Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

Like it may cause a fundamental rethinking of tabloid culture writ large

― Whiney G. Weingarten

peter thiel tried to warn us

profanity standards aside didnt Fatty Arbuckle get the same treatment in 1921?

it's about time this thread had someone show up to argue that every accusation is false and part of a conspiracy, now we can really get down to brass tacks

Is that what you are about to do?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/john-kricfalusi-ren-stimpy-underage-sexual-abuse

oh no :(

ugh. it was 1994 but you don't have to bring back EVERYTHING from the seventies...

damn it.

woah that is some fucked up and gross behaviour

very gross. fuck that.

i couldn't stomach the new R&S but as the article makes clear, he continued to work with so many different people on big projects. now it's like this sickness intertwined into the culture. hopefully that will end.

"Call the police," indeed.

that's a terrible story but this line:"Creators of shows including SpongeBob SquarePants, Adventure Time, and Rick and Morty have cited Ren & Stimpy as an influence" well, yeah, duh. I mean, would they deny that this was influential? I'm not saying 'separate the art from the artist' but it's like saying Woody Allen hasn't been influential. doesn't make him not a fucking creep.

it provides context for the many people who may be unfamiliar with a 25-year-old cult cartoon

And I don't think anyone, the creators or the author, were trying to make him any less of a creep.

his fame has to mentioned as part of explaining why he was able to get away with it in several instances and for so long; he is genuinely beloved by many animators and animation fans for his work.

the many people who may be unfamiliar with a 25-year-old cult cartoon

the new Micky Mouse cartoon is 100% a R&S ripoff. and as mentioned in the article, he recently did animation work for Weird Al and design work for Miley Cyrus. he was still getting work.

Don’t forget the Bjork video!

that one... not so recent

sorry, i was just caught up in naming John K stuff :(

sad sean penn story about his sad book and sad #metoo poem that he included in his book. someone put him on an island somewhere.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-penn-bob-honey-who-just-do-stuff-review_us_5ab9a1bee4b008c9e5fa89a2

sorry if already linked to. you probably don't even need to look at it to be honest.

he was still getting work.

The Weird Al video was 12 years ago.

the Bangerz tour wasn't

His output has slowed down, but he enjoys a living-legend stature that prompted 3,562 people to fund a Kickstarter campaign for his short Cans Without Labels, which he screened at a prestigious animation film festival in 2016. He made art for Miley Cyrus’s 2014 Bangerz tour; he animated two credit sequences on The Simpsons, the most recent in 2015. His portrait still hangs on the wall at Nickelodeon.

The article just came out yesterday.

this is a weird thing to argue about

lots of people have made art for pop stars and have 3500 kickstarter supporters; this guy is famous for a cable tv show made a quarter of a century ago. the article, as it should, provided context for why he is more notable than a garden-variety pedo asshole. not everyone who reads buzzfeed is an animation nerd like (apparently) ilxors

i mean, that is also, literally, how you write articles

personally i learned a lot about the concept of time

if he was most productive when being a sexual predator, the slowdown in productivity is probably not so bad. kind of guessing he won't be getting much work anytime soon

All the sentences in the Buzzfeed article about the cartoons he's influenced and the work he gets all seemed pretty value-neutral to me

I guess the word "still" is confusing, but I assumed it meant "still there after making money for them, like, a quarter century ago" vs "still there despite being the open secret that he's a creep"

*despite the

this is a weird thing to argue about

yeah, I'm not quite sure what the argument here is. of course someone whose peak was in the '90s is going to have a slower rate of creative output in the 2010s, that doesn't make the actual story any less horrifying

Sorry, I had misinterpreted the line of conversation to mean that "John K was still getting work despite the open secret that he's a creep" with an accusatory eye towards Weird Al and Miley. To which I responded about the article coming out yesterday as if to say "yeah, but how open of a secret was it? do you really think Miley Cyrus is keeping up with cartoon-industry gossip from 15 years ago?" I realize that I was mistaken and am sorry, but brad's comment made me lol at my desk, so I guess it was worth it.

the way i interpreted that string of messages was someone said "who cares about this guy and some cult show from 25 years ago". and i responded "he was still getting work" hence the Weird Al/Miley, not to accuse them but to say, he's not just some forgotten rando from a quarter century ago with no current impact on pop culture

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/popular-feminism-structural-rage/

Junot Diaz stories out this morning...

disappointing but also somewhat irritated by the reaction that 'he is claiming childhood abuse to cover for this'. really? in my experience people who were abused as children sometimes grow up to do some fucking horrible things.

AFAICT the annoyance for people is more that in the piece he left the reader with the distinct impression that the only extent to which he "hurt" women in his life was via infidelity

How not to respond

Diaz’s agent — ignoring multiple request for comment from @BuzzFeedNews — gave a statement to the Times not disputing the allegations:

“I take responsibility for my past. That is the reason I made the decision to tell the truth of my rape and its damaging aftermath." https://t.co/ZIQ6GToJ7E

— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) May 4, 2018

oh

I haven't seen any "claiming" child abuse hot takes. For the most part people believe his trauma but also were suspect about the timing and how he relegated the women he hurt as bit player collateral damage.

Of the three highest-profile Weinstein-like cases up here, one of them plunked himself down in the seat in front of me at a Hot Docs screening this morning. (The Fourth Estate, about Trump and the New York Times--pretty good, but a bit heavy on the deification of reporters.) He's a political on-air guy at a public TV station.

I was interested how he's greeted in public. I'm sure Weinstein gets confronted wherever he goes, but this guy is nothing like that--I think most people were really surprised when the story broke. (Which means nothing; Bill Cosby was Cliff Huxtable.) Do people avoid the subject or address it when talking to him?

Two guys sitting adjacent to him--I don't think friends, he was alone--brought up the accusations against him immediately, inquiring as to how he was making out. I heard him say "It's still being resolved," to which the one guy said "It's already been resolved in the court of public opinion." Not sure if that's true or not.

The film took a five-minute detour into Bill O'Reilly's resignation. I looked over at him, thinking "Wow, that must be awkward." I'll resist any attempt to read his body language during this segment.

charlie rose I assume? why not just say who it was?

If it's who I think it is (do you want to avoid directly name him?), then my sense is that most people accept that it's resolved in his favour. At least that's the media consensus.

disappointing but also somewhat irritated by the reaction that 'he is claiming childhood abuse to cover for this'. really? in my experience people who were abused as children sometimes grow up to do some fucking horrible things.

― akm, Friday, May 4, 2018 12:47 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a toxic, deterministic attitude. Many people abused in childhood grow up to be wonderful, loving people. If we push this idea in society of the cyclical or pay it forward theory of abuse what are we saying to young survivors? "oh, you're going to be fucking evil when you grow up, too bad".

Not Charlie Rose, no--I'm in Toronto. Charlie Rose is famous enough that I'd name him. Jmm knows who I mean. I probably shouldn't even post--he's just out seeing a movie. It feels slightly less of an ambush if I don't name him.

I heard that the court of public opinion is worse than jail time so you could be on to something there.

Yerac letting it rip today. I can dig it.

rong

Clemenza, seems a bit unfair to compare SP to Weinstein at this point?
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/04/27/tvos-steve-paikin-cleared-of-wrongdoing-by-independent-investigator.html