Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

I’ve heard rumors fr@nk s@ntoro has done some shady shit to female cartoonists. Wondering if anything will come of that.

Oh jeez really? I’ve not heard that one.

Yeah my husband has always really liked him, and even did a deluxe reprint of one of his books awhile ago, so it’s pretty disturbing. But it’s just vague rumors at this point, afaik, nothing very concrete.

this story got a little more complicated

I just received this statement from @AsiaArgento in response to the NYT story published late Sunday evening. pic.twitter.com/jAOo7TAULX
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 21, 2018
― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Tuesday, August 21, 2018 11:38 AM (ten hours ago)

honestly who knows, but this smells like BS

Xpost oh I guess I know your husband haha. My publisher and I tried to tap him to write a foreword to one of my things.

Conspicuously missing from that Asia Argento statement is any reference to the pictures of her and Bennett together, which, according to the NYT article, show them in bed with "their unclothed torsos exposed". I don't see how to square that with her claim that she and Bennett never had any sexual relationship.

taking fun photos when kicking it with work friends /= fucking

Xps I doubt it - we’re a tiny press, virtually unknown, and my husband would’ve said yes to something like that! It was a reprint of Bl@st Furn@ce Funnies.

taking fun photos when kicking it with work friends /= fucking

I'm willing to stake all my credibility as an occasional ILX poster on the claim that 99% of adults who take topless photos in bed together have had some kind of sexual relationship.

99% of adults aren't Asia Argento though 🤷‍♀️

More than that probably.

poll

Reports that it was Bourdain who made the payment just add a whole new level of grimness to what already feels like a sad and fucked up situation.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Unsexy-Truth-About-the/244314

Thanks for the link, Milton. By far the most enlightening analysis I've read so far.

very good piece

The most terrible part of the harassment, she said, was not the sexting. It was the exhaustion she felt, the sense of depletion, as she tried and tried, and tried again, to manage this man’s attention and demands. How to respond to late-night texts in a way that would rebuff him without jeopardizing her position at the magazine? How to be available for the work without making herself available to the harassment? How to do all of this with some semblance of grace and repose, without losing all confidence that his interests in her had at least something to do with the quality of her work?

Feel this extremely, wow

Yeah, it's a great piece, and this particular aspect of harassment hasn't received the attention it needs to get.

It's your turn, Gérard Depardieu.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gerard-depardieu-accused-sexual-assault-1138559

Isn't that one where there were already very public accusations way back when? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

Kevin Costner may have been the man of the hour at last week's Academy Awards (his Dances with Wolves walked off with seven Oscars), but it was one of the evening's losers who provided the award season's biggest flap. Gerard Depardieu, who was nominated for Best Actor for Cyrano de Bergerac, was a no- show at the ceremony. Even so, he was at the center of a fire storm over comments about his wild days as a youth.

The ruckus stemmed from a TIME story about the French film star published in late January. Depardieu, 42, was asked about remarks he had made in an interview published in 1978 in the magazine Film Comment in which he described his rough childhood and said, "I had plenty of rapes, too many to count." Asked by a TIME reporter if he had participated in rapes, Depardieu said yes. "But it was absolutely normal in those circumstances," he added. "That was part of my childhood."

That admission, not surprisingly, drew an outcry from women's rights activists, newspaper columnists and others. Depardieu later denied making the statements and threatened a libel suit against TIME and any news organization that reprinted them. "It is perhaps accurate to say that I had sexual experiences at an early age," the actor said in a statement. "But rape -- never. I respect women too much." The TIME interview, which was conducted in French, is on tape. The Depardieu camp contends that his words were mistranslated and that he admitted only to having witnessed rapes. TIME has refused the actor's demand that the passage be retracted.

Anyone who says 'I respect woman too much' is suspect.

*ilx search*

A reminder dude became a Russian citizen for tax evasion purposes.

And because he loves women too much to be on board with Western feminism.

Not surprised.

EXCLUSIVE: NBC threatened Ronan Farrow If he kept reporting on Harvey Weinstein https://t.co/Al5UlHrlsw

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) August 31, 2018

donald trump... welcome to #m oh god I can't even finish typing it

NBC FAKE NEWS, which is under intense scrutiny over their killing the Harvey Weinstein story, is now fumbling around making excuses for their probably highly unethical conduct. I have long criticized NBC and their journalistic standards-worse than even CNN. Look at their license?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018

Moonves out at CBS (six more accusations)

norm macdonald . . . thank's

What about when someone admits to wrongdoing?

The model used to be admit wrongdoing, show complete contrition, and then we give you a second chance. Now it's admit wrongdoing and you're finished. And so the only way to survive is to deny, deny, deny. That's not healthy — that there is no forgiveness. I do think that at some point it will end with a completely innocent person of prominence sticking a gun in his head and ending it. That's my guess. I know a couple of people this has happened to.

Who?

Well, Louis (C.K.) and Roseanne (Barr) are the two people I know. And Roseanne was so broken up [after her show's reboot was cancelled] that I got Louis to call her, even though Roseanne was very hard on Louis before that. But she was just so broken and just crying constantly. There are very few people that have gone through what they have, losing everything in a day. Of course, people will go, "What about the victims?" But you know what? The victims didn't have to go through that.

I have always told you people he's a deeply horrible asshole.

Norm, wtf

What about all this emboldening of racism, though?

I live in L.A., where I'm always faced with the lunacy of the left. I didn't know that the same lunacy existed on the right.

This could be, to the letter, how my cousin in L.A. would respond to that question.

morbz otm

I wonder if Louis CK was like "it's okay to be horribly racist, plz don't kill yourself" and Roseanne was like "oh thanks, its okay to be a sexual predator, plz don't kill yourself" and then went and got ice cream in the full knowledge that both of them are actually good people.

norm is a jordan peterson fan and conservative

there is nothing shocking about him believing this shit

the passing of the baby boomers is going to be a bracing tonic for society

are you including all of them in that generalization? Springsteen? me?

yr already a bracing tonic, ol chap

The model used to be admit wrongdoing, show complete contrition, and then we give you a second chance.

How about a model where, when you have grossly abused your position of power, first we remove you from that position of power, then you show complete contrition, part of which is not merely admitting to wrongdoing, but atoning through your words and your actions and living out your contrition in meaningful ways, so that you earn renewed trust, forgiveness and a second chance? And if you don't like that model, fuck you.

me after reading pretty much every response he gives in that interview

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEPwn47XkAMHMUa.jpg

How about a model where, when you have grossly abused your position of power, first we remove you from that position of power, then you show complete contrition, part of which is not merely admitting to wrongdoing, but atoning through your words and your actions and living out your contrition in meaningful ways, so that you earn renewed trust, forgiveness and a second chance? And if you don't like that model, fuck you.

us Jews call this t'shuvah

calling Norm MacDonald a typical boomer is a little weird, as millennials seem to be his most impassioned fans.

Meantime...

https://jezebel.com/a-star-is-borns-notorious-producer-has-been-sued-for-se-1828957531

I think an element of this which has been noted from time to time, but which seems to be not something people like to talk about, is the complicity of our celebrity culture in this stuff. I don't mean in a patriarchal sense (though that is obviously also very important), I mean the way famous people (especially famous men) are rewarded for being famous with a huge amount of social capital which means they can often get away with indulging their worst impulses without any pushback from any of the people around them. I remember when the first things were coming out about Bill Cosby, so many people were so keen to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think that power always corrupts, but isn't it abundantly clear now there are definitely a substantial group of people who will, if given the impression they can do anything they like, do the most terrible things they can?
Sorry, very long way around to it, but as far as "a model" is concerned, I know the USA always has to view everything as individual choices, but really, fuck all of these abusers, focusing on their comebacks or whatever is just more attention, the attention they were given is what made them feel like they could do this in the first place, fuck their redemption stories, just let them fade into the past and look forward to the day we can judge their work without feeding them our attention.
I think since some of the extended fallout of the Jimmy Savile scandal (att an artist I used to respect a lot (NOT JS obvs) was never jailed for a crime but I am 99% sure he is guilty) I've tried to operate on a zero-hero-worship policy, assume all artists and famous people are flawed human beings and don't put anyone on a pedestal. But obviously this does nothing at all to fix the problem, just takes away some of *my* disappointment when something else is revealed. How to stop people giving celebrities the benefit of the doubt whatever they do? I feel like we are now some of the way along, but there is such a long way still to go.

really good post imo

the other side, and it doesnt outweigh it but its a consideration maybe, is that we show much more interest in the supposed, alleged and proven misdeeds of celebrities than we do of other people who are nothing to do with us.

Typical Norm. Stupid comments. Still a brilliant comedian.

hero worship and putting celebrities on pedestals is never going to go away. Norm is far from alone in his views. as much as there's progress being made in some circles, just as many people are digging their heels in and even going backwards. there is a difference between Louis CK and Bill Cosby and eliding that has led to a lot of people getting off the bus. conflating Aziz Ansari with TJ Miller, Charlie Rose, and even Louis is really counterproductive. it'll be borne out when these guys make their "comebacks," I really don't think they're going to be shunned or rejected for much longer.

Yes, good post, CamaraderieAAL. No worship.

the way famous people (especially famous men) are rewarded for being famous with a huge amount of social capital which means they can often get away with indulging their worst impulses

Perhaps the causality may be the other way round? I mean, the people who become famous are mostly people who very much wanted to be famous. So "famous men" isn't like "left-handed men" or "blue-eyed men." It's a somewhat self-selecting group. Yr Bill Clinton types (or whoever) are obviously already known to have outsized appetites. To my mind, that mindset probably preceded fame.

I'm not saying fame or ambition are automatically bad things or that they're only sought by bad people. But it seems safe to say that "men with insatiable appetites for power over others" overlaps with "men who seek power" which overlaps with "famous men." At no point is there much incentive for that complex of traits to veer toward repect of others, or toward impulse control. Or even toward the obligation to adhere to the basic morality that, one presumes, is for mere mortals.

im trying to find a way to formulate the question of whether, accepting the above contention of a whittled set of shared traits in a self-selecting group, the same or a smilar hunger for fame/celebrity in women manifests itself in ways that have fed into this long and sorry affair and whether the entertainment industry, or any such almost-totally personality driven sphere, is more susceptible to this type of prolonged abuse (i mean theres a lot questionable there but it seems to follow on, or not?)