Sexual Misconduct
Latest News and Opinion-
Posted Monday 10/15/18 at 4:02PM EDT
Louis CK joked in his latest standup set that he's been "to hell and back" and "I lost $35 million in an hour"
Source: Laughspin
According to Laughspin, the comedian performed at several New York City comedy clubs last week and finally though obliquely acknowledged his sexual misconduct scandal. “Good to be here even though some of you might not like me,” he said at West Side Comedy Club, according to Laughspin. Host AMarie Castillo told the comedy website: “It’s like he didn’t even skip a beat with the year he had. He was so genuine and reflected on how weird his year was, tried out some new dark and dirty material…Sounds to me he is owning up, acknowledging, and trying to figure it out.”
# TOPICS: Louis CK, Sexual Misconduct, Stand-Up Comedy
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Posted Saturday 10/13/18 at 3:11AM EDT
TV has built a world where white males are the protagonists of the story, from CBS crime procedurals to antihero dramas
Source: Vox
The fall of Les Moonves and the recent premiere of Lifetime's You -- which attempts to subvert the white male viewpoint -- have helped to hammer home the point that a lot of television has been told from the white male point of view. "Straight white men in America are taught that they are the protagonist of the story from birth. Their number includes me — I’ve always intuitively understood myself as the protagonist too," says Todd VanDerWerff. "And this mindset has only become more ingrained in the past 20 years. Under Moonves, CBS became America’s most powerful network, but also went from broadcasting shows like Murphy Brown and Designing Women to mostly being a place where women were corpses, whose murders were solved largely by steely, determined men, with occasional help from quippy female sidekicks." VanDerWerff adds that "over the past 20 years, no network has had a worse record of telling stories centered on characters who aren’t straight white men than CBS, a trend the network has only finally broken this fall. What does it say about a culture when by far its most popular television network is dominated by shows where women serve primarily as support systems, quirky comic relief, and victims?" Antihero shows like Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and The Shield have also helped fuel the narrative that white males can take whatever they want. "The best antihero dramas of the early 2000s, like the best great films of the ’70s, were cautionary tales, deeply moral stories about how, in some ways, the men at the center of them stood in for an America — or at least a white male America — that couldn’t stop gobbling up everything it saw," says VanDerWerff. "The shows suggested, always, that even if their protagonists didn’t get their comeuppance onscreen, it was coming, unless they could change their ways. Only a handful of those protagonists, most notably Mad Men’s Don Draper, eventually came close to doing so. But even now, these shows leave open the question of just how we’re supposed to grapple with the idea that many viewers will always see them as instruction manuals, or as validation of dangerous ideals. What are the takeaways for an audience that doesn’t want to dig into the moral and ethical nuance of The Sopranos and just wants to see Tony whack more enemies, or that believes Skyler White is the true villain of Breaking Bad?"
# TOPICS: Men and TV, Breaking Bad, Criminal Minds, The Sopranos, You, Les Moonves, Sexual Misconduct
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Posted Friday 10/12/18 at 1:39PM EDT
Murphy Brown's #MeToo episode was equally careful and cartoonish
Source: The Atlantic
The "#MurphyToo" episode airing Thursday offered a nuanced take on the #MeToo movement, says Megan Garber. Yet she says the episode arrived amid a revival season that has featured cringey jokes that have come at the expense of women, including one joke implying that women who are sexually harassed are weak. "The episode devotes a relatively nuanced plot line about sexual violence to its white, rich, famous, powerful protagonist," says Garber. "All around that storyline, however—in the earlier episodes of the Murphy reboot, and in the rest of the '#MurphyToo' episode itself—sexism and harassment as broader phenomena are treated, largely, as jokes. Frank treats the new awareness about the prevalence of sexual harassment as an inconvenience. Corky’s lifetime worth of experiences with that harassment manifest, in the show, as quirky anecdotes. Miles is attracted to a woman who works for him, and can’t stop asking her, the Id being what it is, to keep him 'abreast' of professional developments. The studio audience laughs and laughs. Here it all is, in one 30-minute package: progress and backlash. Empathy and its impediments. A culture that wants to be better—and a culture that, despite it all, isn’t." ALSO: "#MurphyToo" episode felt more like it was working through a checklist than revealing much of any new insight.
# TOPICS: Murphy Brown, CBS, Candice Bergen, Diane English, Sexual Misconduct
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Posted Friday 10/12/18 at 1:39PM EDT
"A Scary Time (for Boys)" singer Lynzi Lab performs her viral song on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Source: Decider
The Texas State University dance teacher, who racked up more than 11 million views with her song on Monday responding to President Trump saying it’s a “very scary time for young men in America," was invited to perform her song with a group of women of all ages, including young girls.
# TOPICS: Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC, Lynzi Lab, Late Night, Sexual Misconduct, Social Media, Trump Presidency
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Posted Wednesday 10/10/18 at 1:29PM EDT
Maggie Gyllenhaal defends keeping James Franco on The Deuce following sexual misconduct allegations
Source: The Cut
“I feel like it would’ve been the wrong consequence to those accusations to shut our show down," she said in an interview on SiriusXM's Sway in the Morning. It would’ve been like actually the opposite of the right thing to do,” Gyllenhaal “And yet, you know, look, I believe that there should be consequences for disrespecting or assaulting women. Of course, I do.” She added: “You know, we at the time that the accusations against James came out in the L.A. Times we read them all, we took them very seriously. We spoke to every woman on the crew and in the cast to find out if they felt respected and what their experience of working with James was and everyone said that they had been totally respected by him.”
# TOPICS: The Deuce, HBO, James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sexual Misconduct
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Posted Monday 10/08/18 at 6:10PM EDT
Billy Bush reflects on the second anniversary of his Donald Trump Access Hollywood scandal
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
"Two years ago today, my life went from order to chaos in a dramatic instant," Bush wrote on Instagram on Sunday. "I accounted for my small part, while the President and my employer walked away and still haven’t accounted for their actions. These past couple years have been character building to say the least - anxiety attacks, fits of rage, feelings of betrayal and abandonment - and I have concluded that I am NOT extraordinary."
# TOPICS: Billy Bush, Access Hollywood, Donald Trump, Sexual Misconduct
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Posted Sunday 10/07/18 at 5:20AM EDT
Pete Davidson slams Kanye West's post-SNL pro-Trump rant
Source: The Daily Beast
Saturday Night Live left it to Davidson to address the unaired Kanye West pro-Trump rant that featured the entire cast awkwardly standing behind him after the previous week's show. Davidson said on "Weekend Update" he thought Michael Che “should be the one to talk about Kanye, but we discussed it, you know, because Che is black, but I’m crazy and we both know which side of Kanye is at the wheel right now.” Davidson added: “So speaking strictly for myself, what Kanye said after he went off the air last week was one of the worst, most awkward things I’ve ever seen here. And I’ve seen Chevy Chase speak to an intern.” Davidson ended his segment by donning a red hat that read: “Make Kanye 2006 Again.”
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# TOPICS: Saturday Night Live, NBC, Brett Kavanaugh, Kanye West, Pete Davidson, Sexual Misconduct, Trump Presidency
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Posted Sunday 10/07/18 at 5:20AM EDT
Patton Oswalt: My 2015 groping Veep character is "very problematic to watch now"
Source: Vulture
Oswalt said at The New Yorker Festival his role as the vice president's chief of staff who would constantly grope Jonah Ryan was clearly referencing somebody like Kevin Spacey years before the #MeToo movement.
# TOPICS: Patton Oswalt, Veep, Sexual Misconduct
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Posted Friday 10/05/18 at 10:26PM EDT
Why haven't we seen a flood of #MeToo-inspired shows?
Source: Vanity Fair
Friday was the one-year anniversary of The New York Times publishing its Harvey Weinstein bombshell story that led to the take down of many powerful men accused of sexual misconduct. In the past year, TV shows from GLOW to Jessica Jones to BoJack Horseman have added #MeToo subplots. Even Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a #MeToo-themed episode in the works. "So why haven’t we seen a flood of new #MeToo and Time’s Up-inspired series unfurling across the TV landscape yet?" wonders Joy Press. "One reason is that shows take a long time to incubate; another might be that TV executives were slow to absorb the enormity of the tectonic shift the country was undergoing, and quick to assume that it would not be a lasting phenomenon." She adds: "Ironically, a handful of shows fueled by female rage and trauma appeared just before #MeToo got rolling—and then disappeared. I’m thinking of series like MTV’s Sweet/Vicious, a short-lived black comedy about two college students who become vigilantes avenging campus rapes, and Amazon’s One Mississippi with Tig Notaro as a comedian who has returned to her childhood home to sift through the sexual trauma of her youth. Both series were canceled too soon." A similar fate befell I Love Dick and the recently canceled Dietland. Sweet/Vicious creator Jennifer Kaytin Robinson creator, who is resurrecting her MTV show as a comic book, says she pitched a show about women taking down a toxic boss right around the time of the Louis CK scandal. But a male executive told her, “this won’t be on the air for another 12 to 18 months; do you still think it’s going to be relevant? Because it seems like it’s getting so much better now.” There are some #MeToo-inspired shows in the pipeline, including Netflix's Unbelievable, based on the Pulitzer-winning article An Unbelievable Story of Rape, as well as Hulu's Shrill, starring Aidy Bryant. One unnamed female showrunner tells Press that many TV executives still feel uncomfortable giving female creators too much room to expand portraits of women. “Women’s anger could make for good television, but it means the industry is going to have to shift and trust a woman to articulate that anger,” says the anonymous showrunner. “It still feels like the definition of relatability for female characters is (that) you have to be a perfect martyr, like Elisabeth Moss’ character in The Handmaid’s Tale.”
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# TOPICS: Sexual Misconduct, One Mississippi, Sweet/Vicious, Unbelievable, Harvey Weinstein, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Time's Up
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Posted Friday 10/05/18 at 1:42PM EDT
Ellen DeGeneres reveals she was sexually assaulted, slams President Trump for his mockery of Christine Blasey Ford
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Ellen usually avoids discussing President Trump and controversial political issues. But she had to say something after the president mocked Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's accuser. "I don’t like to talk about him. This is not political," Ellen said while interviewing Today's Savannah Guthrie. "It really isn’t – it’s got nothing to do with being Republican or Democrat or anything. It’s just about respect and someone who is the leader of our country, who is mocking someone who was abused." DeGeneres revealed this week, while interviewing Busy Philipps about her sexual assault revelation, that she was sexually assaulted at age 15. "I was 15 and I had something happen to me and when I watched Dr. Ford, anyone who's had something happen to them, you just get so angry when someone doesn't believe you or say, 'Why did you wait so long?'" she told Philipps. "It's because we're girls and we're taught not to say anything and go along with it."
# TOPICS: Ellen DeGeneres, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Sexual Misconduct, Trump Presidency
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Posted Friday 10/05/18 at 3:56AM EDT
In an emotional monologue, Trevor Noah denounces male victimhood in the #MeToo era
Source: The Daily Beast
In an online-only “Between the Scenes" segment, The Daily Show host denounced President Trump and other men who've made males out to be the victims of the #MeToo movement. He compared it to the fall of Apartheid in his native South Africa. "The country was changing and you had tons of white people who were like, ‘I’m afraid now, what’s going to happen to me? The black people are going to eat us!’” He asked, “How did you go from being the person in power to being the victim overnight?”
# TOPICS: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Comedy Central, Trevor Noah, Late Night, Sexual Misconduct, Trump Presidency
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Posted Friday 10/05/18 at 3:56AM EDT
Teri Hatcher writes an open letter to President Trump detailing her sexual abuse as a child
Source: People
Responding to the president's recent mockery of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, Hatcher wrote on Instagram: “Mr. President, I am a survivor, who stands available to help you understand the way the memories of a trauma like that work. It might be hard for you to understand. I can readily explain in detail that ‘I don’t remember’ is often the most honest response surrounding questions of an assault."
# TOPICS: Teri Hatcher, Christine Blasey Ford, Sexual Misconduct, Trump Presidency
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Posted Wednesday 10/03/18 at 9:05PM EDT
Jimmy Kimmel under fire from Padma Lakshmi and others for his comments about Louis CK's comeback and for calling comedy "very democratic"
Source: AOL
"If we get into the business of sanitizing every comedian and doing a thorough background check before they walk through the door, it’s going to be a very empty stage," Kimmel said when asked about Louis CK's comeback in a Hollywood Reporter interview announcing Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy Club in Las Vegas. "I think people tend to focus on the one or two people who walk out of a situation like that. Ultimately, the audience decides whether someone is welcomed back." Kimmel also laughed off the idea that comedy clubs should be a "safe space." Padma Lakshmi was among many on Twitter who criticized Kimmel's comments, tweeting: "Love you @jimmykimmel but the comedy community can also evolve their culture so that a known abuser who sexually humiliated women & silenced them for decades isn't welcomed back w/ open arms by @ComedyCellarUSA. I know a lot of standups who are NOT ok with sharing a bill with him. A 'background check' isn't really necessary for someone who openly admitted to masturbating in front of/on the phone to female colleagues for decades. We could just, as a culture and an NYC comedy community say, 'Actually f**k that.'" Kimmel was also criticized for saying, in response to a question about female comedians, that "comedy is very democratic. The people who are great, rise to the top; the people who are good, rise to the middle; and the people who aren’t good, don’t make it." As NPR critic Linda Holmes tweeted in response: "First of all, it's incredibly naive at this point to believe in absolute meritocracy in any endeavor, but to blow off the influences of any kind of discrimination in comedy is ludicrous. Second of all: Right in this same piece, they're talking about CK being given a spot on stage. A spot many people would kill for. Giving him that spot is a specific choice made by a specific person or people. That doesn't just *happen*. There are people who would give him that spot -- people who think his comedy is funny -- and people who don't. The idea that it's like the hot air balloon in The Good Place and you walk near a stage and it turns red or green? That's fake. I hate this depersonalization of the ways that people become famous, get opportunities to remain famous, and get opportunities to recover from stumbles. Those are all choices. It's not an algorithm." William Hughes added that Kimmel's "inner Adam Carolla emerged" in the interview, saying his "declaration against safe spaces is still a pretty f*cked-up thing to hear from a guy who is about to start actively employing people, especially since he just spent his last two responses first deflecting the idea that a club has a responsibility to make sure its employees won’t, say, take their d*ck out in front of other performers backstage, and then refuted any responsibility for making sure his club’s line-up isn’t a lazy parade of shitty-but-funny men. It is, in other words, both a continuation of the comedy club status quo, and a major bummer, especially since Kimmel has positioned himself in recent years as a voice for at least some angles of progressivism, ostensibly far removed from his old 'Girls jumping on trampolines' origins."
# TOPICS: Jimmy Kimmel, Padma Lakshmi, Louis CK, Sexual Misconduct, Stand-Up Comedy
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Posted Wednesday 10/03/18 at 9:05PM EDT
60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl on the #MeToo movement: "It's been profound, it's been historic, and in some cases, it's been unfair"
Source: The Times Herald
"There's no sliding scale, there has to be some nuance here," Stahl said of the sexual misconduct allegations that have brought down powerful men. Stahl didn't mention her fired former boss Jeff Fager in making her comments on Monday at the Port Huron Town Hall appearance. She expressed similar sentiments today at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, without mentioning Fager, saying: “It has been very painful, and as a woman, when it hits home, it’s so confusing. I think there have been men who have been accused, and their careers ruined — completely ruined — destroyed and crushed, and they’re not Harvey Weinstein.” She also said today: “There are absolute cases of rape, attempted rape, perpetual assault, that are obviously predatory. Over here, there is a category that doesn’t need to have their lives destroyed.”
# TOPICS: 60 Minutes, CBS, Lesley Stahl, CBS News, Sexual Misconduct
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Posted Wednesday 10/03/18 at 9:05PM EDT
Ex-Mad Men writer Kater Gordon responds to Matthew Weiner saying he didn't recall her allegation of sexual harassment
Source: Indiewire
"My memory is intact," she tweeted in response to Weiner's recent comments to Vanity Fair. "Matthew’s abuse of workplace power dynamics was rampant, and the comments he made should not be viewed as an isolated occurrence."
# TOPICS: Kater Gordon, Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, Sexual Misconduct
