Yes that’s a very good question.

An even deeper question is do you think they actually care about the actresses that were harassed? If they don’t, and I don’t think they do, then what is all this about? Could it be they want to make a track record that those that harass Women must resign?

Like…Trump????

Yes I know I’m paranoid.

I recall vividly the effort to rehabilitate Polanski in the public eye, and the strength with which his partisans conveyed their sense that he hadn’t really done anything wrong except in the eyes of a corrupt prosecutor and the puritan rubes of middle America.

The entertainment industry’s values sure seem flexible.

It puts me well outside the mainstream that I still think of entertainers as basically making some sort of deal with the devil for unearned social status, so I don’t care that much what the price is.

Although certainly there was not anything like social media to drive things, this side of Hollywood was not exactly a secret either. Numberless memoirs, exposes, lurid headlines, etc. passed ultimately with little impact. Even in eras when, pre-feminism notwithstanding, middle class mores demanded women be regarded like Donna Reed.

Cruel though it might be [I'm consciously aiming for that here], I have assumed it was mainly because regular people, if they came into contact with such stories at all, just dismissed it as the price being asked for the promise of a shot at fame, glory, and not-really-earned wealth. Or that there was, even in decades in which Hollywood and its stars were worshipped, a residue of the old attitude that entertainers were at least a little outside polite society.

Whereas in the past few decades celebrity culture and its ideals seem to have invaded real life to a greater degree than was true before. I appreciate that there were decades gone by when “movie stars” were idolized and pop culture featured characters swooning over them, probably accurately, but the entertainment “industry” still seems far more pervasive than it was prior to the 1980s.

I’ve been seeing many ads for a new talent show [it might just be in Canada] called “The Launch”. Another Idol/X-Factor clone but it’s getting heavy advance press because the guy who discovered Taylor Swift is involved.

As I watch this and reflect back on the Idol phenomenon of over a decade ago, I am reminded of an episode of Black Mirror in which people’s entire lives are devoted to the desperate quest to get fame before an anonymous public audience, and their down time is spent accumulating points on some video game by riding exercycles to generate electricity, or viewing compulsory ads on screens in tiny domiciles.

I don’t know which aspect of that society I found more terrifying and dehumanizing. I think of it every time I see an ad for “The Launch”. I am glad to reflect that there are still people for whom getting famous in entertainment isn’t their dream.