Music

Business Insider falls for fake article using Santana's "Smooth" lyrics

by Jeremy Mersereau

Just in case you’re not up on your old media follies these days, the August issue of Vanity Fair included a profile of Australian actress Margot Robbie that was so sexist and offensive to women and Australia both, it reads like a horny fever dream.

According to the piece’s author, one Rich Cohen, Australians are “throwback people” from a land where “a dingo really will eat your baby”, and Robbie herself is “tall but only with the help of certain shoes” and has “a lost kind of purity”, whatever the fuck that means. Most egregious of all: “As I said, she is from Australia. To understand her, you should think about what that means.” Um, that’s your job, dude.

In short, the profile is thunderously dumb. For posterity, another astonishingly amateur-hour quote: “When I think of Margot Robbie, a single word comes to mind,” Jerry said. “Audrey Hepburn.” In comparing Robbie to the classic movie stars, Jerry Weintraub meant that she is big-time, bankable, elegant…” thanks, we get it. Also, please note: ‘Audrey Hepburn’ is two words.

Like all subpar cultural detritus, the profile made for excellent social media fuel:

Users soon began humorously rewriting the profile to even more absurd levels:

Fusion editor Jason O. Gilbert opted to switch out Cohen’s nonsense with the lyrics to Santana’s Rob Thomas-featuring 1999 hit “Smooth”…

…a tactic which proved so successful, Business Insider magazine earnestly reported on it, saying that readers were mainly taking issue with the profile’s opening paragraph, the “which quotes lyrics from Santana’s ‘Smooth’.” I just can’t believe it, a journalistic blunder of this magnitude… I mean, how do you neglect to mention “Smooth” features Rob Thomas?!

The piece remained uncorrected on Business Insider‘s website for a good seven hours before the site issued a retraction. Pretty good turnaround time, especially since it basically takes that long to listen to “Smooth.” Feels that way, at least.

Hopefully the next time we get an ultra-sexist profile of an actress that barely mentions her work, we manage to get outlets quoting “3AM”.

[h/t The Daily Dot]