Free Anthony Weiner!
Well, thank you. I can't watch Casablanca anymore. It's no longer a classic romance of three people whose problems don't amount to a hill of beans in a world torn by war, fighting back against fascism, cynicism and despair. With Ingrid Bergman, the most beautiful woman who ever stepped in front of a camera. No, now it's the story of a powerful man, a prefect of police, who demands sex from attractive, desperate women in exchange for exit visas. And no amount of Claude Rains's charm can make that go away. Louis Renault is the Harvey Weinstein of French Morocco. Also, the treatment of Sam is kind of racist, but that's for another day.
It's not news that men are pigs, but the scope of the problem is boggling. Every day there are fresh accusations and multiple complainants. The acts run the gamut from rape to fondling to hey-look-at-this masturbation to the new crime of digital flashing, i.e., "sexting" someone a picture of your genitals. Naturally, the guy who did that is in prison, while the rest are still among us, along with their astonishing defenders. And the worst part is, I didn't originally despise them all. Some of them I never heard of.
The most egregious and shameless offender is Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, the would-be senator from Alabama. The Washington Post published an exhaustively sourced story about his abuse, nearly forty years ago, of a 14-year-old and three others, and even the Republican Party is divided about its response (today Mitch McConnell called for him to drop out). Among the scumbags defending him, no surprise, are Steve Bannon and some radio clown called Wayne Allyn Root, whose argument is that the teenagers "could have passed for 20" (were you there?). Also, "Where are the women Hillary's dated all these years?...I've heard rumors about Bathhouse Barry" (he means Obama). When you have to change the subject by sharing your own lurid fantasies, Wayne Allyn, it's time for that CT scan you've been putting off. Sean Hannity is another loud defender of statutory rape, which has cost him sponsors and sparked one of the more hilarious "boycotts," as Rightzis destroy their Keurig coffeemakers in a display of ... let's go with stupidity. And Judge Roy himself has borrowed a technique from Trump and threatened to sue his accusers, brave women who still live in Alabama. Liars, politically motivated, crazy, all of the above.
At the other end of my personal spectrum, Louis CK, what the fuck? At least he has admitted to making women watch him jerk off. Since simulated masturbation is part of his HBO special Shameless, we've all had to watch him, I guess. Wanking is a private act, like praying. (Exactly like praying.) What's the attraction of an audience? I will never understand this. But I'm proud of him for owning it, especially as it has affected the release of his movie, disturbingly titled I Love You, Daddy. What can I say? He makes me laugh, part of an ever-diminishing group of people who do. I won't bail on him.
We have arrived back at the old argument about whether it's possible to detach the art from the artist, to enjoy the work of people who do (did) awful things. It has raged for years around everyone from Roman Polanski and Frank Sinatra to Ezra Pound and Herbert von Karajan, but Exhibit A is always Richard Wagner -- adulterer, grifter, half-assed revolutionary, racist, anti-Semite, and without question the greatest composer of the nineteenth century. Can you separate the work from the man, or must you deny yourself a potentially life-changing experience? If not yet, when? If Leonardo did get in trouble over his relationship with a young male model, when can we look at his paintings again? Will Kevin Spacey have to wait five hundred years?*
I feel like we are on the verge of a new blacklist, with sexual misbehavior in place of liberal politics. Instead of naming names, its subjects will have to enter rehab for "sex addiction" and apologize tearfully on television. (It beats touring in Darkness at Noon, I guess.) Will all of them be men? Probably. Men have had license to act swinishly for ten thousand years, more or less, and that's not going away. Look, there are powerful women in entertainment and public life; while they may abuse the help (like Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart), it's rarely sexual. If Oprah has been sexually harassing people, she must be having them killed, too. If Ruth Bader Ginsberg made prospective clerks drop their trousers, there would be talk, not to mention outraged shrieks for her impeachment from self-appointed moralizers like Roy Moore. If Hillary -- well, hell, they just make up shit about Hillary (see above).
Reading over this, it seems a little heartless. Maybe the incessant drumbeat of "bad touch" has brought out my oversexed sarcastic side (see what I did there?). Maybe I just don't like self-pity. I remember Beverly Sills long ago (on Dick Cavett's show) talking about getting felt up by Leopold Stokowski and then by Pablo Casals, both in their eighties, while sitting in a box at a gala. She thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and so did Cavett. In a lifetime of real hardship (cancer, two children with serious birth defects, Rudolf Bing), she was the least self-pitying of women. I miss that.
Anyway, can we agree that this is a win-win for Democrats? If Doug Jones is elected to the Senate -- and there is at least a realistic possibility now -- it will be a victory for the man who put the last two 16th Street Baptist Church bombers in prison and a defeat for Bannon, Trump's Rudolf Hess. If Moore wins, the Republicans can spend six years explaining away a child molester whose malignity will be neutralized by ninety-nine other senators. Happy days are hardly here again, but it's a start.
All I ask is that the next sordid revelations not involve Mister Rogers.
*Spacey's scenes in a forthcoming movie are being re-shot with Christopher Plummer. Will no one stop these Canadians from taking American jobs?
It's not news that men are pigs, but the scope of the problem is boggling. Every day there are fresh accusations and multiple complainants. The acts run the gamut from rape to fondling to hey-look-at-this masturbation to the new crime of digital flashing, i.e., "sexting" someone a picture of your genitals. Naturally, the guy who did that is in prison, while the rest are still among us, along with their astonishing defenders. And the worst part is, I didn't originally despise them all. Some of them I never heard of.
The most egregious and shameless offender is Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, the would-be senator from Alabama. The Washington Post published an exhaustively sourced story about his abuse, nearly forty years ago, of a 14-year-old and three others, and even the Republican Party is divided about its response (today Mitch McConnell called for him to drop out). Among the scumbags defending him, no surprise, are Steve Bannon and some radio clown called Wayne Allyn Root, whose argument is that the teenagers "could have passed for 20" (were you there?). Also, "Where are the women Hillary's dated all these years?...I've heard rumors about Bathhouse Barry" (he means Obama). When you have to change the subject by sharing your own lurid fantasies, Wayne Allyn, it's time for that CT scan you've been putting off. Sean Hannity is another loud defender of statutory rape, which has cost him sponsors and sparked one of the more hilarious "boycotts," as Rightzis destroy their Keurig coffeemakers in a display of ... let's go with stupidity. And Judge Roy himself has borrowed a technique from Trump and threatened to sue his accusers, brave women who still live in Alabama. Liars, politically motivated, crazy, all of the above.
At the other end of my personal spectrum, Louis CK, what the fuck? At least he has admitted to making women watch him jerk off. Since simulated masturbation is part of his HBO special Shameless, we've all had to watch him, I guess. Wanking is a private act, like praying. (Exactly like praying.) What's the attraction of an audience? I will never understand this. But I'm proud of him for owning it, especially as it has affected the release of his movie, disturbingly titled I Love You, Daddy. What can I say? He makes me laugh, part of an ever-diminishing group of people who do. I won't bail on him.
We have arrived back at the old argument about whether it's possible to detach the art from the artist, to enjoy the work of people who do (did) awful things. It has raged for years around everyone from Roman Polanski and Frank Sinatra to Ezra Pound and Herbert von Karajan, but Exhibit A is always Richard Wagner -- adulterer, grifter, half-assed revolutionary, racist, anti-Semite, and without question the greatest composer of the nineteenth century. Can you separate the work from the man, or must you deny yourself a potentially life-changing experience? If not yet, when? If Leonardo did get in trouble over his relationship with a young male model, when can we look at his paintings again? Will Kevin Spacey have to wait five hundred years?*
I feel like we are on the verge of a new blacklist, with sexual misbehavior in place of liberal politics. Instead of naming names, its subjects will have to enter rehab for "sex addiction" and apologize tearfully on television. (It beats touring in Darkness at Noon, I guess.) Will all of them be men? Probably. Men have had license to act swinishly for ten thousand years, more or less, and that's not going away. Look, there are powerful women in entertainment and public life; while they may abuse the help (like Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart), it's rarely sexual. If Oprah has been sexually harassing people, she must be having them killed, too. If Ruth Bader Ginsberg made prospective clerks drop their trousers, there would be talk, not to mention outraged shrieks for her impeachment from self-appointed moralizers like Roy Moore. If Hillary -- well, hell, they just make up shit about Hillary (see above).
Reading over this, it seems a little heartless. Maybe the incessant drumbeat of "bad touch" has brought out my oversexed sarcastic side (see what I did there?). Maybe I just don't like self-pity. I remember Beverly Sills long ago (on Dick Cavett's show) talking about getting felt up by Leopold Stokowski and then by Pablo Casals, both in their eighties, while sitting in a box at a gala. She thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and so did Cavett. In a lifetime of real hardship (cancer, two children with serious birth defects, Rudolf Bing), she was the least self-pitying of women. I miss that.
Anyway, can we agree that this is a win-win for Democrats? If Doug Jones is elected to the Senate -- and there is at least a realistic possibility now -- it will be a victory for the man who put the last two 16th Street Baptist Church bombers in prison and a defeat for Bannon, Trump's Rudolf Hess. If Moore wins, the Republicans can spend six years explaining away a child molester whose malignity will be neutralized by ninety-nine other senators. Happy days are hardly here again, but it's a start.
All I ask is that the next sordid revelations not involve Mister Rogers.
*Spacey's scenes in a forthcoming movie are being re-shot with Christopher Plummer. Will no one stop these Canadians from taking American jobs?
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 1:59 PM
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