Hit Piece
On May 14, sports photographer Chris Elise died.
June 7, three weeks later, The Wrap, a Hollywood gossip rag, published an exposé on his widow, Gigi Levangie. Written by Benjamin Svetkey and Sharon Waxman (Waxman is The Wrap’s CEO and editor-in-chief), “What in the World Happened to Gigi Levangie Grazer? God, Guns and a Hollywood Kiss-Off” is the sleaziest hit job I’ve ever read.
Gigi Levangie is a novelist (The Starter Wife, Maneater, Queen Takes King) and screenwriter (Stepmom) who used to be married to big-time Hollywood producer Brian Grazer (“A Beautiful Mind,” “Apollo 13,” “Kindergarten Cop”). After her divorce, she remarried and moved to the right politically. This rightward shift seems to be the motive for The Wrap’s article.
Svetkey and Waxman begin their piece with Chris Elise’s death.
The obituary wasn’t signed but it’s not hard to guess who wrote it.
Really? You’re going to open by analyzing the obituary of her husband?
For one thing, it was chock-full of personal details only someone intimately familiar with the deceased could have known — like the fact that, before he died, he called his mother in France every morning and began their conversation with the same refrain: “Bonjour Mamie, c’est moi, Titi!”
The Wrap's painstaking analysis successfully “proves” that the man’s widow wrote the Legacy.com entry.
In fact, there was really only one person who could have pulled off that obituary.
Gigi Grazer, c’est toi.
It’s stomach-turning that these two writers would use cutesy wordplay in response to a man’s death. This gross opening sets the tone for the whole piece.
I’ve never met Levangie, but we follow each other on Twitter, and I had a casual impression of a cheerful person whose politics were well to my right. When someone posted that Elise had died, I read his obituary and was touched. It caught the spirit of a man I’d never known. I felt sympathy for the woman left behind.
I already knew a little about Chris Elise. I’d seen a ten-minute PragerU video where Elise explains why he came to America (he’d loved it since he was a little kid) and why, as a black man, he did not think America was a racist country. He also argued that defunding the police would be very bad for poor people in America. PragerU is a very conservative institution1 that churns out anti-left videos, but while I don’t share PragerU’s politics, I had been touched by Elise’s love of America and his determination to become a citizen (a goal he achieved in 2021). His optimistic conclusion was, “You can make it, especially in the United States of America.”
I’d seen an uplifting video, read a touching obituary, and now two weeks later, I was scrolling down a nasty take-down of the dead man’s wife.
The Wrap’s focus on Elise’s death is morbid and bizarre.
The cause of Elise’s death is unknown. The autopsy results won’t be released for several more months, if indeed one is even being performed, which the Tennessee State Medical Examiner’s office wouldn’t confirm to The Wrap.
Most deaths don’t result in autopsies.
But the cause of death of this perfectly healthy-seeming, still young-ish man isn’t the only mystery here.
“Perfectly healthy-seeming.” Again, it’s odd to emphasize that a “still young-ish man” passed away, unless you’re trying to hint at some ugly secret. Why assume anything unusual? I’ve lost a couple of acquaintances in their fifties. None of them had autopsies; nobody felt suspicious because they were relatively young. Tragedies happen. Why spend so much time dwelling on her husband’s death when she is the focus of your piece?
Having finished hinting at ominous secrets, the article moves on to Levangie.
One minute, she was the toast of Hollywood, wife of one of the town’s biggest players. She was everywhere — at movie openings and fashion shows and LGBTQ events and political fundraisers (for Democrats, like Barack Obama).
But then, in the early 2020s, as she approached 60, something happened that suddenly had her seeing red — political red: mocking President Biden for calling out white supremacy, hating on Democratic politicians, randomly fat-shaming, embracing online bullies, retweeting anti-trans vitriol
None of these accusations is backed up by links. I assume they came from trawling Levangie’s Twitter account, but I can’t judge their validity. Without evidence, the writers are just throwing mud.
What were Levangie’s other crimes? “She raged against wokeness” and “was disgusted by California Governor Gavin Newsom.” Just like millions of other Americans and Californians. “She had changed lanes and was proud of it.” Was she supposed to have been ashamed of changing her views?
“I’mma [sic] be the hottest fascista ever,” she tweeted, presumably unironically, in 2022.
Presumably unironically? Are they insane? That tweet is the most ironic thing I’ve seen since The Iron Sheik wrestled a double bill in Ironton, Ohio. Some hyper-left Democrats are too quick to use the label “fascist,” so many people respond by joking about being fascist. I’ve done this more than a few times.2 To suggest that Levangie was a fascist is laughable (and hateful).
As COVID descended and homelessness and crime worsened in L.A., Levangie turned against the town she had been raised in. She and her cowboy-obsessed French husband decamped for the reddest state in the union, where they joined a hard-core Christian church, and started a new life a thousand miles away.
Translation: She and her husband moved to a different state. It happens.
The Wrap treats this change in politics and homes as a horrible mystery that their dogged investigative reporters must uncover. How could anyone ever want to leave the paradise that is California? Or become a Christian?
She hasn’t been giving interviews and she didn’t respond to multiple requests from TheWrap to speak for this story.
Because her husband has just died, you ghouls.
The Wrap gives a quick overview of Levangie’s life story to “maybe even pick up some clues as to what led to such a radical change.” (How could she leave California?) They cover her successful career as a novelist, her novels that were turned into movies and TV miniseries, her marriage to and then divorce from Brian Grazer, and her meeting and marrying Elise. (She first saw him taking pictures at a Clippers basketball game.)
Elise comes across as a nice guy fascinated with American culture, including cowboys. The Wrap turns this into “Elise’s cowboy fetish,” which “might have had something to do with Levangie’s sudden conversion to MAGAism.” Yes, it’s obvious. He liked Westerns, and so she ended up supporting Trump. Happens all the time. One of my favorite movies is “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Should I be worried? Utter bollocks.
But no, “that may be too facile a leap.” Unnamed friends say her turn to the right came during the pandemic when she became angry at Democrats’ inaction over crime and the homeless. Her Twitter feed became “a tirade of hate, fat-shaming and bullying.”
Her awful behavior included tweets critical of President Biden (Oh my, how could she?) and moving to Tennessee, where she joined an “old-time” Christan church. (Christianity being just one step from fascism.)
Then The Wrap concludes its meandering hit piece by linking Chris Elise’s death to Levangie’s changed political views.
If Tennessee officials eventually do release an autopsy, the mystery of Elise’s sudden death may well be resolved. But the other mystery, the mystery of what happened to Levangie — of what pushed her from her life in L.A. and seemingly turned her into a whole other sort of person — that’s something only she can fully explain.
And for now, apparently, the only talking she’s doing is on Legacy.com.
Beyond its nastiness, the piece’s most prominent characteristic is emptiness. There’s no there there. Summing up what these two investigative “reporters” discovered: A man died too young (they got that from the obit). His wife used to be married to a Hollywood producer (they got that from a New York Times profile and Wikipedia). She had become more conservative (they got that from Twitter).
Is any of this noteworthy? Levangie isn’t a politician or powerful businesswoman. She isn’t running for office. She’s merely a moderately well-known novelist who’s lost her husband. Her political views are not important. Nobody should be writing a story about her. There is nothing newsworthy about this article.
So why did they write the piece? And why now?
There may be some secret motive I know nothing about, a longstanding grudge, but politics is the only motive I see. In the eyes of The Wrap’s writers, Levangie had betrayed her liberal world, so whatever anyone writes about her is justified. This nasty article is an offshoot of our nasty hyper-partisan times. Anything you say about those people is good because they are those people.
Many readers disagreed. Waxman’s tweet on the article was brutally ratioed.3
“Condolence, of course, due on her loss.” The lack of empathy is stark.
Another exchange helps to reveal Waxman’s thinking.
In Waxman’s world, deciding that liberals are wrong and conservatives are right is going “bonkers.” The idea that reasonable people can have different political views is incomprehensible. Waxman and Svetkey’s self-appointed mission was to explore why the crazy people (aka Republicans) are crazy, never mind that one of them just lost her husband.
I write this as a liberal. I disagree with many of Levangie’s views and I think PragerU is more than a little wacky. If a good reporter did an exposé on them, I’d be thrilled to read it, but when I read of Elise’s death, the only thing I felt was sadly sympathetic because I’m not a soulless vulture.
The Wrap’s piece made me think worse of the world, so let me end with something better, a few lines from Elise’s obituary:
Chris’s light and spirit filled every room and arena he stepped into with his Converse or Luccheses (and later, his work boots). He was beloved by people all over the world – he was a friend to everyone he met, from street people to captains of industry, from old folks to babies, for whom he’d shake his big afro and make them laugh with delight.
Even animals loved him and were drawn to him, not least of all his beloved Gus and Dixie, who now look for him throughout the house, under the bed, on the land that he so loved and where he walked them every day, for miles.
PragerU was co-founded by Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host. It is not a university. “We promote American values through the creative use of educational videos that reach millions of people online. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Prager University Foundation (“PragerU”) offers a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.”
My Twitter bio currently has the line “Retweets are fascism.” Heads up, Waxman and Svetkey: I don’t really think retweets are fascism. It’s called irony. (With a touch of satire.)
Getting “ratioed” is when your tweet gets far more comments than likes or retweets. The angry replies also get far more likes than your original tweet. As of June 13, Waxman’s tweet had only 105 likes but 658 comments. There would have been more comments, but she shut them off on the tweet. Some of the hostile comments now have thousands of likes.
What disgusting, ghoulish behavior. The way political polarization seems to strip people of their basic human empathy makes me want to weep for us all.
thanks for caring, so many mean things go by like this and it may seem small in the overall scheme of things, but the truth is that it matters
it struck me that we had a close friend die in her 50's, just woke up dead one morning, and we never knew for certain why but we never considered an autopsy