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#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.
Trump Denies Mocking ‘New York Times’ Reporter’s Disability

Trump Denies Mocking ‘New York Times’ Reporter’s Disability

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump denied on Thursday he was mocking the physical disability of a New York Times reporter during a campaign speech in which he flailed his arms and distorted his speech in an imitation of the journalist.

The latest uproar over Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail was ignited by remarks the billionaire real-estate tycoon and former reality-TV star made during a South Carolina rally on Tuesday about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center.

Trump, front-runner for his party’s nomination for the November, 2016 election, was defending his unsubstantiated assertions that thousands of Muslims were seen in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the Twin Towers. During the speech, he singled out Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski for a story he wrote a few days after the attacks while he was then a Washington Post correspondent.

That article reported authorities had detained “a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.” Those accounts have never been authenticated.

Kovaleski himself said in a recent CNN interview that he did “not recall anyone saying there were thousands, or even hundreds of people celebrating. That was not the case, as best I can remember.”

While not referring to Kovaleski by name in his speech, Trump accused the reporter of backing down from his own story.

“Now, the poor guy – you’ve got to see this guy. ‘Ah, I don’t know what I said. I don’t remember,'” Trump said at the microphone, jerking his arms in front of his body and slurring his words in a crude impression of the reporter.

Kovaleski suffers from a congenital condition called arthrogryposis, which limits mobility and muscle development in the joints.

The New York Times issued a statement on Thursday rebuking Trump, saying, “We think it’s outrageous that he would ridicule the appearance of one of our reporters.”

Trump fired back on social media, denying he had made fun of Kovaleski’s disability or would even recognize him.

“I merely mimicked what I thought would be a flustered reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago,” Trump wrote. “If Mr. Kovaleski is handicapped, I would not know because I do not know what he looks like. If I did know, I would definitely not say anything about his appearance.”

He also accused Kovaleski of “using his disability to grandstand.”

In an interview for the Times, Kovaleski said he was certain Trump remembers him from his days covering the real estate developer for the New York Daily News in the 1980s, and that the two were “on a first-name basis for years.”

“The sad part about it is, it didn’t in the slightest bit jar or surprise me that Donald Trump would do something this low-rent, given his track record,” The Washington Post quoted him saying in a separate interview.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman from Los Angeles; Editing by David Gregorio)

Photo: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at an event at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, November 24, 2015. REUTERS/Randall Hill

United States Sees Profound Cultural Shift On Marijuana Legalization

United States Sees Profound Cultural Shift On Marijuana Legalization

By Matt Pearce and Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times

More than a third of adults have smoked it — including the last three presidents. Dozens of songs and movies have been made about it.

Marijuana is no longer whispered about, nor hidden in back rooms and basements. It has come into the open in American life despite decades of prohibition and laws treating the drug as more dangerous than meth and cocaine.

When The New York Times‘ editorial board called this weekend for the U.S. government to end its ban on weed — and let states decide how to regulate it — the newspaper reflected what a majority of Americans have told pollsters: Marijuana should be legal.

The status quo, according to advocates and even the president, has resulted in the disproportionate arrests of minorities and the poor.

“The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast,” the editorial said. “There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to FBI figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin, and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.”

These are not new arguments. But this time they come from The New York Times, not High Times.

Support for marijuana legalization has grown so rapidly within the last decade, and especially within the last two years, that some advocates and pollsters have compared it with the sudden collapse of opposition to same-sex marriage as a culture-redefining event.

Gallup has found more popular support for legalizing marijuana than for legalizing same-sex marriage.

In Gallup’s most recent survey on the issue, in 2013, 58 percent of respondents said marijuana should be legal — up from 46 percent a year earlier and 31 percent in the early 2000s. This spring, 55 percent said gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry.

When Colorado passed a ballot measure in 2012 legalizing recreational marijuana, more residents voted for legal weed than for President Barack Obama (who carried the state). Washington state’s legalization effort also passed handily.

Yet through a combination of ballot measures, legislative action, and judicial action, same-sex marriage has found far more success across the United States, in a campaign supporters liken to the civil rights movement.

For marijuana, a better historical comparison is Prohibition — when alcohol was banned in the early 20th century. Public officials have moved more slowly on pot, in many cases taking incremental steps like decriminalizing possession of small amounts and legalizing the drug for medicinal use.

Taboos have slowly faded. Former President Bill Clinton confessed to smoking marijuana but famously claimed that he “didn’t inhale.” George W. Bush told a friend in a recorded conversation that he didn’t want to answer questions about past marijuana use because “I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.” Obama was bolder, declaring before he was elected, “Of course I inhaled — that was the point!”

In a New Yorker interview published in January, Obama said, “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” But he worried legalizing marijuana would create a slippery slope for legalizing more dangerous drugs.

The American Medical Association, while calling for more clinical testing, has expressed skepticism that medicinal marijuana meets federal safety standards for prescriptions. The American Psychiatric Association’s most recent policy statement says, “There is no current scientific evidence that marijuana is in any way beneficial for the treatment of any psychiatric disorder.”

Dissenters also worry that creating a legal marijuana industry would simply be the next Big Tobacco, with legalization bringing higher rates of addiction and mental health problems.

“When you look back at Prohibition, what you see is that per-capita use of alcohol during Prohibition dropped more than 50 percent; as a result of that, alcohol-related deaths dropped considerably as well,” says Stuart Gitlow, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. “Prohibition was an enormous public health success.”

Even light marijuana use, Gitlow said, can harm brain function.

Gitlow added of tobacco: “We’ve gone over these past 30 to 40 years from about half the population smoking cigarettes to a much smaller figure. … Now the public wants to start that cycle again with a different drug they consider safer (when) the data aren’t all in. Why would we want to potentially start that disaster all over again?”

Colorado and Washington are de facto laboratories for legalization.

In Washington, where marijuana stores opened July 8, officials say it’s too early to draw many conclusions.

“There was a lot of concern that maybe it would end up being a three-ring circus, and we’d have people abusing it or overdosing on it,” Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said. “Those sorts of problems have not manifest themselves in relation to the few stores that are open.”

Alison Holcomb, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who drafted Initiative 502, which legalized marijuana in the state, said, “Things seem to be going very well in Washington.” For one thing, she said, the first 10 days of sales generated $318,000 in new tax revenue.

Holcomb added that in 2012, the year that I-502 passed, law enforcement officers made 5,531 marijuana-related arrests statewide. In 2013, that dropped to 120. She said it “would take a while” to evaluate whether full legalization affects use by young people.

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes was third in line when legal weed sales came to the city. On Sunday, he said the only way to get rid of the black market was for legal stores to succeed and the unregulated medical marijuana system to be folded into the well-regulated recreational system.

“Prohibition has failed to keep marijuana out of the hands of children,” Holmes said. “It has made criminals wealthy and promoted violence and kept us in the dark about what rational regulation would look like.”

Colorado, where legal sales began Jan. 1, has had some stumbles. Sheriffs in neighboring states (where pot remains illegal) have complained they are arresting more drivers coming from Colorado with marijuana.

Fourth-graders have faced discipline after allegedly selling their grandparents’ legally purchased pot to classmates. Some emergency rooms have reported treating children who accidentally ate edible marijuana. And two consumers may have had deadly reactions — including a 19-year-old college student who plunged from a Denver balcony to his death after eating a pot cookie. Also in Denver, a 47-year-old man was accused of shooting his wife to death after taking drugs and eating marijuana-infused candy.

“Colorado is proving that legalization in practice is a lot uglier than legalization in theory,” said Kevin Sabet, president of the policy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who opposes legalization, citing reports of increased calls to poison centers for marijuana overexposure.

“I’ve urged all the governors to go cautiously on this because I think there are risks that we’re only just beginning to understand,” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said in June. “But this is going to be one of the great social experiments of the 21st century.”

AFP Photo/Desiree Martin

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