The New Yorker published a smear piece about the grandparents of Republican Vice Presidential nominee JDVance on Friday.
Vance has cited his “Mamaw’ and “Papaw”, despite their faults, as inspirations in his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy.” You would think that they wouldn’t be allowed to speak in a presidential race, given that both are deceased and have no relevance to the current race. You’d be wrong, as the garbage article below was sent out.
J. D. Vance’s grandparents, immortalized in “Hillbilly Elegy” as Mamaw and Papaw, had a deeply troubled marriage, and Vance praises them for sticking it out. But records show that they entered divorce proceedings twice. https://t.co/TjxxGvU5es
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) August 16, 2024
This is how the piece starts.
Donna Morel is an avid fact-checker. She has exposed major fabrications in best-selling books by the late celebrity biographer C. David Heymann. Morel is an avid fact-checker. She has exposed many fabrications found in the best-selling biographies of late celebrity biographer C. David Heymann.
Vance is a weirdo, right? He has an “obsession with” the nuclear family which has been a building block for civilizations all through history. What a strange, right? Just by reading this line, you can see the direction in which things are going. They wear their contempt of the family on their sleeves.
Jessica Winter, the author of this article, was sure to have been shocked when this “fact-checking hobbyist” got in touch with her. Donna Morel could use her investigative skills to debunk a major part of Vance’s book and provide ammunition for Kamala Harris’ campaign, as the race for president is becoming increasingly tight. The “fact-checking enthusiast” was able to confirm that Vance had told the truth.
The New Yorker acknowledges that Vance claimed that his grandfather had been a “vicious alcoholic” and that he and his grandparents were even separated at one point.
Bonnie and Jim were married for a long time. According to Vance, Jim was a violent drunk and both his grandparents had been violent. Vance praises the couple in his memoir as well as elsewhere for their perseverance. In “Elegy”, Vance wrote that they had “separated, then reconciled and, although they continued living in separate houses but spent nearly every waking moment together”. (The relationship seemed to have improved enormously, Vance notes after Jim Vance stopped drinking in 1983.
The New Yorker found no evidence to contradict this description. The New Yorker chose, however, to present the story as if a grand discovery had been made.
Morel cites records that show Bonnie and Jim, Vance’s flawed yet heroic avatars for traditional marriage, entered divorce proceedings twice. According to court records and an announcement published in the Middletown Recorder on March 22, 1955, Bonnie, at the age of 21, filed for divorce with Jim based on “extreme cruelty” and “gross negligence of duty”. Nigh talked to me about Ohio’s family law in general but did not mention the Vance case.
The divorce (which was only one of two during their marriage) never got to the end and was dismissed. Vance’s grandparents, just as he has always claimed, “stuck with it” until the very end. Many people would find value in reconciliation, regardless of what they think about that decision.
What was the outcome? What was the news value of the New Yorker digging this stuff up, when all it did was confirm Vance’s previous statements? The answer is obvious, and the whole thing seems transparent and disgusting. This article contains nothing newsworthy. It’s an attempt to defame Vance’s entire family, purely to provide sick satisfaction to any left-wing elites who still read The New Yorker.
