Rolling Stone Busted for Trashing a Conservative Movie Its Reviewer Didn't Watch

That’s embarrassing! Rolling Stone, already famous for its politically motivated lying, has just been caught faking it again, this time for trashing a conservative movie its reviewer didn’t even watch.

The movie in question is What Is a Woman, a deep dive by conservative commentator Matt Walsh into the definition of “woman” in the age of transgender mania. I haven’t gotten a chance to watch it yet, but here’s the trailer:

The Daily Wire, Walsh’s employer and the film’s producer, sent free streams of the documentary to various media outlets to help promote it in an effort to garner reviews and buzz. Rolling Stone was one of those outlets, and it published a hit piece on Friday. The “review,” titled “Why Are Social Media Companies Taking Ad Money From a Right-Wing Transphobic Doc?” was an attempt to intimidate social media platforms into refusing to run ads for the documentary. Here is the first paragraph:

For years, right-wing commentator, Daily Wire host, and all-around shitty provocateur Matt Walsh has used his platform to go after trans people. So it’s not surprising that this essentialist ideology has become the centerpiece of his new documentary, What Is a Woman? The film, which premiered on the Daily Wire’s website earlier this month, faced controversy leading up to its release. Now, the Daily Wire has bought ads on major social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, to promote the film — and so far, even though the documentary seems to violate TikTok and Meta’s policies against hate speech. Though the platforms prohibit dehumanizing, mocking, and/or hateful speech about transgender people, the ads have been allowed to stay.

The author of the piece is Brooklyn-based Moises Mendez II, a freelance writer who specializes in culture, social media, and LGBTQ issues. According to his (at least, I think he’s a he, but who knows anymore) LinkedIn profile, Mendez’s writing appears in “Fast Company, Rolling Stone (Digital and Print), VICE, Mic., HuffPost, Remezcla, Insider, Business Insider, the Daily Dot, and MEL Magazine.” And also, Mendez didn’t watch a single second of What Is a Woman?

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Filmmaker Walsh exposed the phony freelancer on Twitter. Walsh explained that The Daily Wire could track each individual screener (a link to watch the movie for free) it sent out, and he attached screenshots proving that Mendez was critiquing something he had never seen. Walsh also dinged the article editor, Liz Garber-Paul, for watching a mere 11% of the movie.

The editor of the piece, @elisabethgp, did a little better by watching a whole entire 11 percent before approving and publishing an article labeling the film “hateful” and “dehumanizing.” pic.twitter.com/cGqyvc38ke

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 11, 2022

Within minutes of his fraud being exposed, Mendes locked down his Twitter account:

Update: Moises locked down his account within three minutes of being exposed as a hack propagandist pic.twitter.com/XxrgV8lQfn

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 11, 2022

Walsh rightly calls out Rolling Stone for fraudulently attempting to harm The Daily Wire’s efforts to promote its movie. I wonder if there’s any liability there?

Rolling Stone has not watched the documentary, can offer no informed criticism of the actual content, but has decided nonetheless that it’s transphobic propaganda and should be banned from all social media platforms https://t.co/hFvMOBn9fb

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 11, 2022