Skylarker
People come second, or possibly third.
Ah hell I can't resist.And then maybe "politically correct" if we want to take it way, way back.
We did have a person who posted here a while back defending Weinstein and Cosby. The left out Kevin Spacey but I think that was because the point they wanted to make wasn't so much that we should presume innocence but that women are often psychopathic lying harpies sent to destroy men, so Spacey's case wasn't really relevant.
I read that R Kelly's attorneys are very worried that it has come out that he seems to have sexually assaulted at least one male minor and seem to feel that this could really ruin the jurors' opinions of him.
Anyway, I think the term "call-out culture" is better, but I'd really like to know who was "cancelled" just to understand what that means to people.
Last I checked, the way the legal system works over here is indeed under the auspices of presumed innocence. You may not like that, but that's how it works.
I don't think I ever "defended" Cosby or Weinstein on here. That particular exchange wasn't as important to me as it clearly is to you but if I had to guess, what I probably said was that nobody was there but the accusers and the alleged aggressor and therefore in lieu of evidence all you have is one person's word against another's. And nobody should go to jail or lose their careers over that.
Sure it's possible that those men could have abused their positions of power and wealth, even to the point of rape or drugged-addled sexual abuse, but it's also just as possible that the women who accused them (usually MANY YEARS LATER) did so because at the time of the alleged abuse the women were looking to get ahead in the industry. And f***ing guys with power is an easy way to get around the usual protocol.
And whether you like it or not (and again, you don't have to like it) that kind of thing does happen. But then these women, looking back, once fame has either been safely achieved or is deemed definitively unreachable, begin to either purge their youthful tactics by retconning their complicity in the sex OR they become so embittered that the prostitution they resorted to didn't net anything that they invent exaggerations or outright lies about the men who they feel should have catapulted them to the top but didn't.
Because f*** the patriarchy, right? f*** meritocracy. Equality in outcome, etc etc etc. blah blah blah.
Christ.
I think Cosby was a philanderer. No doubt. And that's awful. I think he existed during a long, sprawling paradigm in Hollywood where a culture of free sex and recreational drugs and wanton excess was part and parcel of entering the zip code. And that's a dangerous cocktail to enter into as a young, naive starlet full of ambition because maliciously motivated or not, people are gonna take advantage of you and you're gonna let them. Because that's how substance abuse works.
But show me the famous women -the ones who actually made a name for themselves on their own merit- that Cosby worked with or was in contact with over the years who accused him of abuse.
Yeah. Exactly. There aren't any.
As for Spacey, I don't know. I don't know with any of them. That's my point.
An accusation is not tantamount to proof. Should these things be looked into? Sure. But automatically siding with the accuser...that's just absurd. And it's totally antithetical to how our justice system works.
And you know damn well what "cancel culture" means. It is the phenomena by which, upon being immersed in a sex scandal, a previously successful celebrity has his legacy tarnished and -in a woeful act of looking after their own best interests masquerading as conscientiousness - the studio or record company or whatever drops him. Netflix removes his show. His comedy tour is revoked. His movie deal nixed. Etc etc etc. His children's books are called heretical.
Stop acting like it's an unfair term. It's very apt.
"Call-out" culture is a misnomer because it implies that the one being called out has something to be called out on just by virtue of the fact that somebody says they do. But you bleeding heart types are also the ones who believe that all the black guys in prison for rape and murder and mugging and burglary and drug peddling are all in their cells unfairly framed by whitey.
So which is it...accusation equals guilt or not? You have to decide and then be consistent.
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