Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - August 26, 2026


It's Getting UGLIER !!


Episode Stats


Length

25 minutes

Words per minute

150.81

Word count

3,858

Sentence count

159

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.240 Now they're sorry, but it's kind of too late and this thing is just getting messier.
00:00:11.220 Hi and welcome to Flossome Talk, I'm Sashley Flore, journalist, Hollywood truth teller
00:00:15.640 and your voice of reason in a town built on delusion.
00:00:20.240 Okay, so Neutrogena has come out and kind of tried to apologize for their behavior that
00:00:27.740 created a lot of backlash after Hayden Panetti years passing. Now they're sorry but it's kind
00:00:36.240 of too late and this thing is just getting messier. And let's talk about victimhood and one of the
00:00:42.960 biggest scandals at Cambridge University in history. Jason Arday, the professor who basically
00:00:50.180 faked his entire career and all his achievements that recently ended very tragically. There are
00:00:57.220 some interesting parallels from that story to Blake Lively. One shaved by DEI and the other one
00:01:04.580 by Me Too. Let's look into that. And while we're at it, People Magazine just posted another story
00:01:10.980 from Blake Lively's Instagram. You won't believe the title of this one. And we also have an update
00:01:17.420 from the guy who put Justin Baldoni in the company of a lot of criminal men on his Instagram. Now the
00:01:25.320 creator is responding to everyone who accused him of being paid by Ryan Reynolds. And in the
00:01:31.660 meantime, Ryan keeps liking posts from other anti-Baldoni creators. Anyways, let's look at
00:01:37.900 this ridiculous People Magazine article first. So as I mentioned so many times before, People 0.65
00:01:43.520 Magazine is super shady when it comes to covering Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. But this article
00:01:50.440 to me, just took the cake. So yesterday, Blake published a reel on her Instagram promoting some
00:01:56.900 of the new products from Blake Brown, and People Magazine picked it up. And because they know that
00:02:03.560 this should be marked branded content, they made a headline that seemingly didn't have anything to
00:02:09.640 do with Blake Brown products. So they said, Blake Lively nearly forgets to button her pants before
00:02:15.420 heading out the door after hair tutorial video. The actress almost slipped up as she showed fans 1.00
00:02:22.300 how she gets ready for a night out as a busy mom. So they managed to add in there that she's a busy 0.96
00:02:28.720 mom. She's so relatable just like you. Sometimes she forgets things. Anyway the point of this story
00:02:34.820 is to push for Blake Brown products. Not only are they mentioning that she is showing off all these
00:02:42.500 new products through this hair tutorial but they're mentioning everything that these products
00:02:47.940 actually do for you. They're saying that she then used hairspray from her hair care line Blake Brown
00:02:54.460 stating that she previously washed her hair with the brand's wild nectar santal strengthening
00:03:00.260 shampoo and apply the wild nectar santal fundamental nourishing mask and all in wonder
00:03:07.860 leave-in potion. This article should have been shut down by FTC and be marked paid partnership.
00:03:16.580 The thing is, actually, I looked at People and they do have a studio that does paid partnership.
00:03:22.180 It's called Studio at People Inc., which is a native content studio. And when you look at the
00:03:29.940 page, they say that they're producing branded storytelling and multi-platform campaigns.
00:03:36.020 so if they didn't get paid for this article then I'm wondering why they actually published it
00:03:43.960 because it has absolutely no value whatsoever when it comes to news or celebrity or anything
00:03:52.620 it's just like she almost forgot to unbutton her pants when she when she left the house it's not
00:03:58.180 even that she did forget and she walked out of the house with an unbuttoned pants that maybe would
00:04:04.040 have been more of a story, but she almost forgot. I mean, this made me look at People Magazine's
00:04:11.720 coverage of Blake Lively since they settled the lawsuit, because I think that's interesting and
00:04:19.700 how they started covering random non-stories about Blake Lively since she settled. So these
00:04:27.160 are nine stories from the last three and a half months since they settled that People Magazine
00:04:34.560 did about Blake Lively's Instagram. All of it is based on her Instagram. One is about Ryan's arms.
00:04:43.300 One is about Ryan carrying a purse. One is about Blake's decorated purse. One is about Father's
00:04:50.380 Day. More Father's Day in another one. And Blake wearing uncomfortable heels that she swapped up
00:04:57.000 with sneakers. That is another story. Family soccer photos is another one. And an Instagram
00:05:03.580 tribute to Hayden Panettiere the other day. Be kind. Remember that one? And now this one,
00:05:09.940 nearly forgetting to button her pants. I mean, is this journalism? Is this even news? What is this?
00:05:17.140 This is just embarrassing. Anyway, let's talk about something else that's really embarrassing.
00:05:21.680 And that's Harry James, the guy on Instagram who posted a photo that I showed the other day
00:05:28.860 that now has a community note on it with Justin Baldoni and Johnny Depp, for that matter.
00:05:35.160 Amongst all these criminals like Epstein, Weinstein, Tate, Diddy,
00:05:39.780 these people who've been criminally charged.
00:05:41.740 And then he added Baldoni in there.
00:05:43.680 And I spoke about it here on my channel.
00:05:45.420 And then apparently he got some backlash for it.
00:05:48.880 So now he made this post to people who accused him of being paid by Ryan Reynolds.
00:05:55.100 And he says, ever since I included Justin Baldoni in a post last week about famous and
00:06:01.060 successful men who have faced allegations of harmful behavior towards women, that is
00:06:07.680 not what he did.
00:06:09.240 He did not say that these men have faced allegations.
00:06:13.760 He said that these men are abusers.
00:06:16.840 It's a very different thing to say that someone is guilty of something because they've been accused of something, which is what he originally did.
00:06:26.280 And now he's backing down here without saying it and just going after the people who called him out for it.
00:06:32.580 And then he continues, I've had people accusing me of being paid by Ryan Reynolds to post it.
00:06:37.800 And then he's trying to be sarcastic, passive aggressive here saying, which is devastating news because apparently I could have been getting Hollywood money.
00:06:46.500 this entire time, instead of standing up for victim survivors for free. Anyway, Ryan, if you're
00:06:52.740 reading this, I apparently worked for you and payroll has effed up. Yeah, I think the reason
00:06:58.420 why people believe that he was paid for this was because they thought maybe he was a little smarter
00:07:05.260 to do his due diligence before he posted what he did. And now instead of actually admitting that
00:07:12.180 he was wrong he's trying to make new posts to correct it so he just made another post
00:07:18.800 with other people from hollywood and this time he added brad pitt woody allen ezra ezra miller
00:07:26.000 that's blake liby's lawyer she should be on there too by the way and jared leto james franco a lot
00:07:34.500 of the people that i actually mentioned in my episode why aren't they there but anyways now
00:07:38.620 maybe he listened so he added these people but then he said something different he says the
00:07:43.860 reputation that makes an allegation difficult to believe is the same reputation that made these
00:07:49.460 abusers easier to conceal he's saying allegations now so it's very different thing to be accused of
00:07:56.040 something than to actually be guilty of what you're accused of and then he adds here in the
00:08:01.040 caption we need to stop asking whether someone seems like an alleged abuser and start listening
00:08:06.740 to what victim survivors are telling us.
00:08:10.780 That's what we've been doing for two years.
00:08:13.040 We've been listening to Blake Lively,
00:08:14.960 what she's been telling us.
00:08:16.880 And I believe that he's only posting this one
00:08:19.380 to make up for the other one
00:08:21.060 that he really messed up with.
00:08:22.700 And it's okay sometimes to mess up.
00:08:25.780 Maybe he didn't really read anything
00:08:27.840 but the headlines or People magazine
00:08:29.920 and that's why he believed
00:08:32.040 that Justin Baldoni belonged amongst those people
00:08:35.680 or the story is darker than that and maybe Ryan Reynolds or Blake's team had something to do with
00:08:43.680 that post and talking about Ryan I realized that he also likes another anti-Baldoni creator here
00:08:51.040 he never liked these posts until after the settlement by the way and now he's coming out
00:08:57.080 of the woodwork and he knows who all these people are this time is angry Julie I call her angry
00:09:03.680 julia because she's always really angry when she talks about things and then she's presenting
00:09:08.520 facts like they're really outrageous just to like make you think like oh that sounds really
00:09:14.480 outrageous there must be something off here this is bad this is really bad and that's always how
00:09:20.860 she presents things so anyways now she has this really angry instagram reel where she's connecting
00:09:27.860 Alison Borshoff from Daily Mail to Melissa Nathan really outrages a journalist who speaks to a
00:09:35.340 publicist or a crisis manager so anyways that whole post is about the article that Alison did
00:09:42.340 where she mentioned Melissa Nathan and then I'm guessing Melissa Nathan didn't want to be named
00:09:48.140 in the article because she's afraid of more backlash because in the article because in the
00:09:53.440 article she talked about how much these posts are harming her and her business that all these like
00:09:59.900 pro-Blake Lively people are coming after her so that's why she probably didn't want to be named 1.00
00:10:05.560 so she asked to take her name out and then angry Julie makes a big deal about it. Someone just got 1.00
00:10:10.560 caught doing exactly what Blake Lively and all of these women accused her of doing. And Ryan Reynolds
00:10:17.840 likes it. Like Leslie Sloan, Blake Lively's publicist would never contact the media and
00:10:26.020 then say, don't use my name. Have you ever seen any quotes from any insiders or sources close to
00:10:33.860 Blake Lively who's ever named Leslie Sloan? Because Leslie Sloan doesn't want her name out
00:10:40.500 there. Publicists don't want their names in the newspapers. They want to be anonymous. They want 1.00
00:10:46.420 to be in the background and that's exactly what happened here but anyways my point is Ryan Reynolds
00:10:52.600 also liked this one so he is not done pushing all this anti-baldonic content even after he was called
00:11:01.340 out in the daily mail his explanation or comment for that as you might remember was that people
00:11:07.700 are so mean to Blake so why shouldn't I support people who are mean to Justin anyways let's get
00:11:13.400 into how Neutrogena is in a bigger mess than before and this fraudulent professor at Cambridge,
00:11:20.800 which story I believe has a lot in common with what we've seen happening with Blake Vively. But
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00:12:59.020 Okay, so let's get back into it.
00:13:01.740 So as you know, there's been a lot of controversies surrounding Neutrogena the last couple of days.
00:13:08.360 They were accused by Hayden Panettiere in her book and in interviews
00:13:13.300 to have basically ended her contract with them after 10 years
00:13:18.840 because, according to Hayden, because she spoke up about postpartum depression.
00:13:26.160 When I walked out there on Kelly and Michael and I had no plan to talk about my postpartum
00:13:35.300 depression, it just naturally came out. Well, there's a lot of misunderstanding and I feel
00:13:40.120 like there's a lot of people out there who think that it's not real. She was really saddened by
00:13:45.660 this and she spoke about it several times how she felt that at least they could have reached out to
00:13:52.680 her to ask her how she's doing she was going through a really really difficult time and
00:13:57.420 Neutrogena just cancelled their contract with her and basically said it was a moral clause that they
00:14:04.140 had in the contract and that's why they didn't want to renew it with her first they wanted to
00:14:09.860 actually just cut her off but Hayden's lawyer said to them you know you can't just do that
00:14:15.560 you have to finish this contract that we're on. And so they did that, but then they didn't renew
00:14:20.560 the contract with Hayden. At the time when this news broke, when this came out, Neutrogena was
00:14:26.100 completely silenced. They did not want to comment on this. There could be so many reasons why. It
00:14:33.060 could also be that we haven't heard the entire story yet. But the thing is, Neutrogena let
00:14:37.980 everyone just keep speculating on what happened. And we only had one story, which was Hayden's
00:14:43.940 and now after she passed and Neutrogena received all this backlash people coming out saying you
00:14:51.880 should boycott them now they're coming out trying to defend themselves and this is their statement
00:15:00.100 saying we understand that we made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time this
00:15:06.680 is not what Neutrogena stands for or who we want to be the company then announced that it will make
00:15:13.380 a significant investment in organizations supporting women's health, specifically including
00:15:18.780 access to resources for postpartum depression. They're not saying, though, that we're sorry for
00:15:25.580 what we did to Hayden. They're saying we understand that we made her feel unsupported.
00:15:30.820 That sounds more like crisis management than a sincere apology, if you ask me. And that's also
00:15:36.600 why people aren't buying it. And the thing is, when you're coming out this late after she passed,
00:15:42.600 and only say you're sorry because you got backlash,
00:15:46.560 that is not going to solve the problem.
00:15:49.460 Yeah, I'm sure they had discussions about this
00:15:52.920 when it came out, when Hayden talked about it in her book
00:15:56.480 and when the media started writing about it a few months ago,
00:15:59.840 but they didn't want to escalate the situation.
00:16:02.940 And now it's too late for them to explain exactly what happened
00:16:06.680 because Hayden is not there to defend herself anymore.
00:16:09.800 So now this is a really slippery slope for them and people on social media are still furious.
00:16:16.180 Yeah, if Neutrogena really believed that Hayden needed support,
00:16:20.120 why didn't they just come out and say that three months ago?
00:16:23.180 The reaction to it was so startling to me.
00:16:26.740 I mean, Neutrogena wanted to let me go.
00:16:31.320 Then they eventually did.
00:16:34.960 And that was, you know, incredibly difficult.
00:16:38.260 anyway so many questions still surrounding this case as i said the other day her mom has come out
00:16:45.060 and commented on this and now her boyfriend or ex-boyfriend or whatever he is came out with a
00:16:52.020 statement through his lawyer so he has lawyered up now there is an investigation going on so much
00:16:58.620 more information is going to come out surrounding the circumstances of what actually happened here
00:17:04.760 and of course the fact that she wasn't alone when this happened so who was responsible who called
00:17:10.800 911 I said the other day it was a woman because that was what was reported on and now it's been
00:17:16.200 said that Brian Hickerson's brother came to the apartment and Brian was asleep and he was the one
00:17:23.420 who found Hayden so yeah we're learning more and more about that case okay so let's get into this
00:17:29.540 other story of Jason Arday, the biggest fraud in Cambridge history. So I found this article in the
00:17:38.300 rap by Sharon Waxman, and I thought it was really interesting. And also how this story can be
00:17:43.260 compared to what happened to Blake Lively. So Jason Arday, if you don't know this story,
00:17:49.600 he was a professor. He was the youngest black professor at Cambridge in the history of the
00:17:57.860 university and everyone was like wow this guy is a genius it's amazing and then some people started
00:18:04.920 questioning his credentials because it seemed a bit too good to be true and they found out that
00:18:10.380 he couldn't even speak until he was 11 years old and he couldn't read until he was 18 but then he
00:18:17.300 earned his doctorates in his early 20s and people were like something's not right there and then he
00:18:25.140 also said that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days and when journalists started asking questions or
00:18:33.140 people started digging into this Cambridge University was like leave this guy alone
00:18:38.520 you're being racist by asking these questions and they really protected this guy and it turned out
00:18:45.800 that he was a plagiarist and he made up all of this stuff and tragically enough when he was caught
00:18:54.100 in doing all of this. He ended his life. And now the blame game started. Whose fault is this?
00:19:02.260 Was it Cambridge who declined to investigate this guy? And there's also stories, by the way,
00:19:07.300 that Jason Arday sent the police after a journalist who started asking him questions.
00:19:12.720 And it's obvious that the people involved at Cambridge here had good intentions surrounding
00:19:19.820 race and gender but what they actually did was ruining a person's life when all of this
00:19:26.560 information came out that he was a fraud he could not handle it and the rap article here also
00:19:31.440 mentions other similar stories when the cause was more important than actually telling the truth
00:19:38.980 and she's mentioning jason blair that overambitious new york times reporter who this was in 2003
00:19:46.160 who it turned out that he was using drugs
00:19:49.380 while investigating and plagiarizing stories
00:19:52.480 and there were people enabling him to do this.
00:19:55.800 One of them was the editor Howell Raines
00:19:58.880 who spent 25 years at the New York Times.
00:20:02.780 He ended up stepping down after the scandal by the way
00:20:05.820 and then she's also mentioning here the Rolling Stone,
00:20:09.060 the R on the campus, I can't say that word here
00:20:12.500 But there was a big story, an expose in the Rolling Stone about the gang art of this girl called Jackie by fraternity brothers at a party at a university in Virginia.
00:20:29.320 And then it turned out that this never happened.
00:20:33.100 So the Washington Post did an expose about that and said, you know, this actually never happened.
00:20:38.680 And the journalist was questioned and she said that she did not want to ask Jackie too many questions because she was already traumatized by what had happened to her, which turned out was all a big lie.
00:20:53.160 That article was retracted, by the way, by Rolling Stones, who was also found guilty of defamation with malice.
00:21:00.280 Then she also mentioned a story here from the 1980 a Pulitzer Prize winner at the Washington
00:21:05.260 Post who wrote a story about an eight-year-old boy who was a heroin addict named Jimmy and that
00:21:11.420 also turned out that something she's just invented and she won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1980. Her
00:21:16.780 name was Janet Cook. So there are a lot of these examples and as Sharon Waxman is saying here just
00:21:22.420 a few years ago we were called upon to greet every day as anti-racist to post our pronouns
00:21:29.120 in our email signatures everyone was just being called out for questioning anything and remember
00:21:35.700 i received emails from people who's like her she him he and everyone's like this is a bit too much
00:21:42.080 isn't it and she's also pointing out here that this actually hurt women in the end because of
00:21:49.400 all these greenlit stories with blacks and asian americans and latinos and portraying gay and trans
00:21:55.280 characters on screen there were there have been a lot few roles for women and what I found
00:22:01.800 interesting about all these stories that she mentions here is that they all raise the same
00:22:06.880 question and I think that question also belongs in the middle of the Blake Lively story she's not
00:22:13.500 mentioning Blake Lively here but when I read it I was like this is exactly what we've seen happening
00:22:19.120 here as well. This professor was the result of DEI and Blake Lively is the result of Me Too.
00:22:27.020 With Blake we saw what happened when a journalist really doesn't do her due diligence because she
00:22:33.240 decided on the narrative before she publishes the story. I'm talking about Megan Toohey here
00:22:38.740 and the New York Times article. Exactly what happened to Janet Cook in 1980 who won the
00:22:44.580 Pulitzer Prize, by the way. Megan Toohey also won a Pulitzer Prize, not for this story, obviously.
00:22:50.180 Yeah, everyone who questioned Blake Lively, people like me, we were called anti-women,
00:22:55.720 misogynist, you don't support survivors, because we asked questions and we said,
00:23:02.400 this story doesn't hold up. There's so many holes here. And then we saw the evidence of
00:23:07.540 the other side, of course, and we were like, Blake Lively is lying. This is not S.H. And of course,
00:23:14.580 now also after the judge ruled that her allegations would not even be considered sh in the court of
00:23:22.580 law her supporters still come after people who actually question it and then because you question
00:23:29.420 it you are automatically a part of the smear machine and you are the problem and this is exactly
00:23:35.900 what happened to that professor at cambridge as well whom ever asked questions they were part of
00:23:43.100 the problem. A journalist's job is always to question both sides of the story. Were these
00:23:48.780 journalists at the New York Times as skeptical to Blake Lively's narrative as they were to Justin
00:23:55.220 Baldoni and the Wayfair parties? I think we all know the answer to that. Me Too wasn't supposed
00:24:00.940 to be don't ask any questions. Me Too was supposed to be don't ignore women when they come forward.
00:24:07.180 Those are very different principles.
00:24:10.020 Anyways, it's interesting to see now how the media,
00:24:13.060 as I mentioned with that People Magazine article,
00:24:15.680 they're still willing to support her narrative.
00:24:18.800 And they published nine stories about her from her Instagram stories and reels
00:24:24.620 to make people forget who Blake Lively really is.
00:24:28.760 Anyways, that's it for me today, you guys.
00:24:30.980 Thank you so much for watching.
00:24:32.800 And also thanks to Oscar.
00:24:34.920 I think that's been his position during this entire episode
00:24:39.600 he is obviously thinking about next week
00:24:43.520 and all the exciting episodes that he has planned for you guys
00:24:47.140 and of course if you haven't subscribed yet
00:24:48.800 please do and hit the notification bell
00:24:50.960 so you never miss an episode of Flossom Talk
00:24:53.000 and I'll see you soon
00:25:04.920 Thank you.