Americans who voted for Clinton in November. Verrit is supposed to “collect and contextualize noteworthy quotes, stats, and facts for politically engaged citizens.” In practice, it slaps informational tidbits onto shareable images with seven-digit codes that allow users to … verify that the images come from Verrit. … Verrit’s collection is finite — filled only with carefully curated cards that confirm Clinton voters’ views. It serves no purpose except to spare those voters the need to confront beliefs that conflict with their own.
Politico informed the world that Daou had “launched a propaganda rag so shameless it would make Kim Jong Un blush.” As the Verge reported, “Many of those facts are just image macros with quotes from Hillary Clinton, who asked people to sign up for the website in a tweet on Sunday.” Daou is a former dance musician, so he has a history of building contained, low-light spaces where the harsh light of day does not intrude. It was perfect that Verrit coincided with the release of Hillary’s self-serving and maudlin memoir, “What Happened.” What happened is that a thousand Peter Daous surrounded Clinton, and she never thought twice about it. Politico explains:
His is a reductionist world where evidence of misogyny and sexism can be deduced from almost any political discussion of Madame Secretary. When Verrit launched, it inspired not only a mudslide of negative reviews but an ugly denial-of-service attack on his servers. From this rocky reception, Daou didn’t extract the perennial lesson that politics ain’t beanbag. He didn’t cinch up and concede that political passions will cause folks to overheat. Instead, he flew to Twitter and raged in all caps, “PEOPLE ARE STILL TERRIFIED OF HILLARY. PEOPLE STILL WANT TO DESTROY HILLARY. PEOPLE WANT TO SILENCE ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS HER.”
FOUR LEGS GOOD.
The blowback came like the rains of Irma, unholy and unstinting:
uh did I say something about Verrit?
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) September 7, 2017
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