The Andrew formerly known as Prince (was: Jeffrey Epstein thread)

[Nurse Duckett]

It’s so ridiculous that I can barely believe it’s real. I almost want to make a special trip to the shop to see if the Telegraph front page actually looks like that. In a sane world this would kill the Telegraph stone dead with an avalanche of public contempt and ridicule from which it could never recover.

I can confirm the headline, if not the photo, as I picked up other newspapers from my local shop this morning. I agree with your sentiment, but we're far from a sane world.

[Antepli Ejderha]

If he never met her, he couldn't have raped her in the bath.

[Sean of the Shed]

It's like the editors of the Star and the Telegraph have had a job swap for a day.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

It’s so ridiculous that I can barely believe it’s real. I almost want to make a special trip to the shop to see if the Telegraph front page actually looks like that. In a sane world this would kill the Telegraph stone dead with an avalanche of public contempt and ridicule from which it could never recover.

[Balderdasha]

People have sex in the back of tiny cars. People have sex in showers. Of course people have sex in baths (in some positions it can be hell on one or both partners' knees, though). And presumably the tubs in the abides of millionaires are rather more generously proportioned than that in the flat of The Rapeygraph's comedy photographer.

That photo is apparently of the actual bath where the alleged assault took place and the two people in it are two of "Ghislaine Maxwell's associates". Because we apparently now let convicted sex traffickers mount defenses of their friends on the front of national newspapers using their other friends as stage props.

Strangely enough, neither of the two people in that bath look to be the proportions of a fragile seventeen year old girl. And as everyone has noted, the suggestion that people couldn't possibly have sex in a cramped bath is ludicrous.

It's beyond weird. I'm trying to think of a comparison. The closest I can think of is if you let Rosemary West mount a defense of Fred West by taking photographs of her friend in her basement with a photo of Fred West's face taped over his face showing that he was too tall to stand up in there. And then the Daily Telegraph published that photograph on the front page with the headline "The photo that "clears Fred" over basement murder". If that sounds ridiculous, it's because the entire thing is ridiculous.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I've nicked that.

[Nefertiti2]

"if the bath don't fit, you must acquit"

[G-Man]

People have sex in the back of tiny cars. People have sex in showers. Of course people have sex in baths (in some positions it can be hell on one or both partners' knees, though). And presumably the tubs in the abides of millionaires are rather more generously proportioned than that in the flat of The Rapeygraph's comedy photographer.

[caja-dglh]

It is so small they might need to get closer

[WOM]

If you squint at the story, it's meant to be part of a defense of Maxwell OR an overturning of Andrew's settlement with Guiffre...or something. Clearly, between the interview and this, some rehabilitation work is afoot. Seems like a fool's errand, but what else have they got to do?

[Amor de Cosmos]

I presume that sexual intercourse couldn't have taken place because the bath wasn't big enough.

Yeah I know... I know...

[Gangster Octopus]

I'm lost. What is that thing actually trying to say?

[Amor de Cosmos]

This is deranged on multiple levels

https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1619091070662443009?t=uQclxBaWW67lzuClmnzdSQ&s=19]

Is there actually an audience.for this?

Even among Telegraph readers?

If you'd told me 50 years ago that the Daily Telegraph would one day rival the National Enquirer in race-for-bottom sexual innuendo I'd have pissed myself laughing. Somehow the reality doesn't seem quite as funny.

[Satchmo Distel]

"bath sex" should of course be "bath rape".

The paper's hypothesis seems to assume that rapists would be deterred by small spaces. But of course it's bad faith of the type that characterizes Holocaust denial and other forms of conspiracism.

[ursus arctos]

This is deranged on multiple levels

https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1619091070662443009?t=uQclxBaWW67lzuClmnzdSQ&s=19]

Is there actually an audience.for this?

Even among Telegraph readers?

[Bruno]

Fair enough. I tend to lump most media including news media into the "shameless sensationalist whatever will get views" category, they're all basically cut from the same cloth.

[ursus arctos]

I would argue that it is both surprising and new in the context of British "news" reporting, and that such context matters

[Bruno]

So does that mean it’s OK that this interview has happened?

I wasn't trying to suggest that, just that it isn't surprising or new.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

No, but satchmo's post elicited the same response in me as I caught up with the thread. This sorr of shit did happen before, but mostly in the realm of true crime, not news. it also died off because it was too tawdry for even the bottom feeders of the true crime genre

[Gangster Octopus]

Probably.

[Gangster Octopus]

No.

[Sits]

So does that mean it’s OK that this interview has happened?

[Bruno]

I don't recall TV interviews with unrepentant child sex traffickers, whose victims number 500+ over 20+ years.

There's a whole genre of TV shows (decades old by now) about serial killers and rapists, and they're often interviewed.

[ursus arctos]

A tangled web indeed

So we have Talk TV airing an interview enabled by Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother Kevin and conducted by Daphne Barak, who has been an acquaintance/friend of Maxwell’s since at least 1992, and whose cousin was a friend and business associate of Jeffrey Epstein, accused of participating in his crime. The channel did not provide any of this context

[Nefertiti2]

There's an important piece by Mic Wright

https://twitter.com/brokenbottleboy/status/1617979187008278528?s=20&t=7mCKcmt41Pu-A6sjebiYqQ