Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Maggical Thinking

It's one thing not to like Donald Trump, but it's just silly to blame him for everything that happens.  Thus we get The New Yorker claiming the recent attack on Rand Paul emanates from Trump.

Of course, mindless people who believe they understand politics always like to play this game of magical influence.  To this day, anything that happened in the 80s (especially if it's bad) is laid at the feet of Reagan.

Which is what I was thinking while reading a piece in The Hollywood Reporter about Maggie Gyllenhaal.  Now I don't like to make fun of celebrities when they talk politics, because they generally have nothing to say and it's best to ignore them. But this was a pretty good example of mindlessness. Commenting on all the charges of sexual harassment coming to light, she says:

I really feel that's what's been happening since Harvey Weinstein was instigated by feelings that came from having Trump elected.  When an overt misogynist, who says out loud, 'I grab women's pussies, and they let me because I have a lot of money,' is elected president, alarms go off.  There have to be real consequences for that behavior.

What the deuce?  I don't know exactly why all these scandals are happening now, but this is silly.  For years Harvey Weinstein does this stuff and gets away with it. And then Trump says something (in secret, he thought) and--bam!--over a year later Weinstein is toast.

As long as Gyllenhaal is speculating on how politicians control our thinking, why didn't she mention the other political theory?  That while Hillary Clinton was a going concern, Democrats had to look the other way on sexual harassment.  But after losing to Trump, the floodgates opened.

In fact, Maggie, there was plenty of evidence years ago that Bill Clinton was harassing women, but that didn't seem to affect anyone in Hollywood.  According to your theory, it should have made them wake up.  All I remember is a partisan battle where Democrats said it was just about sex.

So I guess if we're to take her seriously (which I'm against), we'd have to argue she's saying it took a Republican to make Hollywood finally care about sex scandals, just like it took a Democratic loss for them to finally feel troubled about Russian influence.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Denver Guy said...

I'm wondering if the hints that Bill Clinton has continued to harass women since leaving the white house will be investigated. We all know today that JFK was a philanderer, but in the 60s it was kept under wraps because it was a really serious allegation against a major politician. This was true until the Clinton affairs, which suggested that the so-called champions of women's rights gave Bill a pass because of political expediency. Now the pendulum seems to finally be swinging back, and I think it is a good thing, though undoubtedly it will over-reach in the end.

5:24 AM, November 22, 2017  
Blogger New England Guy said...

I remember when cons used to be worried about Kremlin stooges in government

6:18 AM, November 22, 2017  
Anonymous Eobard Thawne said...

DG, the problem with the pendulum analogy is that a pendulum swings gradually. Democrats did not gradually come to the realization that Bill Clinton's abuses were problematic. Up to election day November 2016, they insisted that they were purely consensual. Suddenly they aren't.

Ignore the ones that are denied by Clinton fans, like Willey and Broaddrick. Look at the Paula Jones case, which Clinton paid six figures in damages for. He invited Jones back to a private hotel room, dropped his pants, and asked her to service him. When she refused and got upset, he allowed her to leave. That's incredibly similar to what Weinstein did to dozens of women.

12:35 AM, November 25, 2017  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We're still worried about Kremlin stooges in government, NEG. The Dem Party is going to end up delegitimating democracy itself, along with its adjuncts at WP and NYT, buying into this nonsense.

9:19 AM, November 25, 2017  

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