Popcorn at the ready: none other than Janine Abbring, Arjen Lubach’s assistant, picks a fight with the well-known columnist Kitty Herweijer on X. The result is very entertaining.
The entire celebrity world is tied up in arguments. The number of stars that lash out at each other every day can no longer be counted on two hands. And now it is the turn of Janine Abbring, who did Zomergasten for a while and is now mainly busy as editor-in-chief of Arjen Lubach. She searches X argument with columnist Kitty Herweijer.
Hypocritical witch
Kitty, who recently switched from De Telegraaf to AD, is portrayed by Janine as a kind of hypocritical witch. She starts the argument as follows: “I read today that Kitty Herweijer is going to read hate tweets in Sander Schimmelpenninck’s TV program.”
And then: “How wonderful that she comes out like that, I remember well that she tweeted about me ‘I want to scratch my eyes out as soon as that woman comes into the picture’.”
“Do you understand the difference?”
Kitty won’t accept that. She immediately wrote: “The tweet was: ‘No, no, I don’t watch Zomergasten. As soon as Janine Abbring puts that finger on her chin, I want to gouge my eyes out.’ The tweets that bother me: ‘sl*t’, ‘h**r’, ‘you shouldn’t meet them’, ‘they should gas you’. Do you understand the difference? Hard joke vs threat.”
The angry Janine then: “Oh, I have more than enough experience as a Summer Guests target. And I find the ‘stupid h**r’ messages from completely unknown attic room nonos much less objectionable than a media journalist who deliberately opens the cesspool a little wider. Do you understand the difference?”
Criticism of work
Then a certain Sjoerd joins the discussion. “She means that she was not charmed by the television you make, Abbring. Not all criticism of your work is a hate tweet.”
Janine then says that she is annoyed that she is being criticized by a man. “Thanks for the mansplaining about hate tweets, but as a Summer Guests presenter I probably have a little more experience with that than you. I don’t think ‘gouging out eyes’ by a self-proclaimed media journalist is exactly ‘criticism of my work’.”
‘A bit strange’
Kitty refuses to apologize. “Self-described a bit strange here, because that was my job. But it apparently affected you very much and I sincerely find that annoying for you. Nevertheless, I don’t make excuses for harsh jokes. As an employee of a satirical program, you certainly understand that!”
Janine concludes passive-aggressively: “Apparently we have a different definition of what a (hard) joke is (by the way, that’s my job) but I don’t need any excuses. I find it especially funny that you, of all people, started reading out hate tweets. That’s all.”
Cup of coffee
Can’t Janine just calm down and have a cup of coffee with Kitty? “That’s sweet, but unfortunately that’s not possible, because as soon as I touch my chin (and that is inevitable) Kitty grabs the fork from the table to gouge her eyes out and I think that’s sad.”