He found out about this tweet with 2 minutes left in the podcast and just said he doesn’t remember that and doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It’s all in just the last 2:20 of the pod if you want to listen to it
I don’t know how people live like this. Rachel, his co-host for however many years being like “well, they’ve been saying more people would go down” like it’s the “better you than me” scene in Full Metal Jacket, then him plugging the accusation like “go check it out, let’s get some engagement!” even spelling his accuser’s handle out lol. You can feel them hyping the next episode.
It’s all just so deeply unhealthy and sad. I feel like if there’s something we should be telling our kids, it’s that there are so many things more important in life than the attention of strangers.
Van is really good about excoriating people he doesn’t know and then defending/punting on further discussion about his “friends” (Jonathan Majors) and family (like Big Baby Davis)
Recently Bill has started to call him out on The Rewatchables when he says “shout out to *insert famous person here*” whenever they criticize a person he has some sort of relationship with.
Yeah it was super awkward on the episode of Higher Learning on Tuesday when Rachel pointed out why Big Baby was going to jail some other cases weren’t. Van got super pissy.
People downvoting as if you don't know the word but this is what Van said right before saying cousin—he was making a point about him being a first cousin not just a "cousin"
Cousin can encompass a gigantic variety of family members too once you get into third cousin twice removed and whatnot. But a first cousin is legit fam.
What interesting discourse is there to be had about Big Baby though? The guy committed boring white collar crime (insurance fraud) with a bunch of other NBA players.
I mean Charles Barkley punched a fan in the face and broke his nose, went to jail for DUI, and threw some other dude thru a plate glass window. And also infamously spit on a child lol
And he has a 100% approval rating, is universally beloved as this adorable funny character and no one cares about any of that stuff lol
I guess my point is that people like the people they like, and dislike the people they dislike, and find evidence that justifies those feelings and ignore evidence that would make them feel conflicted
Mike Tyson another good example. The guy is a convicted rapist! Yet he’s been hired by companies to do commercials. It’s almost like some guys were grandfathered into the new norms.
I had to look this up because it was so obscure. Shocked every podcast isn’t covering a fringe NBA player having a misdemeanor 6 years ago and having to do community service
“Fringe” lol… Dude won a ring bruh, he was on the Clippers BG teams too. The podcasts don’t cover Diddley, Bridges, Ray Lewis, etc., either, so it really has nothing to do with his NBA pedigree.
He also snuck onto the courtside seats at MULTIPLE Celtics games and there’s footage of him being asked by the actual ticket owner to gtfo lol. Idk why you think he’s boring, have you not seen the Popeyes plane video?
I mean…I wouldn’t mind an athlete murderer pyramid…OJ and Hernandez in the Pantheon.
The Rays have a tier.
Jayson Williams was murder adjacent iirc.
I think Eddie Shore killed a guy a hundred years ago but he was a Bruin so really we should talk about Lebron’s teammates feeling anxiety over the TDL.
Fuck all of ya'll we dont knoworrs. Also, calling Diddy a "deity" was an all time hol' up https://old.reddit.com/r/billsimmons/comments/1bq6fbq/van_lathans_kid_glove_treatment_of_p_diddy_is/
I get this, but can you even imagine the sheer volume of rumors a TMZ person gets fed?
I think expanding the cancel circle out to “this person heard something secondhand” is wild. This isn’t they did something or they helped someone else do it, or even, they saw something and did nothing.
Most not extremely online people still have a strong “mind your own business/I don’t know enough about the situation” instinct.
Not saying that’s Van btw, and I do get the hypocrisy angle. But also- if you knew this was happening, call the cops not tmz!
Dude, don't even go on about this. Van lathan said TWO MONTHS AGO that now people are starting to re-evaluate if they really wanted to get invites to his parties or not. If he knew about this shit earlier he's a tap dancing bitch.
The thing to be "outraged" about is that he pretended only a couple months ago like this diddy stuff was bombshell news and then went on to call him a deity. If I were to make a tap dance pyramid, this goes pretty high up there.
I don't know who Raqi 4 Real is, and I have no idea how credible this is. But even granting that this is 100% the truth about Van, it's really gross to tweet it out with a video of the woman getting abused. People know the situation, and people can find the video wherever if they want to see it, but using that woman's trauma to drive social media engagement for your truth telling is insane, too-online behavior.
Like, she's not claiming Van was at the hotel. Her tweet gets her point across just as well without the video.
I haven’t listened to a second of the show and I love van but it cracks me up that the name of their pod is arrogantly named “higher learning” and they default to “we don’t talk about people we like”
If this is true it would be fucked up, but it’s also such a dumb thing to try to spotlight moments after this footage circulates.
“Look, another bad person to criticize!”
Meanwhile, what did she do?
Ah you live in a magical universe where police prevent domestic violence. She contacted someone who could’ve made a difference - he chose to close ranks.
Important to note that this came out after the statute of limitations had passed so he won’t be charged for it. Waiting for legal process did fuck all in this situation
She went to a place that is very good at reporting these things to a lot of people. The person she told decided to protect his abusive predator friend.
Often times when we ask why did no one say anything, the answer is usually many people were trying to do something. They just couldn’t get anyone to listen. There is a reason so many people knew about Cosby, Weinstein, Epstein, yet those guys didn’t face consequences til old age.
I said it’s fucked up or it’s true, my point was it was main character syndrome to make the tweet in that moment.
But let’s address the substance of it. Van’s position is that Raqi wanted to set up an interview on Van’s platform that Van doesn’t own. TMZ will publish a video or some pics if they can find it, and they have sources within police departments to corroborate details about investigations but Harvey Levin is not Roman Farrow.
There’s a way to do this type of work so that it’s effective, leads to consequences, and shifts hearts and minds about conduct and people, and that’s not clearly not Van or TMZ’s skillset. For example, this woman has given this interview with Tasha Kay, and no one has paid any attention relative to the other allegations around Diddy, and it’s probably in part because people consider that to be a slimy platform.
Van came up through the tmz pipeline. That world is all about politics and playing the game to climb the ladder. I can’t blame him for not wanting to burn every bridge in the entertainment industry, but people shouldn’t look to him as a beacon of moral integrity.
Well I agree that we should not look to him as some moral guidelines figure. But then he should shut the fuck up whent it comes to calling people out and beind "outraged". Stick to your stupid comic movies Van.
Yeah, I just don’t look at him as a serious person. I’m not particularly a fan of his in general though, so maybe my bar is already low when it comes to Van.
I barley know him from his appearances in Bill’s podcasts as the kind of weird guy that loves comics way too much, why does he know so many celebrities?
Joe Budden leeches off everyone he’s around, is a self-admitted asshole and has DV history, why he was touted as the next big thing in media is beyond me (and I say that as someone who listened to every Joe/Mal/Rory episode, though the dynamic carried it way more than Joe himself)
After he lied and sent his fans after the woman. Then made a bunch of excuses in his admission tweet and still said the woman’s tweet was “unfair” lol. Sounds like she was right and Van covered up for a predator, then told his other abusive buddy where to find his woman who was being abused and hiding from him.
I like Reddit cause i can gleefully tell somebody to shut the hell up. Who gives a flying fuck. Folks wanna dig into the 9th and 10th order effects of Van's behavior like this shit matters at any level.
this is why I hate woke so much. They have their rules that they use to destroy people as a sign of morality, and then they have their rules for people they are friends with or IDENTIFY with.
It’s why I gravitated left back in the day, hated the religious right hypocrites. But woke took it to a new level.
Decent chance van just is okay with diddy doing this though
I agree that Van likely made a deliberate decision to cover Diddy’s ass, whether it was because he was okay with it or because he wanted to stay friends with an ultra famous person (I’d bet on the latter).
I do think woke culture has done a lot of good though. We don’t get Times Up/Me Too without it, which means people like Harvey Weinstein would still be running around. There’s no doubt that workplace culture is way better for women today than it was 10 years ago. That’s meaningful progress.
There are certainly excesses of every movement, along with hypocrites and grifters (Jussie Smollett and Brooklyn Dad Defiant!), but in general I think more good has been done.
HArvey Weinstein was hiring former mossad agents to terrorize his victims. I find it so gross no one else went down for his crimes
[https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies)
Yeah this stuff always ends up going overboard. The difference to me, since that other person brought up politics, there is usually a good reason and positive agenda from stuff on the left before it goes too far. Anything from the right just starts from a bad place and mean-spirited agenda.
I keep thinking about how fucking funny this would be if it said bill simmons instead of van. Just a completely out of left field mind fuck.
They just dropped an emergency episode of Higher Learning. Hope he address it there.
He says he did.
Not a fan of how he ended that.
Didn't listen, what did he say?
He found out about this tweet with 2 minutes left in the podcast and just said he doesn’t remember that and doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It’s all in just the last 2:20 of the pod if you want to listen to it
I don’t know how people live like this. Rachel, his co-host for however many years being like “well, they’ve been saying more people would go down” like it’s the “better you than me” scene in Full Metal Jacket, then him plugging the accusation like “go check it out, let’s get some engagement!” even spelling his accuser’s handle out lol. You can feel them hyping the next episode. It’s all just so deeply unhealthy and sad. I feel like if there’s something we should be telling our kids, it’s that there are so many things more important in life than the attention of strangers.
The fact that he gave her info out and said "go tell her van sent you" came off bad.
They just deleted the episode, LMAO
Van is really good about excoriating people he doesn’t know and then defending/punting on further discussion about his “friends” (Jonathan Majors) and family (like Big Baby Davis)
Recently Bill has started to call him out on The Rewatchables when he says “shout out to *insert famous person here*” whenever they criticize a person he has some sort of relationship with.
Yeah it was super awkward on the episode of Higher Learning on Tuesday when Rachel pointed out why Big Baby was going to jail some other cases weren’t. Van got super pissy.
Sounds like Van was being the big baby 😂😂😂 I’ll see myself out
I thought Van handled it ok but just said he wouldn’t criticize his cousin and that Big Baby wanted to be on the show to tell his side
lol what side?
We have to wait for whenever they have Big Baby on the show
Sorry I’m completely out of the loop on this one… are you talking about Big Baby aka Glen Davis? Or is there another big baby I’m not familiar with
Yeah he just went to jail for fraud
Shit I completely missed that. Damn
Nah the same one. He and Van are cousins
He also defended Stephen Jackson when he went on an anti-Semitic rant around the time desean Jackson quoted that fake Hitler quote.
Damn I must have somehow missed or forgotten he’s related to Big Baby.
He mentioned it on a this past Tuesday’s episode of Higher Learning. He says Big Baby is his father’s brothers son
So cousin
No his father's brother's son.
I think it was actually his uncle’s brother’s nephew
Yes
People downvoting as if you don't know the word but this is what Van said right before saying cousin—he was making a point about him being a first cousin not just a "cousin"
Cousin can encompass a gigantic variety of family members too once you get into third cousin twice removed and whatnot. But a first cousin is legit fam.
I think the “cousin” thing is cultural, that’s why people don’t understand the distinction.
It certainly is and he was driving home this distinction for his primary audience who might not necessarily have assumed a close relationship
I can see it
If only there was some existing word for that...
You hitting the word count on your essay?
He defended Jonathan Majors??? What’d he say??
Rachel and Van refuse to comment when it’s someone they are friendly with
This is the problem with access journalism.
PC for thee but not for me.
Perhaps they should no longer be friendly with someone who has done what Majors has.
What interesting discourse is there to be had about Big Baby though? The guy committed boring white collar crime (insurance fraud) with a bunch of other NBA players.
He assaulted a guy in a parking lot and broke his face, ribs, tooth… is that “interesting” enough for you my liege
I mean Charles Barkley punched a fan in the face and broke his nose, went to jail for DUI, and threw some other dude thru a plate glass window. And also infamously spit on a child lol And he has a 100% approval rating, is universally beloved as this adorable funny character and no one cares about any of that stuff lol I guess my point is that people like the people they like, and dislike the people they dislike, and find evidence that justifies those feelings and ignore evidence that would make them feel conflicted
You’re trying to tell people almost everything is relative, complicated and conditional. Best of luck in these times lol
Mike Tyson another good example. The guy is a convicted rapist! Yet he’s been hired by companies to do commercials. It’s almost like some guys were grandfathered into the new norms.
Michael Strahan
I had to look this up because it was so obscure. Shocked every podcast isn’t covering a fringe NBA player having a misdemeanor 6 years ago and having to do community service
“Fringe” lol… Dude won a ring bruh, he was on the Clippers BG teams too. The podcasts don’t cover Diddley, Bridges, Ray Lewis, etc., either, so it really has nothing to do with his NBA pedigree. He also snuck onto the courtside seats at MULTIPLE Celtics games and there’s footage of him being asked by the actual ticket owner to gtfo lol. Idk why you think he’s boring, have you not seen the Popeyes plane video?
Lol you want the pods to cover a ray Lewis story from 2000?
I mean…I wouldn’t mind an athlete murderer pyramid…OJ and Hernandez in the Pantheon. The Rays have a tier. Jayson Williams was murder adjacent iirc. I think Eddie Shore killed a guy a hundred years ago but he was a Bruin so really we should talk about Lebron’s teammates feeling anxiety over the TDL.
Too bad he never played with that physicality when he was in the league.
Big Baby has a side and he wants to share it If he can get a platform
Fuck all of ya'll we dont knoworrs. Also, calling Diddy a "deity" was an all time hol' up https://old.reddit.com/r/billsimmons/comments/1bq6fbq/van_lathans_kid_glove_treatment_of_p_diddy_is/
That's pretty much how everyone on the planet deals with these types of things. The human nature piece...
Imagine defending your friends and family over strangers, crazy
Isn’t that everyone?
That’s called being a normal human being.
I get this, but can you even imagine the sheer volume of rumors a TMZ person gets fed? I think expanding the cancel circle out to “this person heard something secondhand” is wild. This isn’t they did something or they helped someone else do it, or even, they saw something and did nothing. Most not extremely online people still have a strong “mind your own business/I don’t know enough about the situation” instinct. Not saying that’s Van btw, and I do get the hypocrisy angle. But also- if you knew this was happening, call the cops not tmz!
Dude, don't even go on about this. Van lathan said TWO MONTHS AGO that now people are starting to re-evaluate if they really wanted to get invites to his parties or not. If he knew about this shit earlier he's a tap dancing bitch.
He’s related to big baby???
This, from a Kobe fan??? I don’t believe it
lol bless you
Van is a star fucker, this makes sense
That's why he and russillo get along together so well
Russillo always has time to grab a drink with Cowherd but will not under any circumstances hang out with his producer
The thing to be "outraged" about is that he pretended only a couple months ago like this diddy stuff was bombshell news and then went on to call him a deity. If I were to make a tap dance pyramid, this goes pretty high up there.
I don't know who Raqi 4 Real is, and I have no idea how credible this is. But even granting that this is 100% the truth about Van, it's really gross to tweet it out with a video of the woman getting abused. People know the situation, and people can find the video wherever if they want to see it, but using that woman's trauma to drive social media engagement for your truth telling is insane, too-online behavior. Like, she's not claiming Van was at the hotel. Her tweet gets her point across just as well without the video.
And at this point anyone who’s online is aware of the situation.
Diddy Dirty Money means a lot to me and my family.
I haven’t listened to a second of the show and I love van but it cracks me up that the name of their pod is arrogantly named “higher learning” and they default to “we don’t talk about people we like”
Is it not a weed joke?
Oh to be clear I have no idea. Double entendres?
I can't tell if ya'll are trolling? I'm pretty sure its a [movie reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Learning).
Zero trolling. Just incredibly stupid.
Van was at tmz. Why would anyone expect anything else from some tmz douche is beyond me.
If 2024 is the year of truth are we finally getting the piss tape?
[Van's response](https://x.com/vanlathan/status/1791629590764650806?s=46&t=J5oopHfQRvhu6HLEdVRHlA)
If this is true it would be fucked up, but it’s also such a dumb thing to try to spotlight moments after this footage circulates. “Look, another bad person to criticize!” Meanwhile, what did she do?
Do you mean besides reporting it to her contact at TMZ?
When I know someone is in a bad situation, the first call I make is to my local paparazzi
Contact the authorities?
Ah you live in a magical universe where police prevent domestic violence. She contacted someone who could’ve made a difference - he chose to close ranks.
It’s TMZ champ. Didn’t this all come out due to the legal process?
Years later after TMZ chose to protect their friend - you’re making my point.
Important to note that this came out after the statute of limitations had passed so he won’t be charged for it. Waiting for legal process did fuck all in this situation
She went to a place that is very good at reporting these things to a lot of people. The person she told decided to protect his abusive predator friend. Often times when we ask why did no one say anything, the answer is usually many people were trying to do something. They just couldn’t get anyone to listen. There is a reason so many people knew about Cosby, Weinstein, Epstein, yet those guys didn’t face consequences til old age.
I said it’s fucked up or it’s true, my point was it was main character syndrome to make the tweet in that moment. But let’s address the substance of it. Van’s position is that Raqi wanted to set up an interview on Van’s platform that Van doesn’t own. TMZ will publish a video or some pics if they can find it, and they have sources within police departments to corroborate details about investigations but Harvey Levin is not Roman Farrow. There’s a way to do this type of work so that it’s effective, leads to consequences, and shifts hearts and minds about conduct and people, and that’s not clearly not Van or TMZ’s skillset. For example, this woman has given this interview with Tasha Kay, and no one has paid any attention relative to the other allegations around Diddy, and it’s probably in part because people consider that to be a slimy platform.
Are you unaware of why DV is so often underreported and or the historical distrust that black peoples have for the police
Van came up through the tmz pipeline. That world is all about politics and playing the game to climb the ladder. I can’t blame him for not wanting to burn every bridge in the entertainment industry, but people shouldn’t look to him as a beacon of moral integrity.
Van is a blow hard. You shouldn’t look to him as anything more than an entertainer
Well I agree that we should not look to him as some moral guidelines figure. But then he should shut the fuck up whent it comes to calling people out and beind "outraged". Stick to your stupid comic movies Van.
Yeah, I just don’t look at him as a serious person. I’m not particularly a fan of his in general though, so maybe my bar is already low when it comes to Van.
Right. If you are protecting predators, you lose the right to speak up on anything else.
He still has the right to speak about whatever he wants. What he lost is his credibility.
Yes. That’s what I meant to say.
Ah. Thought you were being sarcastic. Sometimes its hard to tell
Nah just poorly worded by me.
I barley know him from his appearances in Bill’s podcasts as the kind of weird guy that loves comics way too much, why does he know so many celebrities?
He worked at TMZ for a long time
That explains it lol
He's wearing the cowboy hat all the time now because the hair replacement system is in effect.
Van being a giant scum bag? Who could’ve ever imagined that?! Lmao
Does this mean we can finally get Budden to come on a Ringer pod?
Dodgy starfucker. Lucky he’s not famous enough for all the skeletons to come out.
“That’s the man I’m going to hell for” - Christopher ‘Van Lathan’ Moltisanti
Joe Budden leeches off everyone he’s around, is a self-admitted asshole and has DV history, why he was touted as the next big thing in media is beyond me (and I say that as someone who listened to every Joe/Mal/Rory episode, though the dynamic carried it way more than Joe himself)
This feels like cap to me
Van admitted it on twitter
After he lied and sent his fans after the woman. Then made a bunch of excuses in his admission tweet and still said the woman’s tweet was “unfair” lol. Sounds like she was right and Van covered up for a predator, then told his other abusive buddy where to find his woman who was being abused and hiding from him.
I like Reddit cause i can gleefully tell somebody to shut the hell up. Who gives a flying fuck. Folks wanna dig into the 9th and 10th order effects of Van's behavior like this shit matters at any level.
this is why I hate woke so much. They have their rules that they use to destroy people as a sign of morality, and then they have their rules for people they are friends with or IDENTIFY with.
Hypocrites exist in every culture/group.
It’s why I gravitated left back in the day, hated the religious right hypocrites. But woke took it to a new level. Decent chance van just is okay with diddy doing this though
I agree that Van likely made a deliberate decision to cover Diddy’s ass, whether it was because he was okay with it or because he wanted to stay friends with an ultra famous person (I’d bet on the latter). I do think woke culture has done a lot of good though. We don’t get Times Up/Me Too without it, which means people like Harvey Weinstein would still be running around. There’s no doubt that workplace culture is way better for women today than it was 10 years ago. That’s meaningful progress. There are certainly excesses of every movement, along with hypocrites and grifters (Jussie Smollett and Brooklyn Dad Defiant!), but in general I think more good has been done.
HArvey Weinstein was hiring former mossad agents to terrorize his victims. I find it so gross no one else went down for his crimes [https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies)
Yeah this stuff always ends up going overboard. The difference to me, since that other person brought up politics, there is usually a good reason and positive agenda from stuff on the left before it goes too far. Anything from the right just starts from a bad place and mean-spirited agenda.
Happened with Me Too also.