Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan (fka All Gas No Brakes)

when I saw him on Office Hours I did wonder how well adjusted this guy might be, given that he's spent his entire adult life living in an RV trying to find the craziest people in the country and just going wherever they lead him. I mean it's kind of the central point of this whole documentary, when you surround yourself with a certain type of person you can't help but become one of them yourself. sucks to hear about this though.

as for the movie I thought it was pretty good, I think it gets to the core of the issue which is not so much the political stuff but rather the "information war". he did a good job portraying Alex Jones as conniving and even kind of savvy, though I wonder if Andrew knew how much he himself was playing into that by actually appearing on his show. I was worried he was going a bit out of his way to make the leader of the Proud Boys look cool but he does drive home that the dude is nothing but a grifter himself who sells Biden merch on the side. agree that it was kind of anti-climactic, Andrew getting Covid while the insurrection was going on was a pretty lame way to end it but I guess it fits, since the entire movement didn't amount to much anyway. I still think about that one dude exiting the Capitol telling the other rioters "eh, nothing's really going on in there"

also hell of a sting at the ending regarding the YouTube conspiracy dude, was not expecting that

Becoming what? One of the bad people? Sounds like he's been a pest (to put it mildest?) going back to high school. You must know this is present in all sorts of groups.

right but he has been doing this since high school. just saying I can't imagine he has a whole lot of normal relationships in his life. also don't wanna insinuate it's because he's hanging around these right wing fringe groups but I imagine there's a sort of nihilism when you surround yourself with the types of people in his videos. obviously there are certain industries, industries with a lot of high-profile men in them, that are just rife with this sort of behavior. not gonna excuse anything though, I guess I'm glad I saw this before this came out cuz I wouldn't wanna see it now

well I canned my Patreon support on the basis of that. Seems all-too-credible to me, what a disappointment.

seems to be making the rounds on Twitter now, from the looks of it this has been going on since before AGNB and is likely why he got booted from Quarter Confessions. appears to be a real pattern too, not just a "he gets sexually aggressive when drunk" thing (which is obviously shitty too, but unfortunately pretty common with young famous men)

this one sucks because along with Louie CK he was supposed to be "one of the good ones" and now hearing this makes me think of his work a lot different, especially the "projection" bit at the end of this movie. hoping the whole Channel 5 thing gets dropped and that the people I still like (for instance Tim Heidecker) stop working with him immediately

Tim Heidecker talks about it at the beginning on Office Hours, looks like they're not involved with him anymore. he seems really shaken up about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWzqSF8PEhM

ugh, what a fucking mess.

I think he handled that as well as you could

I am very much not a fan of the “as a father of a daughter” routine

true, but i liked that he didn't linger on that too long and instead turned the focus towards how he wants his son to grow up and behave around women.

Yeah I think he realized he was doing it and quickly changed it

Wild to me that Tim is a pep-pep

I mean I have a daughter it's true it does change how you look at these things

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/andrew-callaghan-responds-allegations-sexual-assault-1235488040/

fucking awful response

"Andrew is fully committed to working with the appropriate professionals to better understand himself and ways he can grow and improve as a human being, especially with his growing platform and the vulnerabilities it brings.”

fuck you forever IMO

extortion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Channel5ive/comments/10ah34u/the_actual_message_andrews_team_refers_to_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

good lord, HBO money should be able to buy you a better line of bullshit than that.

Probably the worst possible response. Unbelievable

are the "multiple sides" to come or was that referring back to, like, well, don't ask me for money though. ffs.

I mean there generally aren't good responses to these things but ffs implying blackmail when you know the actual message is "now that you have HBO money feel free to kick in some for the therapy I have to go to because of you" is pretty far down the list

only seeing women as people once you have a daughter should be a punishable offense imo
if it changes your mind about women, you've got WORK TO DO beyond parenting

i have been following this story even though i truly didn't know who this guy was before he was outed as a slimeball

I mean there generally aren't good responses to these things but ffs implying blackmail when you know the actual message is "now that you have HBO money feel free to kick in some for the therapy I have to go to because of you" is pretty far down the list

― frogbs, Friday, 13 January 2023 14:21 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it doesn't seem crazy to me that you'd read that message and infer that the writer is suggesting they might expose the subject unless a donation is made, or at least that they might be less likely to expose them if given money? This doesn't necessarily make Callaghan any more sympathetic, but I don't understand why so may people are talking like it's far-fetched to see an implicit threat there

i don't see it personally and he is also transparently inviting more abuse for this person

cool guy hope he explodes

yes i want him to melt completely.

it is genuinely physically sickening to see men (ones I know personally as well as ones I don't like the above video) reveal that before they reproduced and a daughter came out, they didn't think about "this stuff" (sexual coercion and assault) very closely. it's -- i don't have words for it tbh. it's sickening.

It’s like “I just discovered females exist and they have feelings and rights”

From like 2000-2010 I tried to get men--friends, strangers, neighbors, ilxors--to care about street harassment/sexual assault of women in public spaces and never succeeded, so totally yes it is sickening and also it's just. so. boring. that we can't ever move the conversation any further along, we're still doing this.

I despair.

he is also transparently inviting more abuse for this person

yeah it's absolutely horrific and dangerous. i'm disgusted that he has chosen to respond this way.

idk I personally don't think it's like that exactly, just that when you have children every time you hear any story about someone the same age you think "that could be my kid". like the St. Judes commercials now make me genuinely emotional whereas in the past they were just sad. I mean obviously yeah it sucks that some people genuinely never think about this sort of thing but I'm hoping the last 10 years has made some progress on that front

everyone knows parenting changes people in countless ways. that is not controversial. again, it's the idea that it's virtuous (and worth saying out loud in an exculpatory fashion) to rely on one's own children for this type of enlightenment that sickens me personally. it's proof that many men thought differently before.

using your children as a source for this type of enlightenment makes it very clear that reproducing is what it took for the enlightenment to occur -- that before, they didn't give it much consideration. there is not any doubt of the feelings.

i have now paraphrased this twice.

LL otm

Beheading for anyone who says “As a father of daughters”

well yeah if you didn't think about "this stuff" at all before than that's on you

Callaghan's response is especially shitty because he thinks that one text is the smoking gun that this was a shakedown (which it didn't quite read that way to me and also doesn't preclude the facts that the things he's accused of happened), but the accusor also posted another video with tons of messages from other women who had similar things happen to them and he's seems content to ignore all those to try to portray this as made up extortion

I thought it was bullshit of Variety to publish her name, especially if you're gonna mention the extortion claims. I am guessing you could find it if you were looking but still dont do that

xp RIGHT only i would omit "at all" and swap for "closely/deeply enough"

i just searched ILX for threads about consent and the one i clicked on (about alcohol use, rape, and consent) contains what may be the angriest posts i have ever posted
it's from 2006!!

use your parental status to teach your kids about consent (i am not in favor of beheading)

One possibility that the ability for people to articulate almost any position at all, as well as inability to defend that position if questioned, has degraded to the point where any statement gets crouched in personalized Appeals to Identity.

And so you get the “As a” construction for declaring one’s position or opinion on anything far more often that would think one should. It’s not that somebody didn’t believe a thing before having that identify, it’s that they add that in as extra moral weight to the argument. You can’t make appeals to some sorta universal value or norm because those have lost credibility.

Of course, this changes when it comes to reactionaries, who really don’t see the problem with a thing that affects other until it has some palpable impact to someone in their sphere if not themselves.

non-discussed point and tangential to the larger issue so forgive me but: one of the many unpleasant and tin-eared elements of the "as a father" construction is that it presumes that having a child imbues the speaker with a level of compassion and insight unavailable to the non-breeder which has been disproven by many if not most of the parents i know.

well right I mean when Uvalde happened when talking about it with people who aren't parents I wouldn't bring up the fact that I myself have kids because I don't want to imply "it hits me different because I'm a father". though in reality it kinda does! like, not compared against other people, but to myself before I had kids, especially since I drop my kids off at an elementary school that is also by a wide margin Hispanic, so yeah I have to think about it constantly

part of the objection is not that your perspective isn't valid, just that it's not necessary or helpful to invoke it in a situation where you and your experience simply isn't the story. cf "i have lots of black friends" or "my cousin is gay" or "i can say it because i grew up around here"

perhaps it's an "as a me" rather than an "as a father"

xpost

xp
That's valid, but we're moving away from the crucial point that the father/daughter statement isn't really about being a parent (though I agree with forks on that aspect), it's about gender and othering. Why do you relate to the abstract category of "woman" differently after you've fathered a woman? Why didn't that happen when you partnered with one? Or via the relationship with your own mother? When you hear about men being assaulted does that feel different from hearing about women (and if so, why)?

sure but parenthood IS different than those things, when your kid gets hurt and goes to the ER it's a hundred times worse than having to go for yourself even though you aren't feeling any actual physical pain, which I don't think you would say about your black friends or gay cousin. totally agreed that saying it out loud isn't ever really helpful but I'll still defend Tim Heidecker here because he clearly just doesn't know what to say besides "I believe them and we aren't working with him anymore"

That's valid, but we're moving away from the crucial point that the father/daughter statement isn't really about being a parent (though I agree with forks on that aspect), it's about gender and othering. Why do you relate to the abstract category of "woman" differently after you've fathered a woman? Why didn't that happen when you partnered with one? Or via the relationship with your own mother? When you hear about men being assaulted does that feel different from hearing about women (and if so, why)?

I mean if it happened the other way around I'd probably feel the same way but when you're talking about this sort of sexually predatory behavior it is like 99% men. either way idk if it's so much that you "relate to women" now as it is the idea of someone taking advantage of your child in a way that scars them is a sickening and infuriating thought, as is the thought that Callaghan was only like 17 when he started doing this which is still pretty damn young, and it also terrifies me to think my son could somehow turn out that way

Oh, well tbc, thinking about the actual parenting aspects of this problem seems like a normal, good, and responsible reaction to me!

But that isn't really what saying "as a father of daughters" signifies in the wider world, as La Lechera already addressed. Even if one means it to indicate parental concerns, it would be better to find a more precise way to say that—the shorthand implies a belated and doubtful arrival at basic human empathy, which also inadvertently (?) gives men who aren't parents, including abusers, permission to postpone feeling or acting on that empathy until they're adults, or possibly never.

Well fuck. I was hoping this dude was better than that. Especially as an aspiring reporter working in the social media medium. Kill your idols indeed.

he's put out a video response which I watched 10 seconds of it before closing it

nm just watched it

better than I expected which is not saying much because the bar was right above the earth's molten core

he asks if his victims would reach out for an apology - well the last time one of them reached out, you framed it as extortion, fuck you

I thought it was a good apology.

Seemed to take actual ownership which to me, is the only bar for a good apology and sadly is not hit by a lot of celebrities in these situations. If he does what he says he’s going to do re: 12 step, therapy, stepping away from public life, then it seems like he has himself on a good track to change.