Harvey Weinstein…

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

Harvey Weinstein goes down in flames as anger of Hollywood women ignites

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PDT - Wednesday, October 18, 2017



IT IS hard to imagine anything less alluring than the sight of portly, hirsute Harvey Weinstein naked in the shower, but the Miramax movie mogul offered actress Ashley Judd that dubious erotic opportunity when he lured her up to his hotel room back in 1997.

At least that is what Judd claims and, since she is just one of a long phalanx of actresses and female employees hammering Weinstein with accusations of sexual harassment, it is not hard to believe her. Oscar winners Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow are two of the biggest Hollywood figures to claim Weinstein has used his imposing power in the film industry to pressure women into getting intimate with him. Actress Rose McGowan calls Weinstein “my rapist” and does not mean it euphemistically.

Apparently this behavior has been going on for decades and was such an open secret that, when Seth MacFarlane made it a point of satire while hosting the 2013 Academy Awards, everyone got the joke. Making a segue to the supporting actress nominees, MacFarlane said, “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.”

The once fearsome, bullying titan of the independent film industry has been brought low by reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker that exposed his very dirty laundry. The board of the movie company that Weinstein built with his brother, Bob, has fired him. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revoked membership from the multiple-Oscar-winner. The Producers Guild is moving to expel him. Police in London and New York are investigating him for sexual assault. Democratic politicians, like Hillary Clinton, who benefited from his largesse are condemning him. He is being treated as a pariah across the entire film industry, from international film festivals to Weinstein peers, such as former Disney boss Jeffrey Katzenberg. And his wife has left him.

Weinstein will be showering alone for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, it is not hard to imagine that other powerful men in Hollywood are jumping at shadows, terrified that their own peccadillos and perversions will be exposed by women they have misused.

Since the birth of the movie business, starlets have often been expected to advance their careers by submitting to the desires of powerful studio executives, producers and directors. Lurid references to “the casting couch” are a Hollywood cliché. The fact that, for so very long, this exploitation was treated as something harmless, a humorously titillating tradition, a standard business practice, now seems as weird and antiquated as witch burning.

The balance of power seems finally to be shifting. Women in Hollywood are no longer staying silent, fearing that resistance will ruin their careers. One woman who set a fine example for others is the late, great Carrie Fisher who is most widely remembered as Princess Leia from “Star Wars”. When a screenwriter friend, Heather Robinson, told Fisher that a Sony producer had promised to wreck Robinson's career because she had rebuffed his sexual advances, Fisher took action. She sent the producer a cow tongue inside a Tiffany box. The note Fisher enclosed with the box read, “If you ever touch my darling Heather or any other woman again, the next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box.”

Women of Hollywood, may the force be with you.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-weinstein-women-20171018-story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Rich white-trash and their dicks, eh?

NOTE: I won't mention the “J” word because some people have extremely thin-skins.

They tend to froth at the mouth and spout the “A” hyphen “S” words whenever the “J” word gets mentioned.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

#MeToo: Real men stand with women as allies against harassment

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PDT - Thursday, October 19, 2017



SEXUALLY AGGRESIVE CREEPS like Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill O'eilly and — yes — Donald Trump seem to think harassing women to the point of unwelcome groping or worse is a male prerogative. It's just boys being boys and men being men the way nature intended. Maybe they are right if we believe men have not advanced beyond primitive cave dwellers.

However, for every Stone Age, brain-in-his-pants male running loose in a fraternity, locker room, construction site, executive suite or Trump casino, there is at least one man — and, I would argue, many more — who knows how to be a gentleman in the fullest sense. These are real men who respect women, not just with fatuous words when everyone is listening, but in private when a man's real character shows its face.

Disgraced movie mogul Weinstein now insists that he deeply admires and honors women. After all, isn't he a card-carrying Hollywood liberal? A major donor to the Democratic Party? A big supporter of Hillary Clinton? Well, if his many accusers are correct, it seems his admiration and respectfulness and progressive politics fell away on quite a few occasions when he was alone with females over whom he held substantial power. Like Bill Clinton before he was chastened by impeachment, Weinstein's sole priority was to satisfy the wolf inside him.

Metaphorically, casting couches are not confined to executive offices in Hollywood. They exist in all kinds of workplaces, from the military and college campuses to big-box stores and fast-food restaurants. In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, hundreds of thousands of American women have been logging into social media with the hashtag “#MeToo”. The message from each of them is, “I, also, have been sexually harassed” — by male bosses, by male co-workers, by male cops, by male teachers, by male relatives, by male family friends, by male strangers.

Women who have suffered harassment need to know that the old cliches, such as “all men are alike” or “all men want the same thing” are fallacious. There is an army of men who are very different from the brutish stereotype. When I think about the males of various ages that I know well — my friends, my closest work colleagues, my son and son-in-law and their good friends — I can testify that there is not one among them who would harass a woman at work or sexually exploit a women under his supervision. This is not because I live in a hippy-dippy West Coast bubble. These men include cowboys as well as cartoonists; Republicans as well as Democrats; Christians as well as atheists and agnostics; a college soccer coach, an electric car engineer, a state governor, a high-tech entrepreneur, an airline pilot, a musician, a police officer, a personal trainer, a banker, a philanthropist, several attorneys, a couple of professors and, not surprisingly, a gaggle of journalists.

These guys are not wimps or losers or in any way less than male. They are quite accomplished. At least some of them are pretty darn buff and attractive. Certainly, they are all sexual beings with the usual desires, but I cannot imagine any one of them forcing himself on a woman who did not welcome his attention. I cannot picture any of them making offensive remarks to pretty women walking by, let alone claiming license to fondle a female because of some sick sense of entitlement. They just do not live that way.

It is not just that they respect women, they also respect themselves. They do not want or need to be the kind of guy who is driven to prove his illusory sexual prowess by aggressive targeting of any unlucky woman who arouses his animal instincts. Neither I, nor the many admirable males I know, claim to be perfectly enlightened, but I do not think that is what most women are demanding. What they want is a man who gets it; a guy who masters his carnal urges and aspires to be a fair, compassionate, civilized human being.

Women need to be assured there are men they can count on as allies when some jerk with more authority than he deserves and far more self-regard than is justified tries to exert his droit du seigneur to exploit a woman in a workplace or at a party or on the street. There are good guys. We are here. And, if you are looking for someone to stand with you, we say, “me, too”.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-me-too-20171018-story.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from Fairfax NZ....

Sick of alpha males? #MeToo!

By ROSEMARY McLEOD | 11:41AM — Thursday, 26 October 2017


Harvey Weinstein and wife Georgina Chapman ararrive at the 89th Academy Awards
in Hollywood. — Photograph: Reuters.

THE MORE I SEE OF MEN, the more I like dogs, as witty old Madame de Stael famously put it — and she knew the very top dogs of her time.

Just watch dogs greeting each other and you'll see human behaviour. They quickly establish, in this order, who last had the more interesting meal, the sex of the other dog, and who's going to be on top, because there always has to be a top dog and a self-abasing bottom dog who's prepared to lie on its back and have the other pretend to tear its throat out. Often that dog is cute and cuddly. Sound familiar?

I wince at these mute dialogues, seeing in them the traditional role of many women around alpha males. I'm all for the #MeToo consciousness-raising exercise currently on the Internet, in which women admit to bad sexual experiences they've had, but suspect that there is still much to learn about ourselves as animals.

There seems to be a kind of ingrained subservience in some women, a perhaps reluctant willingness to just give in in the face of smug, self-loving males who suck all the oxygen out of a room. We mentally shrink ourselves back into something smaller and more limited, because we know we'll never get a word in edgewise or, being female, be listened to if we succeed in some feeble half-baked way at getting a point across. But we don't like it. We just go through the subservient motions.

There is a term for one male workplace behaviour, the pelvic tilt, a display so blatant the male might as well be a dog, often involving one or both legs hooked over the sides of a chair so their gonads stare you brashly in the face. I've seen this accompanied by finger-clicking to a young assistant to get her to fetch a file a couple of feet away.

There's a coded dominance in after-lunch odour too, when alpha males reek of garlic and wine, suggesting they can afford expensive restaurant meals known as "business lunches" while you eat your peanut butter sandwiches at your desk. Wise women know this is preferable to being invited along to those prestige lunches in order to be groped or “invited upstairs”.

The current run of old men being called to account for alpha behaviour runs so true to form that women all recognise it. In the dog world, age makes you arthritic and slow, which you may be sure applies to Fox News's lecherous Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly, and the heinous Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, if they would only admit it.

Stripped of money and power they'd be seen for what they are, old and unattractive men, but they've been top dogs so long they act like impotence is a foreign country, and women are panting to lie down for them and wag their fluffy tails. They're doglike in that there is no more to their idea of a sexual encounter than a whiff of perfume and a body. Women, being more complex, don't enjoy it, feel demeaned, and they just don't get why.

It's all about money, because money is power, and powerful dogs (not necessarily pedigrees) always end up on top, these grubby forays echoing the way dogs — and cats — mark their territory with pee. There may be younger, more pleasant men around the office, but the old dog's piddle blocks them out.

Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor brought in $US147.13 million in advertising to the network last year, we're told this week, so you get why the Murdoch executives wanted to keep him on. Money counts for more than good manners in that world. It can buy any whining woman off, while men without it go to jail for less.

On a lighter note, anger being a waste of time, the appointment of 93-year-old Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe as a World Health Organisation goodwill ambassador is almost as good a joke as Donald Trump becoming President of the United States. China is reportedly a friend of the old dictator, and Russian hackers have been credited with creating Trump's election victory by spreading fake facts about his opponent. This is how modern wars are fought.

I like Jacinda Ardern's relentless positivity in the face of this tired and grubby world, then. It's refreshing. I'm hoping the local alphas will sit when they're told to, and don't strain too hard on the leash.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/98205394

[aDjUsToR]

"I won't mention the “J” word because some people have extremely thin-skins."


KTJ you appear to be an anti semitic Jewish supremacy conspiracy theorist kook. It's funny how many "caring" and "aware" (barf/eye-roll ) lefties are like that when you scratch the surface.

[aDjUsToR]

"Sick of alpha males? #MeToo!"

Lefties always cover for celebrity lefty predators though. Lefties don't really care about principles. All that matters to most of them is that you are in the correct ideological clique.

Oh and beta males tend not to make good leaders, soldiers or cops. As you were.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

So........Trump's professional 24/7 bullshit artist is acting as Trump's mouthpiece 'cause Trump is too gutless to front up himself.


from The Washington Post....

All of the women who have accused Trump of sexual
harassment are lying, the White House says

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the “official White House position”
on the issue during a news briefing.

By JOHN WAGNER | 3:48PM EDT - Friday, October 27, 2017


White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks to reporters at a news briefing at the White House.
 — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.

ALL THE WOMEN who have accused President Trump of sexual harassment are lying, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday when asked for the official White House position on the issue.

The question was posed during a White House briefing at a time when numerous men in high-profile positions have been undercut of late by allegations of sexual misconduct, including journalist Mark Halperin, who faced accusations this week from former colleagues.

“Obviously, sexual harassment has been in the news,” Jacqueline Alemany of CBS News asked Sanders. “At least 16 women accused the president of sexually harassing them throughout the course of the campaign. Last week, during a press conference in the Rose Garden, the president called these accusations ‘fake news’. Is the official White House position that all of these women are lying?”

“Yeah, we've been clear on that from the beginning, and the president's spoken on it,” Sanders said, before quickly pivoting to another reporter to ask a question.

During the Rose Garden news conference that Alemany referenced, Trump was asked about allegations made by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on his television show, “The Apprentice”. She has accused Trump of forcibly kissing her and touching her breast.

“All I can say is it's totally fake news. It's just fake. It's fake. It's made-up stuff, and it's disgraceful, what happens, but that happens in the — that happens in the world of politics,” Trump told reporters.

Eleven women came forward during the 2016 campaign to accuse the then-Republican presidential candidate of unwanted touching or kissing. Other women accused Trump of walking in on them when they were undressing at beauty pageants he owned.

Besides Halperin, other men whose behavior has been called into question in recent weeks include Bill O’Reilly, the star Fox News anchor who was ousted less than a year after Roger Ailes, the network's co-founder; and Harvey Weinstein, once regarded as one of the most influential figures in the entertainment business.

• John Wagner is a national political reporter covering the White House for The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • ‘My pain is everyday’: After Weinstein's fall, Trump accusers wonder: Why not him?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/10/27/all-of-the-women-who-have-accused-trump-of-sexual-harassment-are-lying-the-white-house-says