Remember when we called this guy a douchebag?

I’m feeling really good about the decision, thanks to a former employee for his website, Bustle, who says he directed her not to hire “smart” writers.

Autostraddle has the scoop, from an interview with a writer named Raphi who was helping put together the new site. She explains her first meeting with Goldberg:

“Our first meeting was the weirdest job interview I’ve ever had. We met at Peet’s Coffee and he was very intent that I call his bag a briefcase. I guess some of his friends had called it a man purse and that had bothered him. Then he goes ‘So what makes you qualified to work for me? No offense, but you don’t look like someone who will cry if she can’t get her hands on the latest Gucci purse,’ so that should give you a pretty good idea of how he was approaching this whole thing. He talked a lot about making money and how great it is to be rich, then wrote a check to me without asking me to sign anything… I think he really liked showing people how easily he can throw money around.”

And then:

“He told me not to contact so many “smart” writers (I think he meant something very specific by “smart”) and that many of the ones I liked seemed to have big chips on their shoulders. He’d never heard of Bitch or xoJane, and I don’t think he knew about Bust magazine before I told him about it… I told him about Bitch and he snarked on the name and said ‘advertisers must love that.’”

Nice! Wait until he finds out we’re a nonprofit media outlet.

To be fair, it’s not the fault of Bustle’s writers that their boss clearly has no idea what he’s doing. Many of the posts up on Bustle today are totally fine, rather bland restatements of the day’s big news stories. None seem like they’re written by someone who thinks the only good female writer is one who will cry without a Gucci purse. Maybe Bustle can rise above the man at the top.