#metoo

Thursday

Toby Young

So you’ve been canceled. Here’s how to fight back

In April 2017, a group of students at Dartmouth College met with Dr David Bucci to complain about sexual harassment in the department of psychological and brain sciences that he chaired. The allegations didn’t sound particularly grave — none of the students complained of rape, for instance — but Dr Bucci flagged it up with the Title IX office even so. It was that office’s responsibility to follow up sexual harassment complaints and it duly did, suspending three professors and mounting several investigations. You can imagine Dr Bucci’s surprise, therefore, when seven female students named him in a lawsuit they filed against Dartmouth 19 months later, accusing him of ignoring the original complaint.

canceled cancel culture
bryan singer
Cockburn

The dark passion of Bryan Singer

Cockburn can’t possibly imagine what attracted alleged pedophile Bryan Singer to Stephen King’s ‘Apt Pupil’, a story from King’s 1982 collection Summer of Corruption, which Singer first read aged 19 in 1984. Nor can Cockburn imagine why Singer was so obsessed by adapting King’s story that he commissioned a script on spec, and then, after the success of The Usual Suspects, turned down offers to direct The Truman Show and The Devil’s Own.  In Apt Pupil, set in the Eighties, Todd Bowden, a 16-year old a Californian high school student, realizes that Arthur Denker, the old man who lives down the street, is really Kurt Dussander, a fugitive Nazi war criminal.

Friday

Ben Sixsmith

Is Kevin Spacey crafting a final masterpiece?

Boris Karloff, the master of early horror films, used to dress up as Santa Claus to deliver Christmas presents to disabled children. Onscreen, Karloff was a brooding, terrifying presence. In real life, he was the consummate gentleman. Onscreen, John Wayne was a bold war hero. In reality, Wayne had somehow avoided signing up to fight in World War Two.We know better, then, than to judge our actors by their roles. Villains of the cinema may be heroes in their homes, and heroes of the cinema may be, well — less heroic than their image might suggest. There is no point conflating the life with the work. Even if Jimmy Stewart had a more impressive wartime record than John Wayne, we all know that the Duke was a far more convincing and compelling leading man.

kevin spacey

Wednesday

Stephen L. Miller

2019 was the year of the ill-advised celebrity interview

If we learned anything from the #MeToo movement, it is that powerful men in media and Hollywood believed themselves to be living in their own personal movies rather than the harsh truth of reality. They were the stars, directors, and producers, and they would always get the girl — even if the girl wanted nothing to do with them, or was actually just a potted fern in a restaurant.This explains why these A-List abusers keep sitting down for tell-all interviews against (one would hope) the better advice of their legal counsel. Rather than the sick perverts that they are, these men see themselves taking on the role of Frank Mackey in Magnolia, whose tough, sexist exterior will eventually melt away to reveal his wounded inner-heart to the audience, thus garnering our sympathy.R.

interview harvey weinstein

Saturday

Ashley Olson

Autopsy of a #MeTooing

I almost backed out completely. I had drafted and redrafted the thread so many times. I labored over each component — the diction, which had to be compelling yet detached; the culling and selective cropping of screenshots; the order in which I would present the anecdotal and documented evidence, to construct a narrative engineered for virality that would at once cast me as blameless and transform an awkward male pervert into a sexual predator. I knew that, if successful, I would be committing myself to a few days, maybe a week, of an extremely stressful public performance. But my curiosity compelled me to continue.

#metooing autopsy

Thursday

James Delingpole

Dave Chappelle plumbs new depths of tastelessness in his new Netflix special

'You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special,' says VICE. And if that's not recommendation enough, here's one from me: Sticks & Stones is the most, offensive, foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic comedy set you're likely to see on TV this year. Chappelle, I must confess, was new to me. Yes, I know, I know, all you American readers: he's a comedy institution, ranked no. 9 in Rolling Stone's '50 Best Stand Up Comics of All Time' with numerous awards and a career going right back to his 1993 movie debut in Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But when you're English and you get to a certain age, you find yourself taking a certain perverse pride in not knowing anything whatsoever about icons who are really huge in the US.

dave chappelle

Tuesday

Cockburn

Mark Halperin and the art of the #MeToo U-turn

So, you’ve been accused of sexual misconduct. You’re officially hashtag canceled, laying low, plotting your return to glory. How do you pull off the comeback? Do you try and slip back in unnoticed like The New York Times‘s Glenn Thrush? Do you go on a literal apology tour around the country like comedian Aziz Ansari, performing a routine about how much you’ve learned from your experience? Neither of those approaches was good enough for Mark Halperin. For the former NBC News correspondent, who was accused of, among other things, rubbing his clothed erect penis on some young female staffers and propositioning others, the smartest way back has a few stages. First, issue a general apology, while denying a couple of the allegations, and don’t direct one at the women involved.

mark halperin

Wednesday

Jesse Longman

Aziz Ansari: Right here and wrong now

Aziz Ansari premiered his hour-long Netflix apology special in a barely audible voice from a crouching position in the corner of a dark stage in Brooklyn. His mostly white audience was rapt and reverential through each moment of silent reflection and public embrace. For past crimes, he forgives himself, he forgives his audience for not forgiving him earlier, and he forgives all those who know not what they did — crying ‘Nazi!' in crowded theaters, promoting fake news, finding good people on both sides.We are chastened. We are redeemed. Our prodigal son has returned to us a prophet and yea, unto us his message is clear: 'Children, we are all assholes in different cultural contexts. Love each other. Now is all we have.

aziz ansari

Sunday

Dominic Green

Jeffrey Epstein is a pervert for our times

Why do dogs lick their own genitals? Because they can. And wouldn’t it be great to be able to do whatever you like? Only those at the very top and bottom of society have the license to live like that. Our culture lionizes them even after the grubby final reel. They’re the Gatsbys, the Scarfaces — but also the Jeffrey Epsteins. The rich are different, like F. Scott Fitzgerald said. The degree of difference may vary, but the ways of difference don’t change much. The degree of difference between the very rich and the merely affluent is wider now than at any time since the Gilded Age — and wider than it was in 1925 when Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, his groveling tribute to those who differ by having more money than sense. But the ways of difference remain much the same.

jeffrey epstein

Thursday

Ben Sixsmith

The case for locking Joe Biden in a cupboard

Most candidates for the Democratic nomination are struggling to be noticed in a crowded field. Elizabeth Warren details policy proposals. Bernie Sanders rails against the establishment. Beto O’Rourke stands on tables and flails his arms.Joe Biden, on the other hand, has not had to do a lot to garner attention. The career politician and former vice president has a big enough and successful enough brand that he was guaranteed to be the favorite merely by existing. American liberals love to soak in a warm bath of nostalgia for the innocent, pre-Trump Obama era, and if they cannot have Barack back, Joe is the next best thing.

joe biden

Monday

Dominic Green

Did American outlets refuse to publish the MLK sex transcripts?

It’s #MeToo time for Martin Luther King — despite, historian David J. Garrow alleges, the efforts of senior staff at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the LA Times and the Guardian. In this week’s Green Room podcast, Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, alleges that these outlets chose not to publish his discovery of transcripts from the FBI’s taped surveillance of Martin Luther King. Instead, Garrow’s research was published this week in Britain’s Standpoint magazine. https://audioboom.

mlk #metoo

Tuesday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

At Harvard, you’re guilty until proven innocent

‘In 55 years of association with Harvard, I can’t remember a worse violation of academic freedom than this one. And Harvard has had a few,’ Alan Dershowitz tells me in this week’s Censored in the City podcast. https://audioboom.com/posts/7260600-is-there-still-academic-freedom-at-harvard Activists on the left have been working hard to change definitions and distort values for some time. We shouldn't be surprised that they’ve started succeeding. At first it was simple. One word at a time, like how you define the meaning of safety or assault. Then it became about bigger ideas. The left, who once championed free speech and academic freedom, began distorting how we should think about and advocate for those values.

harvey weinstein guilty harvard

Tuesday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Jacob Wohl’s latest hoax shows the issue with ‘believe all victims’

There’s a few fundamental problems with the idea of ‘believe all women,’ or more broadly, ‘believe all victims.’ The first is that our entire justice system is built upon the opposite idea, that people are in fact innocent until proven otherwise. The second is that as our definition of sexual assault keeps changing by the minute, it’s possible for two people to experience the same encounter in radically different ways, with one person believing they just had entirely consensual sex, and the other believing they were assaulted. The third, and most important: there are bad people in this world. And bad people lie.

jacob wohl

Friday

Julie Bindel

Camille Paglia vs the trans-Taliban

Camille Paglia has joined the ever-growing list of women in the metaphorical stocks being pelted with accusations of transphobia. A number of blue-fringed students at her university are demanding she be fired for her statements criticizing some women who bring charges of sexual assault, and because of her comments about transgender people. ‘I am highly skeptical about the current transgender wave, which I think has been produced by far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows’, she said in 2017. Why are they bringing this up now, you may ask? Why ever not? I am still hounded and bullied by the cabal for a comment piece I wrote in 2004.

camille paglia

Wednesday

Heather Mac Donald

Joe Biden and the deranged policing of personal space

Conservative pundits and Republican politicians are joining the Democratic outcry against former vice president Joe Biden, accusing him of inappropriately touching females. They are making a serious mistake. Conferring legitimacy on this latest and craziest flare-up of #MeToo hysteria will further weaponize females to take out any man of their choosing, based simply on their feelings. More consequentially, it will make society impossibly fraught and brittle, intolerant of the ordinary messiness of human interactions and unaccepting of generational differences. The crusade against Biden began last week when a left-wing Democratic operative and social justice advocate accused Biden of having inappropriately kissed her in 2014.

joe biden personal space

Tuesday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Would the Democrats rather win in 2020, or eat themselves alive?

Do Democrats want to win the 2020 election? Do they understand why they lost in 2016? I’m increasingly unsure. It seems like every time a relatively reasonable candidate or undeclared candidate gets a little buzz, the Democratic base tries to derail any possible momentum. It happened with Amy Klobuchar who is apparently a hardworking hard-ass. So what? I want a president who is tough enough to run the country. Being nice isn’t a qualification for the job. Neither is being in tune with the most recent sensitivities of the tribe of the politically correct. Throughout his many years in public service, we’ve all seen the myriad photos and videos: Joe Biden is touchy. Very touchy. Sometimes bizarrely so.

biden 2020

Saturday

Freddy Gray

What’s the matter with Joe Biden?

I once worked with an attractive woman who had a strange encounter with Joe Biden. As a young reporter on Capitol Hill, she got stuck in a melee of reporters shouting questions at the senator. Biden saw her plight and invited her to join him as he marched into an elevator. My former colleague was delighted: here was a rare interview opportunity. As soon as the elevator doors closed, though, Biden took out a Snickers bar and inserted the whole thing into his mouth. He then masticated heavily throughout the ascent and walked off without a word. That’s Joe Biden, the man who could well be the next president of the United States. He’s a weird dude. He may be even weirder than Donald Trump. Lots of politicians are gaffe-prone: for many, their lack of smoothness is winning.

joe biden biden’s

Wednesday

Natasha Green

What happened to Gilbert Grape?

Young Amber Heard met elderly Johnny Depp on the set of The Rum Diary (2011), a Hunter S. Thompson adaptation about a man trying to save his soul. Like the Depp-Heard marriage, the movie had a weak narrative, too much drinking, and generally poorly reviews. It lasted a lot longer than it should have done, too. Heard filed for divorce in May 2016, but you wouldn’t know it. Three years on, the marriage remains click-worthy. Days after filing, Heard accused Depp of being verbally and physically abusive throughout their relationship. Depp denied the allegations, and has now asked for $50 million in damages.

johnny depp amber heard

Tuesday

John R. Schindler

Wokeness eats the Virginia Democrats

If there’s one word which symbolizes American progressivism in 2019 it’s wokeness. Asking what it means constitutes proof that one is not woke. Although wokeness can best be viewed as the pop-cult wing of the late-Marxist heresy called intersectionality by academics, it’s really more a cultivated posture than a coherent political program. The challenge with wokeness is its fluidity. Its arbiters exist mainly on social media as an unelected Politburo of sorts, and their edicts can change without formal notice. What was sufficiently woke yesterday may not be deemed so today, with real-world costs for those eager to stay on the vaunted right side of history.

justin fairfax ralph northam virginia democrats

Monday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

#MeToo has hurt women in the workplace

About a year ago, I found myself at an eclectic dinner party. In our mix were men and women of all ages in all stages of their careers. Conversation turned to the #MeToo movement and the way it had changed the national conversation about sexual harassment and assault. A high-powered lawyer at the table confided in us that several of his male friends and counterparts had come to him after noticing a troubling pattern. These men — who were working for different companies, across a wide array of industries — were committed to mentoring men and women. They were eager to ensure that their colleagues were being treated equally and being afforded equal opportunity, regardless of gender.

#metoo women workplace