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Tag: ronan farrow
Feinstein Urges Delay After New Sexual Misconduct Allegation Against Kavanaugh

Feinstein Urges Delay After New Sexual Misconduct Allegation Against Kavanaugh

The New Yorkerreported on Sunday night that Senate Democrats are investigating a second accusation of sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Reported by staff writers Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, the story includes an extensive interview with Deborah Ramirez, 53, who says the incident occurred during their freshman year together at Yale University.

Ramirez agreed to be interviewed when the magazine contacted her. She said that she recalls a drunken dormitory party where Kavanaugh thrust his exposed penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Kavanaugh denied that the incident ever occurred, calling it a “smear” in a statement distributed by the White House.

According to the New Yorker, the story has spurred controversy among their Yale classmates, some of whom supported Ramirez’s  account while others backed Kavanaugh’s denial.

But as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared to hear testimony this week from Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, at least one of its members asked Sunday night that any further action be postponed pending a full investigation of both charges.

“I am writing to request an immediate postponement of any further proceedings related to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh,” wrote Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, in a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee chair. “I also ask that the newest allegations of sexual misconduct be referred to the FBI for investigation….We need a fair, independent process that will gather all the facts, interview all the witnesses, and ensure that the Committee receives a full and impartial report.”

Kavanaugh is already under heavy scrutiny following Ford’s accusation that he assaulted her in an attempted rape during a drunken high school party when both were teenagers in suburban Maryland. He categorically denied ever attending the party described by Ford or participating in any such attack.

#MeToo: How I Learned What Predators Like Weinstein Do To Women Every Day

#MeToo: How I Learned What Predators Like Weinstein Do To Women Every Day

OK then,  #MeToo.
Long ago and far away, I had an academic superior who enjoyed sexually humiliating younger men. There was unwanted touching—always in social situations–but mainly it was about making suggestive remarks hinting that being a “hunk” was how I’d gotten hired.
My “pretty little wife,” as she was insultingly called, got to stand there and watch. We had no idea how to defend ourselves. There was a second guy in my department, also an administrator with power over one’s career, who made a practice of inviting younger men on manly hikes in the woods and making aggressive passes.
It was a thoroughly poisonous atmosphere. I knew that to complain would invite ruin: initially through what’s now called “gaslighting”—claiming I’d imagined everything—followed by accusations of sexual panic and homophobia.
A definite no-win situation.
Ironically, life in a New England college town had been among my Arkansas wife’s girlhood dreams. Instead, she found herself patronized to her face when she opened her mouth—always by academics, never ordinary New Englanders, I should stipulate.  
I quit before they could fire me.
But it was a real learning experience. In consequence, although definitely not Mr. Sensitive, when it comes to sexual abuse I’ve always understood what women are talking about.
Much of the time, it isn’t even about desire—apart from the desire to put you down and keep you there.
Yet my situation was far less threatening than that of the women preyed upon by disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein,  and so many others confronting harassment or worse. First, there was no possibility of physical force. Second, my antagonists’ power was limited to the precincts of one provincial academic department.
All I had to do was walk away.
No harm, no foul.
Not so with Weinstein. As the head honcho at one of the most successful movie companies in the world, he had the wherewithal to advance or ruin an actress’s entire career. Based upon first-person accounts in Ronan Farrow’s lengthy New Yorkerexpose, he was a calculating predator who set the same trap repeatedly in luxury hotel suites in New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris.
He’d invite a young actress to meeting in his hotel suite, greet her with drink in hand wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and then pounce, sometimes violently. A bigtime Democratic donor, Weinstein followed the script as written by Donald J. Trump. You remember how it goes: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
If certain of the New Yorker allegations could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt —alas, they probably cannot—Weinstein belongs not in some luxury European rehab but an American penitentiary. He’s more than a sexual harasser; he’s a rapist.
Also, apparently, a bully in other ways. “Lucky me,” commented the British actress Kate Winslet, “I somehow dodged that bullet. The fact that I’m never going to have to deal with Harvey Weinstein again as long as I live is one of the best things that’s ever happened and I’m sure the feeling is universal.”
Although he’s produced humane films such as Good Will Hunting, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, and Shakespeare in Love, tales of his temper tantrums are indeed universal.
That said, Weinstein didn’t invent the concept of the Hollywood casting couch nor the louche sexual ethics of the movie business generally. Trading sexual favors for sought-after parts is as old as the theater. The ancient Greek dramatists Sophocles and Euripides were famous for their adventurous love lives. Indeed, one of the most interesting articles to emerge from the Weinstein affair appeared in Slate, recounting a British fan magazine’s 1956 expose titled “The Perils of Show Business.”
Incongruously illustrated with cheesecake photos, it featured the following rules from actress Marigold Russell that working women everywhere would be well-advised to heed: “One: when you have to talk business, stick to offices—and office hours. Two: refer invitations and offers to your agent. Three: don’t give your home phone number, give your agent’s.”
Actress and director Sarah Polley writes that her agent wouldn’t let her meet Weinstein alone when she was 19, which told her all she needed to know. She also figured that “the idea of making people care about [Hollywood sexual predation] seemed as distant an ambition as pulling the sun out of the sky.”
Me, I’m so vain that I can’t imagine wanting intimacy with somebody that didn’t want me back. Which in the final analysis makes a bully like Weinstein seem almost pathetic to me, although not to his victims, I’m sure.
Awful as he is, there’s also something smug and ugly about these ritual media stonings. For a columnist like the New York Times’ Bret Stephens to write that Weinstein’s “repulsive face turns out to be the spitting image of his putrescent soul” strikes me as seriously over the line.
 We sinless pundits hide carefully behind our bylines.
Ronan Farrow Might Just Make His Mark As The Anti-Piers Morgan

Ronan Farrow Might Just Make His Mark As The Anti-Piers Morgan

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times

Piers Morgan out, Ronan Farrow in.

On Sunday, CNN confirmed that “Piers Morgan Live” will be ending next month, proving that a large Twitter following and pedigree of minor non-journalistic celebrity (though a former editor, Morgan, 48, was mostly known as a judge on “Britain’s” and then “America’s Got Talent”) does not necessarily a successful news host make.

Then on Monday, MSNBC debuted the first hour of “Ronan Farrow Daily,” proving that a large Twitter following and a pedigree of minor non-journalistic celebrity (though a contributor to many news organizations including this one, Farrow, 26, is mostly known as the super-smart son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen) remain acceptable news host credentials nonetheless.

Forget the judging panel on “American Idol,” or even the Leno/ Fallon, Fallon/ Meyers handoff; it’s the hosts of our cable news shows that mirror the increasingly messy line between social and media, between profession and personality.

While Farrow was earnestly interviewing former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen and David Axelrod on Monday about the crisis in Ukraine, many people were far more interested in reacting to Morgan’s ouster on Twitter and the blogosphere. Some did so in joy, a few in woe, but most wondered why Morgan had failed so spectacularly in the prime-time slot that Larry King made famous (before beginning to fail there himself.)

Just as if we didn’t know. He tanked because he’s insufferable.

Morgan would like everyone to believe that Americans didn’t warm to him because he was a “British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing.” Never mind that many news hosts and commentators have been outspoken about gun control or that with our near-hysteria devotion to “Downton Abbey,” Kate Middleton and Benedict Cumberbatch, most Americans have all but applied for dual citizenship with the U.K.

No, it wasn’t the cricket references or the football (as in soccer) issue. Morgan failed as a host because he was smug, arrogant, condescending and thin-skinned. He failed because he was more interested in keeping his name in the news than in the news itself.

As recently as two weeks ago, when a guest (transgender author and activist Janet Mock) complained about the sensationalistic nature of Morgan’s questions, he “apologized” by having her back on the show and reprimanded her for the caustic response on Twitter. When Stephen Colbert sent up Morgan’s response and interviewed Mock, Morgan continued to rant on social media.

Watching him repeatedly foment his own controversy, then “report” in high dudgeon about his treatment in the wake of it, television audiences were reminded, once again, of the prescient wisdom of James L. Brooks’ “Broadcast News.” “Let’s never forget,” says Albert Brooks sarcastically as TV reporter Aaron Altman, “we’re the real story. Not them.”

Enter Farrow, who sailed through a dutifully disparate array of topics during his first hour with the slightly anxious confidence of the star student enlisted to run the class.

He covered the Ukraine crisis from pathos to policy — what will Russia do? How does it affect the U.S.? — pausing to explain, with a map, why exactly Ukraine is such a mess. He discussed budget cuts at the Pentagon, the governors’ meeting at the White House, a possible rise in the minimum wage and, in the show’s only truly light-hearted segment, the problem of dumpster diving behind Colorado’s now legal marijuana shops.

Looking much younger than his years, Farrow was carefully aimed at a post-boomer mentality. He joked about watching reruns of news greats (Murrow and Cronkite), referred to marijuana as “weed,” referenced both Lena Dunham and selfies. At times painfully earnest, he introduced a new interactive feature called “The Daily Battle” by calling on viewers to tweet their thoughts about who was handling the Ukraine crisis better, #RFDObama or #RFDPutin.

What Farrow didn’t do was mention in any way, shape or form his personal life. That included the portions of it that have been part of a huge and emotional reaction to his sister Dylan’s recent insistence that Allen molested her. It also included the ongoing question of his own parentage (according to his mother, Frank Sinatra may have been involved).

Like Morgan, or for that matter, Alec Baldwin, who was recently relieved of hosting duty by MSNBC, Farrow views the world from a narrative platform. Leaning more perhaps toward the book-learned Rachel Maddow than Chris Hayes, Farrow — the Rhodes Scholar who graduated college at age 15 — fits in nicely with MSNBC’s ongoing attempt to make smart the new hip. (Political analyst Joy Reid also debuted her new show on Monday afternoon.)

But still it is him, his take, his performance that will make or break the show. Will more people want to see Ronan Farrow daily than wanted to see Piers Morgan live?

The timing of his show’s debut has already been commented on in light of his family’s public crisis, but with Morgan’s departure, it becomes even more meaningful. More than three decades younger than the Brit, born to fame rather than cultivating it, much more interested in appearing smart than right, Farrow could make his mark as an anti-Piers.

Though one suspects that with his international pedigree, Farrow might just be in the habit of calling soccer “football” too.

AFP Photo/Ben Gabbe