In December 2017, Meryl Streep, grand dame of contemporary American cinema struggled to explain her business relationship with Harvey Weinstein after Rose McGowan, raped by the producer in 1997, inveighed against the announcement that Hollywood actresses would demonstrate solidarity for victims of sexual violence by wearing black at the 2018 Golden Globes ceremony.
"Actresses, like Meryl Streep," McGowan tweeted, "who happily worked for The Pig Monster [Weinstein], are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You'll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa [Weinstein's then-wife's fashion label]."
Streep, stunned, wrote a long statement:
"I wasn't deliberately silent. I didn't know. I don't tacitly approve of rape. [Or murder? Or arson? Ridiculous of Streep to put that in there.] I didn't know. I don't like young women being assaulted [Really? How about middle-aged women, or anyone?] I didn't know this was happening. I don't know where Harvey lives, nor has he ever been to my home. [Where he lives has what to do with anything?] I have never in my life been invited to his hotel room [a Weinstein modus operandi when luring and then assaulting his victims]. Through friends who know her [Rose McGowan], I got my home phone number [a landline, presumably] to her the minute I read the headlines [That's quick!]. I sat by the phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express my deep respect for her and others' bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers."
These excerpts, from a much longer statement printed in a Rolling Stone article reveal that Meryl Streep, even when she's not on camera, is an actress. McGowan's language, refreshingly honest and direct, contrasts severely with Streep's overwrought bullshit as she answers questions no one asked of her:
Are you in favor of rape, Meryl?
Do you like it when a young woman, such as Rose McGowan, just twenty-three in 1997, gets raped?
Can you supply Harvey Weinstein's address?
Have you ever invited Weinstein to your house?
Did he ever invite you to his hotel room?
Hamlet's line, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" comes to mind. I don't suggest that Streep had anything more to do with Weinstein than she's related in her whining self-defense; however, her words stink of guilt generated by participating (successfully, with numerous awards and accolades) in a culture designed by men to manipulate and exploit women, the younger the better. Streep, a literal drama queen, knows this. Her reaching out to McGowan becomes a self-sacrifice ("I sat by the phone all day yesterday and this morning"), an excuse believed in, perhaps, by people who think movie scenes are more real than life. The cynic in me, in anyone, says, "You don't have a cell phone? You sat by your landline for a day and a half? Even without a cell, you couldn't do things in your house, you had to be right by the phone? Why? Because, to you, some minor actress ripped into you and your silently protesting colleagues?
Now that Weinstein, imprisoned and infected with Covid-19, has receded in Hollywood's letterbox-shaped rear view mirror, the community of filmmakers, performers, top producers, many of whom knew Harvey's vile secret, rests with the comfort of knowing that their SILENCE (as McGowan put it) will again be put to good use when the next wealthy predator among them gets exposed by courageous women like Rose McGowan, who has more guts than Meryl Streep, but no Oscars.
The above news story from two years ago doesn't seem as relevant as the pandemic, but women getting violated by powerful men continues as Joe Biden, the walking corpse who's risen to the position of Democratic frontrunner to take on Donald Trump, is both an old and new story.
Biden allegedly raped one of his staffers in 1993. Her plausible story has been attacked or dismissed by pro-Biden surrogates, including, coincidentally, Alyssa Milano, from 2001 to 2006 Rose McGowan's costar on the TV series, Charmed.
Milano, who did not initiate but popularized the #MeToo Movement, wrote in 2017, "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem."
In 2018, Milano attended confirmation hearings for controversial right wing Judge Brett Kavanaugh, nominated by President Trump for ascension to the Supreme Court. He had allegedly sexually assaulted Christine Ford in high school. She came forward with her convincing story, testified before the senators, but nothing much came of it because power tends to stomp on justice and human rights.
Being an actress with experience going back to her childhood in the 1980s, she found her spot in the chamber perfectly, seated over Kavanaugh's right shoulder, on camera much of the time. She seemed to embody the #MeToo Movement, facing down a creep with the personality of a dry drunk.
Not just Kavanaugh, but Trump, incurs Milano's disgust, so much so that by the end of 2019, she said to an MSNBC host that she supported Joe Biden, since he had "the best chance of defeating Donald Trump." A typical view among Hollywood liberals. Swallow the bitter pill and vote Blue No Matter Who.
Now that Biden has been accused of rape, you'd think Alyssa Milano would follow the truth of her own words from 2017, would reject the former Vice President, especially after hearing his accuser's heart-wrenching account of Biden's alleged sexual violence. I've heard audio of the accuser relating this story. If you have no feelings, you could dismiss it easily. If the account doesn't fit your political hopes, you can push it aside to a dark part of your brain, maybe the same space where Meryl Streep's guilt lives, tickled occasionally into expression whenever an inconvenient person, like Rose McGowan or Biden's alleged victim, speaks out to let the world know about our human failing of admiring evil men.
Milano, though, remained SILENT for six days after Biden's accuser spoke out. The mainstream news media barely covered the story.
Interviewed by phone by entertainment journalist Andy Cohen, Milano's flabby comments on the Biden accusation made little sense. She meandered, helped along by a celebrity-loving interviewer, and concluded with how there "needs to be due process" in the Biden case, although Biden's not on trial, so due process doesn't apply.
Her public views on Kavanaugh in 2018 made no one wonder: she called him a "sexual predator."
In Cohen's interview, Milano said, "We really have to sort of societally change that mindset to believing women, but that does not mean at the expense of giving men their due process and investigating situations, and it's got to be fair in both directions."
Had she said that in 2018 during the Kavanaugh hearings she might've been a guest on a Fox News show.
For many, integrity is valued until it gets heated by a challenging life problem.
I leave the final word on integrity with Rose McGowan, who, regarding the Biden rape accusation, tweeted, in response to Alyssa Milano, "You are a fraud!"
Vic Neptune
No comments:
Post a Comment