What Set Do You Claim? : An Expose On Xeni Jardin
Disclaimer: I am not a professional journalist, nor do I have access to vast databases or shady sources. What I am is a person who is passionate, and can smell a lie. These two skills allowed me to bring this story to light.
Xeni Jardin is probably one of the so-called “blogospheres” biggest success stories. She successfully ran or contributed to many large blogs and currently runs a large twitter account with a following of about 155 thousand accounts. Even more nobly, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and has documented her journey. More recently, she has contributed to many mainstream publications and has begun a transition into a political pundit blogger offering her opinion on the crazy landscape of modern politics.
It was one of these “hot takes” just a few days ago that first introduced me to Xeniflores Jardin. Slightly over two days ago she began a scathing rampage upon her twitter account. Decrying whistle-blowers Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden as “enemies of America”. The first two of which are currently languishing in foreign prisons for ostensibly, exercising their first amendment rights.
Xeni, a person who’s entire career is devoted to the first amendment continued her attacks, targeting Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Her argument that Bernie benefited from the oft-debated Russian interference in the election is one that has been frequently reported on, though no credible link has been found, only that the accounts connected to this scandal preferred to boost outsider candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, among others. While the events of the 2016 election can be rehashed for eternity, it is not the topic of this article; this belonging to Xeni’s dubious personal history that casts a harsh light on her own credibility as a journalist.
For some background, Xeni Jardin was born in Virginia, on August 5th 1970. Her father was an art professor of some local fame, who taught at several local campuses and wrote several books on the subject. He passed away when she was only 8, leaving her and her brother in the care of her Mother, who worked as a curator in local art galleries and museums. Sometime later, she left home, and became the blogger we know today.
It’s during this time period that the strange disassociation with the Xeni of then and the one today are. In her 2005 LA times profile, she is described as;
“[someone] who can hold her own among the “alpha geeks” and speaks fragments of five indigenous languages, including three ancient Mayan tongues. Jardin’s so well-versed in fine art that she once traveled the world as an art guide to wealthy tourists.”
However, before starting her own travel blog, there is no evidence that proves she had ever worked in the travel world. In fact, her own wikipedia page puts her at a travel agency in some capacity, stating “ she was site editor for travel agency Traveltrust”. Of course, the statement can be attributed to a simple boast, as there is no evidence that Jardin ever worked in a physical traveling capacity at Traveltrust, but she did work there.
The second and third claims in the quote are open to a little more scrutiny. After a glance at Jardin’s social media profiles, no evidence of her posting in anything other than English. This can also be attributed to boast, but factors into a more prevalent issue with Jardin’s backstory.
As for the strange name, Xeni has a quirky origin for it like so many other aspects of her life from the same profile.
“It was a nickname that stuck during her travels through Mexico and Guatemala with her mentor, Dr. Munir Xochipillicueponi Quetzalkanbalam, a writer, performer, director, composer, entrepreneur and Mayan expert whom Jardin considers her adoptive father.”
This anecdote was first brought to my attention by a friend on Twitter who, in jest said that this person was of dubious origin. Indian first name, meso-american last name, while not impossible is improbable, not even factoring in the man’s boisterous resume. Despite such a large resume, this Dr. Munir does not, at least in my findings, exist at all. A bold claim, I know, but before I explain my reasoning, let me talk about something that plagues Ms. Jardin’s existence; a borderline fetishization of non-white cultures. Xeni has forgone the old way of cultural appropriation; Native-American headdresses and chic tattoos of meaningless phrases in foreign languages. Instead, she has intrinsically founded her online persona in a possibly invented lineage of minority cultures. Like a cultural appropriation Caroline Calloway, Xeni has used her outsider mystique to gain traction in the online world.
Her invented name does serve another purpose, one that she brings up later in the article.
“Xeni Jardin, pronounced SHEH-nee zhar-DAN, isn’t her given name. Jardin doesn’t reveal that, she says, because she wants to avoid dangerous people from her past.”
Despite previous claims on Wikipedia (by a user later verified to be Jardin who submitted several unsubstantiated claims to her own page) this is not her birth name, but one adopted out of necessity. I am not one to normally assume, but this claim feels somewhat uncertain. When I hear claims of a dubious past, someone coming from a town where the average net worth is over 1 million dollars is not what I think of. Possible affluenza affliction aside, based on the numerous enigmatic claims, I begin to doubt large swaths of her story.
A quick google search reveals little information about Dr. Munir that is not already intrinsically connected to Xeni. There are but only blog posts written by Ms. Jardin are able to corroborate this. A brief public records search on the name revealed that it was associated with another similarly unorthodox being, by the name of Maestro. Curiously, both of these people had phone numbers and addresses in Ms. Jardin’s birth name. Every single address and phone number listed under this persons name also corroborated to addresses owned by Ms. Jardin with only 3 exceptions. However, the website used only aggregates associates based on similarity, so false positives are abound. For example, I searched myself and only 2 of my addresses out of 4 where correct. Despite the imperfect system, I searched 4 different people I knew, none of which ever offered any connections to people associated with them as frequently as Ms. Jardin did. Unfortunately, I cannot publish my findings as I do not wish to doxx Ms. Jardin. Even further, no records of a Munir Xochipillicueponi Quetzalkanbalam exist as an alumni of any university website across many different searches.
The scope of this possible gross appropriation does not stop at the South Americas, but also involves the wholesale stealing or parroting of AAVE (African- American Vernacular English) and Hispanic-American accents/vernacular.
Granted this is a quote from another account but still a “bad look”
I do not wish to accuse Ms. Jardin of fraud without any concrete evidence or lack their of, but an overwhelming amount of evidence exists that Xeni Jardin is not being entirely honest about how her flowering following came to be. There are many White Liberal bloggers turned pundits in America, many of whom feature lack of insight on race, but as a black man, Xeni’s suspicious backstory disqualifies her on being a champion of the people.
