Sexual assault

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Kevin Spacey’s transatlantic fall from grace

At the beginning of the forgettable comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember, there is a selection of starry cameos, including Tom Cruise as an idealized version of Powers and Kevin Spacey hamming it up to high heaven as an alternate Dr. Evil. The film was made two decades ago, when Cruise was probably the biggest star in Hollywood, and when Spacey, a double Oscar winner for his roles in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, was the leading character actor of his generation, both onscreen and onstage. Today, Cruise is as successful as he has ever been, with his latest film, Top Gun: Maverick, attracting rave reviews and stellar box office earnings. It has been a far different story for Spacey.

Wednesday

Rachel K. Paulose

Prince Andrew coughs up

Court documents filed on Tuesday morning by counsel for Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre revealed she had settled her high-profile human trafficking case against Prince Andrew. Although the documents omit both an admission of guilt by Andrew and a disclosure of the settlement sum, the Telegraph asserts that the beleaguered prince will pay Giuffre an estimated £12 million ($16 million) to resolve her case under New York’s Child Victims Act, and that the money will come from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The parties informed the court that they had reached a “settlement in principle” and anticipated filing a stipulation of dismissal of the case within the next month.

prince andrew

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

Our media helps China hush up the Peng Shuai scandal

The media showering that China has received during the Beijing Winter Olympics has been both a national and international disgrace. NBC has been tiptoeing around how the Games are being held in the shadow of Uighur concentration camps, while athletes describe horrid living conditions including food that makes Fyre Festival’s cuisine look like a gourmet meal. But almost nothing compares to Western outlets repeating Chinese Communist Party talking points over the coerced interview confession that Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai gave to the French magazine L’Equipe this weekend. Late last year, Shuai accused a former senior CCP official, Zhang Gaol, of sexual assault in a social media post.

peng shuai

Wednesday

Rachel K. Paulose

Prince Andrew must answer to America

The Duke of York is heading to a New York courthouse. US District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled today that Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew may proceed as a matter of law. Ms. Giuffre’s victory means the judge finds her claims legally cognizable. As the case moves into civil discovery, Ms. Giuffre must prove all the relevant facts she alleges to be true. Prince Andrew has denied all Ms. Giuffre’s claims. In a 2021 lawsuit filed in New York’s federal courts, Giuffre sued Andrew for committing battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

andrew

Thursday

Rachel K. Paulose

Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense and the war on memory

The Ghislaine Maxwell trial resumed today with the defense’s presentation of its case, beginning with a procedural loss for the Maxwell team. The judge rejected the defense’s unusual request to allow some of their witnesses to testify anonymously. Maxwell’s attorneys claimed three witnesses feared they “might get a lot of unwanted attention.” Judge Alison J. Nathan ruled that because the defense did not claim the witnesses were victims or sexual assault survivors, no special exemptions applied to the general rule that witnesses in federal court must be publicly identified.

ghislaine maxwell memory

Monday

Peter Wood

Michelle Goldberg and the art of the Big Lie

Lies come in all shapes and sizes, colors, odors, textures and tastes. Some are only little white lies, but more often the accompanying adjective suggests something unpleasant. Damnable lies used to be the most condemned, but today the foulest of all perfidious, incarnadine, silken and sulfurous lies are Big Lies. Thus when New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wants to reassure progressive voters that they can ignore the story about a ninth-grade girl who was raped (i.e. forcibly sodomized) in a girl’s restroom in a Loudoun County, Virginia school, she serves up her diversion under the title “The Right’s Big Lie About a Sexual Assault in Virginia.

big lie

Thursday

James Walton

Michaela Coel’s dazzling finale reminds me of Philip Roth: I May Destroy You reviewed

From our UK edition

It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently very fashionable indeed) and the late Philip Roth (increasingly discredited as an embodiment of all those phallocentric white guys who once ruled American fiction merely because they were great writers). Nonetheless, this week’s television made it hard not to. On Tuesday night, as an adaptation of Roth’s The Plot Against America began on Sky Atlantic, Coel’s I May Destroy You was serving up a dazzling final episode that confirmed how Rothian the series has been.

Monday

Taki

Why Harvey Weinstein cried on the phone to me

Harvey Weinstein was a very sought after dinner guest back in the days before he was a convicted rapist. Mind you, he and I started out as mortal enemies, over a woman, needless to say. I won the first skirmish although I didn’t know it at the time. (The lady went home with me and Harvey badmouthed me to her.) Once I found that out I wrote in my New York Post column of the time that Weinstein was an enemy of good manners and good tailoring. He found it funny and approached me at a party I was giving with Michael Mailer in a downtown New York tavern. As he was known as a brawler, I stood up and got ready to rumble. But it was not to be. He graciously put out his hand and told me in front of witnesses that I had never done him any harm and that he wanted to be friends.

harvey weinstein

Tuesday

Melanie McDonagh

Why there’s no feminist solidarity for Kellyanne Conway

Is Kellyanne Conway proof that patriarchy has no gender? That’s what the British journalist, Suzanne Moore, says in the Guardian today. She broods over Conway’s contention that she too was sexually abused once (is there anyone out there who wasn’t?) and considers whether she deserves a bit of empathy before concluding that, because Conway is gunning for Christine Blasey Ford, empathy would be wasted on her. Actually, it’s not just that Kellyanne Conway is pro-Brett Kavanaugh. She’s Not One of Us because ‘She is anti-abortion, and though a survivor of sexual assault, works for a man accused of multiple sexual assaults.’ By which she means Donald Trump.

kellyanne conway