Linda Bloodworth Thomason, friend of Bill and Hill and creator of “Designing Women,” has something to say about Les Moonves, the CBS head honcho who was recently ousted after heroic journalist Ronan Farrow exposed him for assaulting and harassing women for decades. Thomason was a CBS hit-maker who nabbed a record-breaking writing and producing contract with the network in the early 1990s. That all changed when Moonves came on board:
I was never sexually harassed or attacked by Les Moonves. My encounters were much more subtle, engendering a different kind of destruction…
During that period, because my contract was so valuable, I continued trying to win over Moonves. And he continued turning down every pilot I wrote. Often, if he would catch me in the parking lot, he would make sure to tell me that my script was one of the best he’d read but that he had decided, in the end, not to do it. It always seemed that he enjoyed telling me this. Just enough to keep me in the game. I was told he refused to give my scripts to any of the stars he had under contract. Then, I began to hear from female CBS employees about his mercurial, misogynist behavior, with actresses being ushered in and out of his office. His mantra, I was told, was, “Why would I wanna cast ’em if I don’t wanna fuck ’em?”
People asked me for years, “Where have you been? What happened to you?” Les Moonves happened to me.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I was walking the halls one day in the original CBS building. In spite of no longer having gainful employment, I still felt proud that I had been allowed to make a creative contribution to the network I had grown up with — starting with Lucy and Ethel, who had electrified me and inspired me to write comedy. I never dreamed that I would become the first woman, along with my then-writing partner, Mary Kay Place, to write for M*A*S*H. I took pride in being part of a network that always seemed to be rife with crazy, interesting, brash women, from Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda, to Maude, to Murphy Brown, to the Designing Women. Many of these female characters paved the way for women to be single, to pursue careers and equal pay and to lead rich, romantic lives with reproductive rights.
As I walked, I noticed that the portraits of all these iconic women were no longer adorning the walls. I don’t know why and I didn’t ask. I just know that the likes of them have rarely been seen on that network again. Thanks to Les Moonves, I can only guess they all became vaginal swabs in crime labs on CSI Amarillo…
And as for you, Mr. Moonves, in spite of the fact that I was raised to be a proper Southern female, and with your acknowledgement that I have never, in my life, spoken a single cross word to you, despite the way you treated me, may I simply say, channeling my finest Julia Sugarbaker delivery: “Go fuck yourself!”
Read the whole thing at The Hollywood Reporter.
Moonves was originally slated for a big payout after CBS kicked his sorry ass to the curb. But outrage from the public and from women he’d destroyed over the course of his career caused CBS to backpedal. From Farrow’s New Yorker piece:
Update: Three hours after the publication of this story, CNN reported that Moonves would step down from his position at CBS. Later the same day, CBS announced that Moonves had left the company and would not receive any of his exit compensation, pending the results of the independent investigation into the allegations. The company named six new members of its board of directors and said it would donate twenty million dollars to organizations that support the #MeToo movement and workplace equality for women. The donation will be deducted from any severance payments that may be due to Moonves.
The Moonves episode is a timely reminder about misogyny’s widespread damage. Powerful shit-stains like Les Moonves and Harvey Weinstein may finally experience some financial, social and hopefully legal costs for their abuse. But another leering pig, Donald Trump, has thus far escaped his reckoning, and a sexual harasser still sits on the highest court in the land, where he may soon team up with two Trump appointees to curtail women’s reproductive freedom.
We should never forget that misogyny (with an assist from a foreign autocrat and an anti-democracy, white supremacist-pandering Republican Party) gave us Trump and cheated us out of our first woman president. We should also keep in mind that misogyny continues to narrow possibilities and therefore blights our society in ways that are beyond reckoning.
As Rebecca Traister noted in a powerful piece in New York Magazine last year, our national narratives are still being shaped by lecherous, powerful men:
In hearing these individual tales, we’re not only learning about individual trespasses but for the first time getting a view of the matrix in which we’ve all been living: We see that the men who have had the power to abuse women’s bodies and psyches throughout their careers are in many cases also the ones in charge of our political and cultural stories.
The Latin origin of the word “matrix” roughly translates to “womb,” and in modern usage, it denotes a medium in which events take place, a space where development occurs. But there’s nothing nurturing about the misogyny matrix, in which abusers not only destroy individuals but serve as political and cultural gatekeepers.
That matrix, where all of us live right now, is poison to society, as is white supremacy. And we’ll never “rise up and live out the true meaning” of our equality creed until both misogyny and white supremacy are defeated.
Princess Leia
Do preach! And thank you- needed this today. The poison is so exhausting and the denial so thick.
Fair Economist
Yet another highly placed sexual abuser in the media. I honestly think this is part (not all or even most, but some) of the media’s intense bias for Republicans and for Trump. These abusers have been looking out for each other.
Elizabelle
And Jeff Fager of 60 Minutes is out too.
Kick out one predator, you find a lot of other predators and enablers.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: I think that’s a fair assumption. Someone is going to get a hell of a book out of looking at the whole environment.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
The first time I heard that theory I dismissed it but I think it’s worth considering, given what we’ve discovered just since the election. They’ll never admit it though- any change will have to happen thru changes in hiring and promotion.
Humdog
It is odd, to me, how certain aspects of these stories just jump out as WTF!?!? All these Moonves or Weinstein foul acts, but somehow I figured their misdeeds were confined to Hollywood and I already knew about the casting couch. But Moonves attempting to rape his doctor in an exam room, and the UCLA medical center pressured the doctor to not report it because Moonves is so powerful. A separate industry, with a socially powerful title of doctor wronged, and still no support for women or repulsion of predators.
Then the video tape of child rape by MSU doctor, a pregnancy, firing of the reporting coach and revocation of the wronged atheletes scholarship? Burn the school down and arrest everyone on the board and the athletic department. You cannot explain this as “MSU had a chip on their shoulder for being the less prestigious college in Michigan. This was a criminal enterprise fronting as a school or sports team.
RICO the CBS board, UCLAMed center board and MSU. Shut the fuckers down and scare other org into beginning to take this shit seriously. Still won’t do a thing for the women wronged, however.
Mike in NC
Wasn’t it Moonves who claimed that Fat Bastard would be great for his network’s ratings, but not so good for the country? But he made damn sure that Trump got unlimited free coverage.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: Margaret Sullivan, ombudsman extraordinaire, just up in the WaPost. Abusive media moguls harmed more than just individual women. They shaped a misogynistic culture.
Mark Halperin. Roger Ailes. Bill O’Reilly
hitchhiker
Very interesting that young Ronan Farrow should be the one who brings so many of these stories into the sunlight. He’s just about perfectly situated to pull it off: gay, brilliant, male, child of actors, brother of an abuse victim (who is still not believed), eloquent, politically connected, and all out of fucks to give.
Cheryl Rofer
Excellent article from Margaret Sullivan, as usual.
ETA: I see Elizabelle beat me to it.
Smiling Mortician
I had so many reactions to this story when I saw it earlier today (at Wonkette, I think?) First, relief that they booted the fucker and did it quickly. Next, shame for my realization that while I loved Bloodworth-Thomason’s writing whenever it was on my teevee, I never really noticed that she’d been kicked to the curb, much less wondered why. And then, I was grateful for Ronan Farrow for doing this as what seems to be a heartfelt mission. Then, I was pissed cause what if the reporter investigating all of this were a woman? In fact it HAS BEEN a woman or 3 or 45 and nobody paid attention . . . Dunno. I just try to hold out a little bit of hope that the increasing pace of the revelations, the loftier perches from which these pigs are falling, and the swifter reactions will lead to the quick humiliation and downfall of the Wrinkled Peach Perv in the WH.
smintheus
@Humdog: My first academic job interview back in the ’80s was with MSU. A single History faculty member “interviewed” me…consisted of a series of rude, dismissive, and incredulous comments intended to turn me off – because the job was being reserved for a former student of theirs, as I later learned. Well, mission accomplished. I have never been able to imagine a single good thing about the culture of a university that permits that kind of abusive treatment of interviewees.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Excellent column from Sullivan.
Eljai
I would not be surprised if Moonves hated Linda Bloodworth Thomason because she is an intelligent, creative woman and a friend of Hill and Bill. Between the awful way he treated her and his comments about Trump being good for business, I take special glee in his downfall
Mnemosyne
If you look at it rationally, Moonves had no reason to torpedo Bloodworth-Thomason’s career. She was an extremely successful producer who had created several hit TV shows for CBS, so it would be totally irrational for Moonves to do that if he wanted the network to be successful. And yet he did torpedo her career because he hated seeing a successful woman at his network more than he loved the money, ratings, and prestige that she brought to the company.
That very irrationality of Moonves’s actions is ironically what gives space to the excuse-makers. Of course a smart, successful CEO like Moonves wouldn’t make his decisions based on something as irrational as misogyny, so he must have made the decision for other reasons.
This is one of the ways that bigotry does its work: when we assume that someone couldn’t possibly have acted out of bigotry because they’re too smart, too successful, to act for such petty reasons. Which means that the victims of the bigotry are the ones who are forced to try and make everyone else see reality.
I don’t know. I didn’t sleep much last night, so I may be babbling. But those are my thoughts.
MattF
And… how long had all this been going on? It’s good to see some pushback, at long last, but a lot of damage was done. How is that going to be fixed?
Humdog
@smintheus: So the culture there was toxic before they hired the predator doctor. There must be some kind of abusive asshole-dar, where like minded fucks find each other and together create a toxic sandbox. Either that, or there are so many more monsters out there than I ever imagined.
Betty Cracker
@hitchhiker: Farrow has done us all a huge service. I was listening to a Jon Lovett podcast the other day (Farrow’s partner), and he talked about how the networks tried to shut down Farrow’s reporting on the Weinstein story. Truly outrageous, and who knows how many other reporters they succeeded in shutting up, but as you noted, Farrow is almost uniquely positioned to pull this off.
smintheus
@hitchhiker: I’ve never seen any credible evidence that Woody Allen committed abuse. Just the opposite, the claims appear to have been refuted decisively…not only by investigators but also by one of Ronan’s brothers. In fact, as far as I have read up on them, the claims appear to be based on impossible circumstances and factually false “memories”. If so, then Allen is owed an apology by those who have leapt onto discredited allegations to heap abuse on him.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
It’s rare for an enabler to enable just one predator. If they’re willing to protect one, they’ll protect them all, or at least all the ones they can get away with. It’s naturally worst when there is a predator at the top, since they have the power to staff the organization with enablers. It’s one of the ways that the boss sets the tone for the whole organization.
smintheus
@Humdog: I could tell within a minute of the start of that interview that there was something seriously amiss. When I described it later to a couple of my former professors, they were incredulous.
smintheus
@smintheus: So yes, I think people can easily recognize a sick campus culture, and sickos presumably are drawn to it.
Alain the site fixer
@Mnemosyne: I think they’re spot-on.
Nicole
@Mnemosyne: No, I think you’re right on the money. Moonves’ misogyny was stronger than any sense of obligation to shareholders.
Also I’m really mad because Bloodworth Thomason said Huey Lewis wanted to do a show with her and Moonves said no and thus the world was denied a Bloodworth Thomason show starring Huey Lewis and 10/10 would have watched that.
It’s not just the trauma and the abuse- misogyny and racism denies us as a civilization, too. Art, music, scientific advances, all kinds of things we miss getting because a small group wants to maintain their grip on power.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Right — it’s one of those terrifying moments when you realize that cold, ruthless self-interest would be a step UP as a motivating factor.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: Yes. That’s the dynamic that Trump and some of his sick minions have used to dismiss credible reports that they regularly abuse women and girls, and which their Republican supporters are eager to swallow whole.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Margaret Sullivan is amazing. The WaPost’s gain was yet another Grey Lady loss.
And the Grey Lady, the “both sides — emails! emails! emails! — has Sulzbergers. No ombudsman, and the last one was a horse’s ass. (Liz Spayd.) Crickets over there.
B.B.A.
@smintheus: I know this much: Woody Allen and Mia Farrow are both terrible human beings. Dylan Farrow was abused by one or both of them.
Mary G
Have we ever discussed the email that one of the just-ousted board members at CBS sent to Kathy Griffin last August when she was in trouble for pretending to have cut off Twitler’s head?
It’s vile. He dictates a letter she is to send to the president without changing one letter, even though it is replete with spelling and grammar errors. One line is “How stupid I was to follow the lies of the “Left.” You can see the whole thing attached to this tweet:
So yes, CBS was full of these mooks and the thought that the creator of one of my all-time favorite shows, Evening Shade, was blocked by them is enraging. We lost so much! I’m sure it didn’t help that she and her husband were good friends of the Clintons.
TaMara (HFG)
I’ve been sick about this since I read it yesterday. For so many reasons, but mostly because I worked in that toxic environment for years, naively believing in my own power. From this perspective, far from LA, a lot of things make much more sense now.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: NBC is gonna be due its time in the barrel. Executives, I think. Something’s really wrong over there, and has been for a long time. Maybe not as much sexual harassment as Republican and corporate fellating, every chance they get. But who knows? Why not both?
Mary G
@Mary G: PS Kathy was instructed to leak the letter to Fox News and no other network. He’s spent an hour and a half writing it and if she didn’t do what he said her career was over. So glad she ignored him and is more successful than ever.
bemused
@Mike in NC:
And at a talk he gave, he giggled like a little kid over the money they made covering the lunatic.
schrodingers_cat
What is T’s support among white men right now?
Elizabelle
Makes me wonder a bit more about the giggling PBS female newscasters on the Snooze Hour. Judy Woodruff was not like that before.
What’s going on at PBS? NPR has had its issues (Michael Oreskes, whom they hired after he was at the NY Times previously).
smintheus
@B.B.A.: According to the lengthy and detailed refutation of the accusation, published recently by Ronan’s brother, it was Mia Farrow who was the abuser. He describes her as a manipulative and deeply dishonest monster, whereas he portrays Allen as a decent man and an island of stability for the kids in the horrible environment created by Mia. He also refutes the accusation on factual point after factual point. For starters, the brother says that he and others (including an adult) were present with Allen the entire time Ronan claims Allen was committing an assault; they were all watching TV together. Plus supposed factual details don’t match the physical layout of the house.
Elizabelle
@smintheus: I agree. I don’t believe the accusations against Woody Allen. I blame Mia Farrow, trying to get back at him. She turned the kids against him.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Judy Woodruff has been pretty pathetic, especially since Jim Lehrer’s departure. I used to like her when she was at CNN.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
And yet we had a commenter on this very website say the other day that Griffin was just being whiny when she complained about the horrendous backlash she experienced after that photo ran.
Griffin said that a huge part of the backlash was misogyny, and after seeing it, I believe her. It’s just too vicious and pointed to have happened because she made an assassination joke about an unpopular president. The vehemence and viciousness of the backlash had an additional engine driving it, and I think that engine was misogyny. Way too many men were getting off on putting Griffin in her place after she made that dumb mistake.
But because Griffin’s word gets automatically discounted based on her gender, she really had to pile up the evidence a mile high before people started to go, Hmm, yes, perhaps having people call her hospitalized sister and screaming death threats at her went a tad too far based on the original offense.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Entirely too high.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@smintheus: Really? Wow. That requires that you don’t consider the (female) victim credible. But you believe her male sibling. A very interesting position to take in a thread about misogyny.
Mary G
Don’t fuck with our DiFi:
@Mnemosyne: Yes, she said when she asked for a Netflix special, they told her they already had one woman, so I’ve been bugging them on Twitter to sign her up. Her current tour is selling out and set to make $4 million. I’ve never really liked her comedy, but now I am a huge fan of her personally.
This is just another data point in why women are so mad, and I don’t think the polls are reflecting it all.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Anything above 0% is too high in my opinion.
Mnemosyne
@hitchhiker:
@smintheus:
@B.B.A.:
Guys, can we maybe NOT re-litigate the whole Woody Allen vs Ronan Farrow thing again? It’s not germane to the thread. Thank you.
trollhattan
@Humdog:
Every damn day Ken Starr appears on my teevee or radio to opine about Trump, the Mueller investigation and why Bill Clinton is the mostest horrid person to ever walk the face or the earth. This Ken Starr.
Why is he placed on a pedestal today. He should be in the Shame Corner with the rest of the enablers and predators, not on every booker’s A list.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Exactly.
TenguPhule
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: Here’s the statement from DiFi:
I thought it was odd earlier when I read that the Republicans were delaying the Kavanaugh vote for a week. Hmmmmm.
Ladyraxterinok
In grad school in the 60s I took a joint history-foreign language seminar. One of the history students, a young woman, was the one the internationally famous prof looked to when the rest of us were stumped. She seemed to be his star student.
I later learned that when she went to him for advice about her post-PhD options, he told her that she should look for a job teaching in HS!! Many female grad students at the university freaked out when we learned this. It was later learned that he blocked the hiring of a gifted female historian. (She accepted a faculty position at an Ivy school.) He was obviously opposed to women teaching at the university level.
Elizabelle
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I don’t consider Dylan credible. I really don’t. I believe that she believes the abuse happened. And I think Mia initially planted the evil. Ronan is standing up for his sister.
But it’s not something that actually happened. At least, as far as I can see. Woody Allen has a fixation on teenage females. You can argue that is unhealthy. That does not necessarily lead to abuse of a toddler, and particularly of a toddler daughter when he was closely watched and the relationship with Mia Farrow was deteriorating. Mia’s own father turns out to be an abuser of children.
I think the whole thing is tragic.
Believe women, but you don’t have to believe every single woman. Especially when there’s a high probability she was coached.
Roger Moore
@hitchhiker:
I think the first one was key. One of the things I’ve gotten from reading these stories is how discouraged the victims get by people’s indifference. When they’re first violated, they tell their friends and loved ones about it, but nothing happens. In some cases, they tell people in the media, but their story isn’t reported. That discourages them and convinces them that they’re never going to be believed, so they give up. By publishing that first story in the teeth of fierce resistance by NBC, Farrow has proven he’s willing to listen and to fight the good fight to make sure the victims’ voices are heard, and that has to be getting them to come out of the woodwork.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
He may have been gambling in a state that considered it illegal at the time.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Is Judge K a sexual predator, is that’s why Mr P-grabber nominated him? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@smintheus: Interesting though that the kindly protector was having an affair with an older daughter of Mia’s, isn’t it?
I admit I fell in love with Ronan for his tweet
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: Hadn’t seen this. Good advice.
bluefoot
@smintheus: When I was an undergrad and applying for graduate school, my advisor told me that there would be people interviewing me who would try their best to make me cry or react emotionally just because I was a woman (and, I assume, not white), and use that as a reason to discount me and my application. Sigh.
germy
Did any of you see the CBS Evening News last night?
Jericka Duncan did a story about Jeff Fager, and his defense of a “harsh” text he sent to a reporter, demanding “fairness.” Then she said “That reporter was me.”
Holy shit, my wife and I said at the same time. Even the cat, who was half asleep on cushion, looked up at the TV with wide eyes.
Duncan then proceeded to share the text. It was definitely a threatening text. “Other people who have tried to harm me have lost their jobs” etc.
After her segment, she switched back to Jeff Glor, who called the text “unacceptable.”
We felt like we were seeing history being made.
TaMara (HFG)
@Betty Cracker: This all gives me a lift. And not to wish ill on anyone, but I cannot wait for the day McConnell is out and lives out his days as a drooling, chinless fool, hopefully in an orange jumpsuit.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Mnemosyne: I hate to be contentious, but it’s an explicit example of the bias toward crediting male accounts over those of females.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
As I recall, he coached girl’s softball teams?
TaMara (HFG)
@Mnemosyne: :-D This
B.B.A.
@smintheus: It’s possible that story is true. But it’s also possible that it isn’t.
In general, though, we’d be better off in a world where we believe every allegation of abuse than one where we believe none of them, so that’s the side I err on.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
All of this. Predators flock together under the protection of their enablers, so it makes sense that we would find nests of them rather than them being scattered around.
A toxic workplace enables abusers. A healthy workplace makes it impossible for them to get away with their bad actions. Unfortunately, healthy wprkplaces are few and far between, especially in Hollywood.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
And I think this plays on a very common form of bigotry related to poverty and wealth. We tend to believe that rich people are rich because they’re better people- smarter, harder working, more rational- than poor people. Because we see bigotry as foolish, we assume it must be a disease of poor, low-class people. We tend to brush off signs that the rich and powerful are bigots, and when they’re unmistakable, we act as if it’s some big exception. We’re unwilling to accept the possibility that rich and successful people are just as prejudiced as poor people.
Terry chay
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: also that you discount another male sibling, one who has broken three major stories, and every movie Woody Allen ever made.
Mike in DC
@schrodingers_cat: He has to have “loser stench” all over him for meaningful numbers of white men to abandon him or drift away from supporting him. Losing the midterms bigly helps that. So does the prospect of being indicted some day.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Elizabelle: The whole thing is tragic, and it’s hard to know whether Dylan was coached, or encouraged to be brave and tell the story. Victims are scared. I’ve seen it up close from my days as a prosecutor.
But clearly we’re not going to agree on this point. So I’ll sit up (for a moment as I’m working).
B.B.A.
I will also say that there are abusers within our own ranks, cf. Eric Schneiderman and John Conyers, and we must remain ever vigilant to root them out.
germy
Not to be trivial, but along with their abuse and thwarting of female employees, their empowerment of people like PEETUS, their dismissive coverage of HRC’s campaign… they make primetime TV a home for garbage.
Big Brother, The Bachelorette, Dancing With The Stars (featuring Rick Perry), and a million other garbage shows… instead of something smart and funny by Linda Bloodworth Thomason and the writers she would have hired.
These men have no talent other than turning popular entertainment into shit.
J R in WV
@Elizabelle:
I was running errands in town yesterday, and listened to NPR news on the radio. It was terrible, story after story about completely irrelevant trivial things, interesting trivial things, but still irrelevant, while the nation is facing huge problems, none of which were mentioned in the nearly an hour I listened. None of which were mentioned!!!
Did I mention NONE of the huge problems were mentioned?? I have supported public radio and TV since back in the 1970s, when it was just getting started in WV. But now I feel like that support is problematic. Worthless and wasted. Yet locally there is good reporting.
Ladyraxterinok
@TenguPhule: Yrs ago it was learned that my then dentist was abusing his young female patients. He was a coach for his daughter’s grade-school sports team. Just saying!
Mnemosyne
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
It’s also an unsolveable question at this point short of new evidence emerging, with people who have entrenched arguments on both sides.
I mean, I’m not the boss of anyone, but I’m more interested in discussing these new pieces of information that were just revealed about how professional women are being treated in the workplace in 2018 and how the people being unmasked were intimately involved in shaping everyone’s perceptions of the 2016 election. I find that more interesting than yet another rehash of Allen’s scandal, but YMMV.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: I want Kavanaugh’s nomination withdrawn. And I don’t think der Trump will get anyone else through until the new Senate takes office in 2019. Yes, the GOP may try. But I hope they would not be successful.
Trump just plain should not be nominating justices who may eventually rule on matters relating to him. Gorsuch is a dirty pick too.
We have so much work to do in the coming years.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
I always assumed the opposite. Poor people couldn’t afford the luxury of being bigoted assholes to everyone around them because that was a surefire way to commit suicide.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: I think there’s some truth to the claim that Democrats need younger leadership, but when you see things like Feinstein’s statement today, and her decision to release Glenn Simpson’s testimony some months ago, you realize there’s a gravitas that comes with having served in the Senate for years. Dianne Feinstein has no phucks left to give when it comes to this administration and she’s using her seniority and reputation to good effect. Good on her!
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.:
CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!
germy
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
That would require moral compass most definitely not in evidence.
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: NPR has taken a real turn for the worst. In the hourly recaps, I can hear them framing everything as they received it from their GOP sources. Getting to where I don’t even like the sound of their voices.
Grateful for the fantastic classical and jazz programming, and that they provide an hour for Terry Gross.
But something is really, really wrong with NPR. They have Stockholm Syndrome over there.
germy
Elizabelle
@tobie: Agreed. I love DiFi when she’s being feisty. And Nancy Smash Pelosi. And Hillary. And the Notorious RBG. And all the wise women.
tobie
I called Heidi Heitkamp’s Grand Forks office not as a constituent but as a past contributor to her campaigns and told the very sympathetic young woman answering the phone that Kavanaugh’s lack of candor and honesty made him unfit for an appointment to the highest court of the land. The assistant said that Heitkamp was aware of this issue and was seriously considering what to do. That’s not the statement of someone voting no but it’s also not the statement of a definite yes.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Have I touted “The Good Place” as an antidote to all that lately? Not only is the cast diverse by design, with a female lead, but so is the writers’ room, and the show is all the better for it. The first two seasons are on Netflix right now.
California Stars
In my 20s and 30s I put up with all kinds of really nasty shit at the places I worked…maybe slightly shy of assault, but a close call in some instances. In one of the first real jobs I had, I learned pretty quick which desks in office would serve as the most effective barricade (helpful in the hours after my boss had had his afternoon cocktail). And this was only in the 2000s–not that long ago. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I act on the strength of my convictions? Such behavior was technically illegal, but there was no template for standing against it. I could have stood up and BEEN the template, but I didn’t. I just went along to get along. Learning how to avoid certain situations was an unspoken part of any job description. Sometimes I pushed the envelop a little, because I knew I could get more money, or more desirable assignments, if I flattered my male bosses. Is that gross, or what?
I am not a huge fan of Courtney Love but she was one of the only people to publicly call out Weinstein in the beginning. It took some character and grit I think.
germy
@Mnemosyne: We enjoyed “Superstore” last season. “The Good Place” was fun. We don’t watch a lot of primetime TV, but there are some good things getting done.
Moonves’s wife hosts “Big Brother” which we can’t watch more than ten seconds of before changing the channel.
hitchhiker
@Betty Cracker:
Yikes.
Remember when Anita Hill tried to deliver her information anonymously? I hope this person is both legit and tough as hell, because these things get ugly.
The Moar You Know
As a male American:
Yup. You would not believe the shit other men still will say to me about Hillary (actually I’m sure you would) two years later. Men with wives, daughters, mothers. Men who, when they start up about Hillary, show themselves to be nothing but human garbage in ambulatory form.
smintheus
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: What is “interesting” about finding a factually specific refutation credible? Have you bothered to read the brother’s statement? What does the gender of the witness have to do with the question, or for that matter the thread I was responding on?
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: I am convinced that the “science” (it usually isn’t) of economics has done incalculable damage to humanity by positing, rather successfully, that humans do anything based on rationality, because we very clearly do not.
J R in WV
My wife was harassed by co-workers (nearly all male at first) and managers (in particular) for her whole career. One manager was thoughtful and supportive, all the others attempted to grind her down.
She suffered and still suffers from her treatment. If she had even just audio recordings of her treatment I would be encouraging her to sue all those guys into the ground. One guy “coached” his kid’s youth soccer league, until the school who’s team it was asked him to step down for treating the kids the same way he treated his employees, ie, like dirt. But still a manager, now in state government.
Folks, if you get treated poorly by someone on a regular basis, start recording and making notes about the non-audible parts of that treatment. It makes them lying fools when they deny it and you have audio of the behavior.
Mnemosyne
@California Stars:
It’s not a coincidence that most of the women who publicly called Weinstein out over the years have reputations for being “crazy”: Rose McGowan, Asia Argento, Courtney Love. Choosing to only publicly refute the accusations by the “crazy” women and not, say, Annabella Sciorra or Mira Sorvino, is one of the methods Weinstein used to try and make all of his accusers look equally “crazy.”
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Because he went after Bill Clinton back in the day, and that’s far more important than piffling stuff about covering up widespread rape.
smintheus
@B.B.A.: No, we would not be better off believing accusations just because they’re accusations. I have had people in the past – even known liars – spread ridiculous smears against me, and it has been disgraceful the number of people who will believe them despite the absurdity of them, the absence of evidence, the existence of contradictory evidence, and usually without even bothering to ask me about them. Rushing to judgment is never wise nor reasonable.
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: Smartphones can be your friend. Who need know you just pushed “record” on voice memo?
Elizabelle
@smintheus: I thought that was a ridiculously broad statement, too. Good on responding to it.
FlipYrWhig
@germy: I don’t watch a ton of network TV anymore but CBS in particular has, I feel like, a weird vibe. CBS is my Trump-loving hairstylist’s favorite network. They seem to knock themselves out finding things to do for retreads and head cases, like Tom Selleck and Gary Sinise. But perhaps I overgeneralize.
The Moar You Know
@Elizabelle: Yes. Deeply so and it’s been that way for almost 20 years now.
Nope. That would require that their beliefs diverge from their actions. I truly don’t see that being the case. Their reporting is who they really are.
IOW: they were never really your friend. Or mine either.
smintheus
@Elizabelle: Right? The rules of evidence and logic go out the window because somebody has made an inflammatory accusation? That’s exactly what liars and fantasists count upon; the more extreme their accusation, the quicker a lot of people will rush to suspend disbelief because it’s just “interesting” to have something juicy to posture about.
smintheus
@The Moar You Know: Back in the ’70s NPR was our friend. That was before Reagan threatened to cut their funding, and they responded by sitting and begging in front of generations of Republican politicians.
Mart
@trollhattan:Saintly Ken Starr overlooking sexual assault at Baylor has ended up costing the University tens of millions in legal fees. But let’s prop him up on Fox news shilling his book…
smintheus
@smintheus: And fwiw applying basic rules of evidence and logic consistently has served me well many times over. For ex. the crazy UVA allegation – it was obvious to me immediately that the RS was not credible, and in the unlikely chance that the core of the accusation was true there were still massive gaps of credibility in what RS was claiming the UVA administrators and the “victims” friends did or did not do. Colleagues and administrators at my college whom I spoke with the day it broke, however, almost uniformly fell for the RS story hook, line, and sinker without even considering the blatant absence of credible evidence.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
One of the things I’m worried about is the possibility of recess appointments. Especially if the Democrats manage to retake control of the Senate, but quite possibly even if they don’t, I expect McConnell and Ryan to end the Congressional session early enough to give Trump some time to make recess appointments. They wouldn’t be as good as getting nominees permanently confirmed, but at least for executive positions they would be good through the end of the term. And yes, a president can make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court.
StringOnAStick
@California Stars: It hasn’t changed much, has it? I dealt with assault when I was a geologist in the 70’s through the early 90’s. Usually I could maneuver my way out of the situation, but not always. I have to ask myself if I tolerated this stuff because I had experienced the same thing as a child with a much older cousin, and knew then that no one would believe me, don’t rock the boat and upset everyone with such accusations, my parents won’t believe me, etc. I had forgotten the childhood stuff until therapy brought it out a few years ago. Now I see a lot of this on a personal basis and on a cultural basis as the unending cycle of those with power (usually men) using it to both diminish women and get their sexual/power jollies out of it too, while reinforcing their positions of power.
It bothers me that something as wonderful as physical romance between people who love each other gets overshadowed in popular culture by power and dominance behavior as being what this is “really” all about. That young people now often get their first hint about all this from online pron, where power, dominance and control is so central to so many so-called story lines is just depressing. I’m so glad I grew up with some of the peace and love hippie stuff, believing in equal sharing and caring for all (I didn’t get that from my parents obviously, but from the zeitgeist I was focused on at the time).
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Humdog: More than we ever imagined. I’ve spent the last 25 years working with kids who’ve survived abuse, and the extent of this shit is just mind-numbing. Then I read some of the Q-Anon/SatanicBabyKiller/PizzaParlor projectile psycho-vomit, in which the perpetrators and enablers of this abuse are somehow re-imagined as heroic liberators of children, and I just want to take a baseball bat to these motherfuckers.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Elizabelle: @smintheus: I simply found it ironic in the context of a thread about misogyny that the males are credited more than the females.I’ll stipulate that the Farrow family struggles are probably to tangential to the topic. I’ll also stipulate that the entire Farrow/Allen family has a series of issues, and I include Moses.
I did read his piece and was struck that he does not refer to Ronan by the name Ronan chooses, but by his childhood name. He is quick to point b out that he was the designated watcher of Woody, so it would be surprising if he agreed that there was an incident.
I prosecuted dozens of abuse cases and hundreds of domestic violence cases, and I have seen victims who stretch, or flat lie. They are a problem for all victims, including their victims when they aren’t truthful. But I know what it takes to make an accusation that people disregard, because I’ve seen it up close.
I’ll bow out now.
Tenar Arha
@Mnemosyne: 1. This!
2. Also too, this makes it crystal clear why we see tv, movie & even the news leaving money on the table over & over again. They’re not making rational choices. They’re letting racism & misogyny drive their business decisions. The continuing surprise at blockbusters or simply above average returns or increased engagement when someone or something makes it through their gauntlet, is one more indication they have not been using anything about the returns on past performances to decide on future projects, stories, or programs. They make themselves stupid, & pass that poison on.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@smintheus: FWIW, I saw the U VA story as very unlikely and most probably click bait journalism at its finest. Because I’ve heard actual accusations, true, partially true, and false.
geg6
@smintheus:
And marrying his step-daughter definitely proves he could never have abused anyone!
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
I will admit it — I, too, fell for the crazy UVA allegations. Fortunately, all of her accusations fell apart pretty quickly once the story was published.
I still wonder about something her friends said, about how she went off alone at night and came back different. That was the night she claimed she was raped. In retrospect, she could have been a psychological or psychotic break of some kind, but once she started making her accusations, I think a weird social nicety kicked in and it seemed rude to inquire about her mental health.
H.E.Wolf
I just wrote and then deleted an account of what I experienced for almost a decade of my career. The short version: an abuser went about his actions with impunity, because the rot went all the way to the top. And I was fortunate that, like Ms. Thomason, it wasn’t sexual abuse… although it had everything to do with gender.
My sympathies and solidarity to those on this thread who dealt, or are dealing, with worse than I did.
As usual, Shakespeare is a propos:
To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof,
Bidding the law make courtsy to their will,
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow as it draws!
geg6
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
Well, it’s Woody Allen, Genius. He couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. Not even when he married his step-daughter.
CliosFanBoy
@B.B.A.: I remember the child abuse witch hunts of the 1980s too much to lean that way.
Mnemosyne
@Tenar Arha:
They will all tell you that they have numbers and metrics to prove that, say, a superhero movie with a majority Black cast would tank at the box office. All of the studios had the same research, and they all pointed to it when they made their decisions — Sorry, it’s not us, it’s the numbers! Numbers never lie!
What Disney did with Black Panther was go out and gather some new numbers that weren’t 20 years old, and they found that those numbers said that Black Panther would make $1 billion. And the new metric was right.
geg6
@germy:
We saw that, too. And our reactions were exactly the same as yours. We were stunned.
CliosFanBoy
we’ve all seen cases where victims were ignored, and cases where wild accusations were believed. There is no easy answer, and since none of us have firsthand knowledge of the whole Woody Allen/Mia Farrow family I don’t think we’ll reach any agreement except maybe that the family dynamic was a mess.
Roger Moore
@Tenar Arha:
I think a huge part of it is that the stuff about fiduciary duty and looking out for the stockholder is a load of crap. Once they get in power executives do stuff to benefit themselves first and anyone else a distant second. If the company has structured their compensation well, they may wind up helping the company as a way of helping themselves, but they’ll do their best to game the compensation system. And, of course, that extends beyond purely financial rewards. The heads of big entertainment companies will make movies/TV shows/music/whatever that suit their tastes, not the market’s. It’s one of the perks of being in charge.
trollhattan
@germy:
Love “Superstore” and it’s the rare show that passes the teenage girl test, too. Favorite new show last season was “A.P. Bio”, which is over-the-top sardonic and manages to cast teens who, while recognizable “types” aren’t stereotype teevee teens. The kid was coincidentally taking A.P. Bio while season 1 was running.
PJ
@geg6: Yeah, I don’t know who is telling the truth about Dylan, but it is undisputed that Allen was taking nude photos of his stepdaughter before their relationship was discovered, that he dated a 17-year old, Stacy Nelkin, when he was 42, and he tried to sleep with Mariel Hemingway when she was 18.
Tenar Arha
@Mnemosyne: I’m both happy to hear that, but then also even more disappointed in them for the more tentative choices they’ve made on individual shows like Blackish, where they didn’t trust the audience they’d built to applaud & stick with Kenya Barris’ vision. I mean I “get it” while still thinking they’ve chickened out when they shouldn’t have.
Omnes Omnibus
@B.B.A.: No. I think what we should do is take all allegations seriously. We should automatically believe or disbelieve anyone.
Mnemosyne
@Tenar Arha:
With the caveat that I only know what I read in the papers, I suspect there’s some old-time management that needs to be cleared out, but they’ve formed their own little fiefdoms and are difficult to dislodge.
smintheus
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: No, that’s not all you were doing. You were denigrating me because I had drawn a conclusion you don’t concur with. As for your take away from the brother’s account, you make no mention of the factual discrepancies he highlights, such as the claim that the abuse transpired that day in a crawl space that’s actually too small for people to get into and which was already crammed with boxes and stuff. Nor do you talk about all that he says about the mental abuse Mia Farrow regularly dished out, particularly the multiple incidents in which she brutally coached her kids to adopt her own counterfactual versions of events.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you.
smintheus
@geg6: Because that was what I meant, but forgot, to argue, right? Also that Allen gets a pass because he’s a “genius”. Yikes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: should not
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne:
Makes one wonder what else Moonves screwed up at CBS because it didn’t make his dick hard. (and seriously, what kind of middle age man thinks like that? even my friends who were complete horn dogs and dangers to even suggestively shaped tree stumps, cooled down in their 40s) That point that Moonves literally was screwing CBS out of hit shows should have been enough to get him fired.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@smintheus: Denigrating was not my intent, and it’s clear we don’t agree about much. I will make every effort to be gracious in that disagreement.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Long time no see. Welcome back.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Omnes Omnibus: I read the “not” into you comment, and had to read again to see it was missing originally.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: The thing was that the friends were uniformly portrayed as behaving with extreme callousness, even though the reporter allowed a tiny shred of factual evidence that they tried to help her. That sounded like an accusatory account coming from the “victim” with no balancing viewpoint from the friends. Turned out that the friends knew already that she was a fantasist, and knew that she had been playing similar mind games to attract the attention of a guy who wasn’t interested in her. So I think her friends already knew she had psychological issues. The problem was the reporter waded into a complicated situation in a culture mostly foreign to her, with an agenda to prove, and decided not to investigate a frankly incredible story that would not have stood up to even modestly responsible reporting.
California Stars
@StringOnAStick: It’s a very strange brew. It’s hard for me to think about what these guys (Moonves, Weinstein) got out of it. I mean, sure, they got their rocks off, but it is obviously more pathological than that. They were turned on by forcing frightened/unwilling women into sexual situations? Is this more about power than sex? Because both were married, right, and presumably had consensual sexual relationships with their spouses… What did they get out of raping women that was so important to them?
A few years after I quit the job, I saw my first harasser boss again in a professional setting and he (very drunk) told me that he “loved me.” I found it so odd. Like, he really thought that I would buy it when he tried to reframe all that harassment as “love”? Or did it really feel that way for him?
I think I’ll go throw up now.
Cookie Monster
@Mike in NC: Yes.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464
JWL
Are the tens of millions of women that cast their ballots for Trump all misogynists? Were they all duped by Russian propaganda? Americans saw fit to elect a black man to the presidency- twice. It stands to reason that Americans were therefore also prepared to elect a woman to the office. Just not Hillary. For perfectly sensible and politically viable reasons of their own, first in 2008 among democratic voters, and again in the national canvass of 2016. Simply put, as beloved as Hillary remains among her faithful supporters, she was judged fairly by most Americans, and by their lights, she fell short.
For the record, I posted three reactions the terrible morning after Trump had been elected. I wrote (1) God Bless Hillary Clinton; (2) I cursed James Comey and the FBI; and (3) I beseeched God Almighty to grant democrats the wisdom to never again nominate anyone that had supported the Bush-Cheney plot to war. Or, at the very least, refuse to nominate any candidate unwilling to explain why they got it wrong, and what they had learned as a consequence.
Doug R
@Tenar Arha:
Wonder Woman, Black Panther and Guardians of the Galaxy all come to mind.
Doug R
@JWL: More votes than any white guy in history.
rp
@PJ: For the millionth time, Soon yi wasn’t his daughter, and dating a 17 year old when you’re 42 isn’t in the same ballpark as molesting your seven year old daughter. Hell, it ain’t even the same f*ckin’ sport.
Mnemosyne
@JWL:
Um, no. No, it doesn’t. There were thousands, if not millions, of voters who were willing to vote for a Black man, because at least he had a peni$. But voting for a woman to run the country? Ha!
It’s especially odd that you’re posting this claptrap in a thread about Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who was punished by Moonves not just for being an uppity bitch herself, but for being a vocal supporter and friend of Queen Bitch Hillary. After all, if Moonves didn’t put a halt to Bloodworth-Thomason’s career as quickly as possible, then pretty soon those bitches would be running everything.//
Please re-read the article and understand that you just did EXACTLY what I was talking about in my first comment on this thread: you automatically assumed that voters who went for Trump were acting rationally and not out of bigotry, so you blamed the target of that bigotry.
Why do you automatically give the deplorables the benefit of the doubt and assume that they had logical, rational reasons for voting against Hillary?
Tenar Arha
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: This is probably the thing that makes me see bright red the most. I’m so angry I’m that gif of Madeline Kahn
All the comedians, actors, writers, directors, reporters, technicians of all types etc, who have been driven away bc they’re like “eff this b*ulls*it”l, I’m not going to let my colleagues also treat me like crap every day.” We’ll never have a full accounting or accountability of the damage these men have caused, or how keeping even one on staff, like Glenn Thrush at the NYT, drives away the people these companies need to do their freaking jobs well.
gwangung
@Doug R: Crazy Rich Asians makes an even better point.
rp
I think the more relevant point is that the country was willing to vote for a Black man only after 8 years of Bush and the worst financial crisis since the Depression. Clinton almost certainly would have won in 2008 if she’d gotten the nomination. IOW, a woman or minority can win if people are actually terrified (not pseudo-terrified of Mexicans stealing their jobs). The worst thing Obama did for Clinton was leaving her with a strong economy and relatively peaceful country.
Tenar Arha
Hi, I seem to be caught in the FYWP filters. Help.
Tenar Arha
@gwangung: I can’t remember where I read it now, but the success of Crazy Rich Asians green-lit at least 4 (?) movies with strong/mostly Asian casts/director/writer etc. & I practically did a snoopy dance about how full the shows I went to were.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
To be fair, romantic comedies aren’t usually considered “blockbusters” the way a big-budget action movie is. I seriously doubt that Crazy Rich Asians had even a third of the budget that, say, Avengers: Infinity War did.
But, of course, that makes the amount of money it’s made so far even more eye-popping, because a romantic comedy hasn’t made this much money since they heyday of Julia Roberts AND it’s an all-Asian cast and smaller budget = bigger profit for the studio.
PJ
@rp: Oh, well, it’s all ok then.
Juice Box
Toad like old men menacing beautiful young starlets is a much more titillating problem than “you’re not good enough because you’re female/black/gay/Asian/brown not matter what you do” which is a far more pervasive problem as well as one that is harder to correct.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne:
Well, $30 million versus nine figures (and it wouldn’t surprise me if CRA was 1/10 of Infinity War).
To be perfectly honestly, I was hoping for a nice hefty $70 million domestic, enough to pay for everything, with video and cable sales pretty nice gravy. As it stands now, I’m thinking it’s a hefty profit and going to make a couple of the players into…well, maybe not A list, but solid B-list players who can make a great living in movies. And get studios thinking that they CAN make some Asian American actors into movie stars….
rp
@PJ: gross/sketchy/not cool =/= child molestor.
MoxieM
@smintheus: Decent men don’t marry their step-daughters, nor do they take nude photos of them as teens. Full stop.
Why is his abuse of another step-child so hard for you to believe?
satby
@JWL: tens of millions of women are certainly racists as well as misogynists. That’s why they continue to vote Republican. And to say she was judged fairly, when she was libeled and slandered for 30+ years, as well as ignoring the interference of Russian trolls, is ridiculous. A lot went on in 2016, but Hillary’s vote on the Bush war wasn’t that big a factor for anyone outside the left. The lies about her were.
satby
@satby: and if there was edit, I would add: and she still beat the pants off the traitor in votes.
Mnemosyne
@MoxieM:
Dylan is his biological child, though given what Mia Farrow has been hinting about who really fathered Ronan, that could be up in the air.
Also, being a pedophile (someone who is attracted to pre-pubescent children) is not the same as being a guy who is a statutory rapist because he sleeps with consenting post-pubescent teenage girls. The latter is still wrong, but there’s not really that much crossover between offenders.
TenguPhule
@JWL:
Many of them, yes.
You have not seen awful until you’ve seen a bunch of rightwinger women turn their talons on another woman.
Mnemosyne
@satby:
I had to look it up, and nearly half of US states have NEVER had a female governor in their state’s history:
But, sure, there was no misogyny from the people who voted against Hillary, just a rational, reasonable decision that Trump, a man who had never held elective office, would be a better president than a former US Senator/Secretary of State. ?
rp
This has bugged me for a while. It’s obvious that Ronan is Frank Sinatra’s son, so she cheated on Allen with Sinatra and then lied about his parentage for decades. She has some serious credibility issues.
Omnes Omnibus
@JWL: You have got to be fucking kidding.
geg6
@rp:
Which, obviously, rubs off on her female child because, well, you know them bitches, right?
smintheus
@MoxieM: It’s not “so hard” for me to believe. I just want to see credible evidence that an accusation is true, which I have not seen. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
More generally, why do so many commenters on BJ automatically assume that any other commenter who disagrees with their viewpoint about anything at all, by virtue of that disagreement, must be ignorant, stupid, or malicious? The go-to rhetorical strategy here seems to be instantaneous ad hominem attack.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
I’m not rp, but here are my thougts about it:
I still remember the initial social worker’s report where she stated that she did not think that Allen had molested Dylan, but that his interactions with her were not always age-appropriate, and that Allan did not seem to have a good sense of physical boundaries.
What I suspect is that Allan did cross a physical line, which may not have been an intentional molestation but made Dylan uncomfortable. She then reported that to her mother, who “lovingly” coached Dylan into claiming it was a deliberate molestation.
Remember the whole McMartin Preschool fiasco? One of the worst things about it was that the kids got terrible therapy to “help them remember,” and when someone “helps you remember” something awful that happened to you, it actually doesn’t matter if it really DID happen. The process of creating the “memory” creates its own trauma. Which meant that all of those poor kids then had to undergo ADDITIONAL therapy to help them get rid of the false memories that were just as traumatic as if they’d really happened.
So, no, I do not think that Dylan is lying. I think that she believes her story 100 percent. But I also believe that her mother helped exaggerate what really happened and that exaggeration is now Dylan’s memory of what happened.
rp
@geg6: Don’t play stupid. No one doubts that Dylan believes she was molested. The issue is whether she was coached by her mother. Given Mia Farrow’s credibility problems and the generally weirdness of the family, I don’t think Dylan’s statements can be taken at face value. Nor do I think Allen’s interest in 17 year old girls suggests that he was likely to molest a seven year old girl.
ruemara
You’d be surprised how resentment & narcissism can fuel something awful in men for whom boundaries are quite thin.
I had wondered why LBT wasn’t doing tv. It seemed like so many famous, funny women just up & disappeared right around when I was exiting HS. But unsurprising. If anyone asked me about the hardest part of making a life in the creative field, I’d definitely say it’s not the being creative part. It’s the amount of people you have beg to let you be creative.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I went back to writing fiction: fewer gatekeepers. With self-publishing, you can sell directly to your audience.
But, as you know, as soon as you get involved in a collaborative art like film, including screenwriting, suddenly the gatekeepers appear in droves. ?
eemom
@smintheus:
FWIW, which might not be much, I wholeheartedly agree with every word you’ve said on this thread, and I’ve been saying the same for years. Including but not limited to when the “feminist” brigade around here was verbally lynching anybody who dared to question the Rolling Stone UVA story.
I also think it is pure idiocy to equate Woody Allen’s proclivity for 16-18 year olds with being a child molester.
eemom
@rp:
Now THAT is what I call a credible allegation.
rp
@eemom: res ipsa loquitor
Haroldo
@Elizabelle: And it’s been broken for a long time. Morning Edition and All Things Considered are in their own miserable ways as intolerable as Fox.
I will listen to local reporting, but won’t go out of my way to do so. (And it’s been years since I’ve given them money.)
MoxieM
@Mnemosyne: Thanks–I’m aware. I didn’t say anything about Ronan Farrow. I was responding to comments that minimized the creepiness of Allen’s behavior with his step-daughter–the one he married. And then, I was talking about the other step-sibling (I think step; don’t know names, apologies for not being that fascinated with movie star families) who claims he (Allen) abused her while she was a young child.
Tehanu
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
I think it is just as much an error to assume all females claiming victimhood must be credible as it is to assume they’re all liars. I don’t know who’s telling the truth here, but I don’t start with the assumption that in a thread about misogyny, it’s automatically required to dismiss a male’s statement.