Tape Up Your Webcam

You may have heard about, or more pertinently you may have seen, a recent scrape involving legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin, scion of cable news, eminence of the New Yorker. Like so much else these days, it involved the common rut into which we have all fallen that is ‘working from home’. It didn’t go well.

Toobin was participating in some high-brow discussion, a roundtable, if you will, on the upcoming American election. On the election and the issues pertaining — Toobin, befitting his training and stature, was tackling the legal aspect, a not insignificant question following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the elevation, or not, of her nominated successor.

In an appointed break, members of the video call which featured Toobin noticed that it seemed as if he was distracted. Then, several witnesses reported, he not only removed some clothes; he began to masturbate. So far, we don’t know how long he did this for.

Now, while all this is very funny, it’s also pretty sad. Some of the purported screenshots which have appeared in the time between this call concluding and its appearing in VICE magazine are really quite brazenly unpleasant. Many — among them Toobin’s political opponents, prompted by his denunciations of the president — are laughing like jackals, and hyenas, and those mocking birds who feast on the decay of other things.