The Alex Epstein-Washington Post controversy includes an example of Epstein declaring victory by saying his side has greater weight:
Thanks to my preemptive public refutation, the Post delayed the piece a week and removed 90% of its unjust attacks–including all references to racism.
But as you pointed out the article is still a hit job that is written to make him look racist. For example, the article sez other people said his arguments are “ethnocentric and paternalistic”, which is a thinly veiled accusation of racism. Epstein laid down yes/no criteria for the article to be acceptable but he achieved none of them and still claimed partial victory.
WaPo ignored the substance of Epstein’s arguments. They stated that some people said good things about Epstein and others said bad things. And since most of the comments were bad we’re supposed to conclude that Epstein is bad.
That’s funny considering it’s a very non-random sample of comments. They could have easily written an article with more positive than negative comments.