Monica Lewinsky: The price of shame

johns and Jians

Standing on a crowded subway train, I had a Now Magazine open to a page spread that gave a full view to the woman peeping over my shoulder of either a Jian Ghomeshi trial analysis or an article about migrant sex workers at odds with well-meaning activists who want to end human sex traffic as a form of slavery. My only thought on human traffic is that an actress from The Walking Dead and the recent sequel to Dumb and Dumber had famously helped out with a sort of "underground railroad" operation to rescue some women who had been exploited that way. Law enforcement may state that they will focus on johns or clients, eliminating the demand for the supply. But then it could be argued that if the supply remains the same and demand is reduced then the price goes down and lower-end clients are attracted. And if those guys absorb all of the arrest risk, they might even take measures to make sure they won't be arrested. Sex workers of any stripe might be in more danger of violence. Just as rape or sexual assault victims in the future might more commonly disappear so the offenders won't be spending ten years waiting for a ticking Cosby or Ghomeshi time bomb to go off. What's in the Now magazine diverges quite a lot from my own concerns that these issues dredge up. Now usually takes the uber-progressive stance, while an umbrella like progressive or feminist or Christian or Humanistic just clouds the specifics. One might sympathize with sex workers not wanting to have contact with police, while at the same time understanding that no segment of society (even police) should be a permanent blind spot where it is understood that there just won't be investigation or policing of any kind. It would be like advertising the section of a bank where the CCTV cameras don't work. One might understand that a woman must be free to express herself as she sees fit in the say she dresses and use her body in sex work if that is her choice; the same could be said about the client using his body as he chooses. Is he merely circumventing the conventions and leagues of society or enjoying a thrill in an otherwise tame surface life, or is he cultivating a detachment from the feelings of a sex partner and a focus on his own whim that can escalate by increments into the demands of a rapist? If the latter possibility is true, then the availability of prostitution may provide baby steps for even the most cowardly character to embolden himself in the various forms or gestures of sexual assault or rape, overt physical struggle or covert with a drug in a drink. That sensibility might not grasp the idea that whatever joy or elevation comes from sex itself is part in parcel of a shared moment of individuals conspiring together like sharing a secret or simply accepting and wanting the contact of another human being. Not that some johns don't have that motivation. But it is all about the anomaly. The Crown prosecutor in the Ghomeshi trail seems like the only person in Canada who did not know how it would play out. The only reason the rest of us knew was by looking at the pattern. It is more difficult to prove rape or sexual assault than it is to create the impression that a witness is not credible. Certain things could have been checked as the witness was prepared. In movies or TV, we see practice runs with hard questions double-checking claims about whether the alleged victim tried to contact the offender at any time afterward. The prosecution team might make sure psychiatrists are brought in as witnesses to establish officially the well known human nature to behave irrationally following an event that is hard to process. They certainly could have done their due diligence to verify that a car specified as the location for an assault was of a make and colour the accused in fact owned and used at the time. Since there is the possibility of a witness lying, a continuity error can't be dismissed. Because there is so much unpunished or unreported abuse, assault and rape around the world, any high-profile case will have the added burden of being an effigy of evil and sadism incarnate waiting for a bonfire. A Ghomeshi or a Cosby might be notorious for behavior that is only finally talked about openly once that individual is vulnerable and people might well want to imprison someone simply for being an asshole. We now know Ghomeshi is not fondly recalled by those who worked with him. We can wait for someone to do a super-cut of interview clips where he is rejected by female guests of Q he asked on dates over the air, like Andrea Martin and Carrie Fisher. Either they dodged a bullet or he did, because entertainment icons don't have to worry about their future and would not likely have taken any quarter from him. The trial of an individual for several different crimes or counts of an offense might be efficient, but it also seems that we assume testimony for one specific incident supports the fact of another alleged incident witnessed by a separate person. But the only thing it bolsters is the character sketch of the accused and the likelihood of a seemingly soft-spoken and friendly persona to do something violent, criminal or otherwise creepy. We might conflate an impression of the accused as a person (two-faced, kinky, mean boss, hypocrite) with whether each allegation witnessed by one person in each case. If fifty women stood watching as Bill Cosby put something into a woman's drink and then grope her once she was asleep, those testimonies would support that case. As separate individuals with unrelated claims, they can only damn the accused in the court of public opinion. If Jian adversary Billy Bob Thornton were said to hit a woman, he would not be a pristine God falling from Mount Olympus. Nobody is salivating to prove Billy Bob is not Bad Santa or not someone capable of a dark side. Had Bill Cosby refrained from lecturing young black men about droopy drawers and staying with the mother of their children and education in general, he might not have angered Hannibal Burress and whoever used a cell phone to record the anti-Cosby bit and he might still be rambling on the Tonight Show for a polite Jimmy Fallon. If Toronto didn't have such a small entertainment community, downsized broadcasting industry, and executive indifference to building on-air personalities or talent in general let alone celebrities, a Jian would not be such a big fish rising under a girl swimmer. Is anyone from CBC checking out Second City or Lunacy Cabaret or other comedy shows around the city? There are veteran comedy folk still getting air-time, as well they should, but there could easily be open floodgates of exposure for a true cutting edge, new blood, and new faces. No need to compromise themselves or be quiet about rotten behavior when there is more investment in opening doors and building new brands.

The Dictator, Mel Gibson, History and Comedy

The Dictator is an outstanding satire which is not burning up the box office in America as it should and has gotten temped ratings on rotten tomatoes. Too bad. A movie that swings for the fences will impress those it was meant to impress (people like myself who find it refreshing) and will alienate people who are either strict formalists who insist a movie can only be a satire or a rom-com. It will also annoy morons, but we'll leave that aside. I love the fact that this is both a satire and a somewhat disingenuous rom-com with a protagonist who gets to do heroic deeds and still has a back-story and attitudes that are off-putting. Too many movies are running for office. This movie expects you to know when it is giving movies the finger. Some people don't get it. I got it and appreciate it. This is the sort of movie I would like to be doing. Get the Gringo appears to be released somewhere and I like what I am hearing about it, that it has the quips of a Lethal Weapon and it has a tone like Robert Rodriguez flicks. I look forward to Machete Kills, in which Mel Gibson is supposed to play a bad guy. This all happens around the same time Joe Eszterhas is coming out with an e-book called Heaven and Mel which will fine-tune his own spin on the creative falling out he had with the actor-director over the Maccabee script. I have only the other day heard that he released audio of Mel's alleged rant to him in Costa Rica, but it is clearly from another room and kind of low key as rants go. Mel yells at him for not writing a darn thing over 14 months of being employed to do a screenplay, then yells "Who wants dinner? Yum!" or something. No big deal. He also apparently appeared on Jay Leno and (appropriately) made light of it. It is a shame. I have a copy of Basic Instinct which is entertaining. I also have a book, "The Devil's Guide to Hollywood," wherein one presumes our guide is Joe. After the downbeat visit to Costa Rica (where another writer was having better luck writing with Mel, one Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart and directed Mel in We Were Soldiers) Joe did finally whip-up a screenplay draft. But it was apparently slip-shot and not reflective enough of what Mel wanted. Warners rejected it and then Mel rejected it. Warners had already paid Joe for the work thus far. Now without Joe's spin, it is the tale of a screenwriter who hasn't cranked anything out since An Allan Smithee Film, Burn, Hollywood, Burn in 1997 if you don't count the 2006 foreign polo film Children of Glory which has three other credited screenwriters and I've never heard of it. Getting his draft of the Maccabee script rejected by Warners would be such a blow to this latter phase of his career he knows his posterity is at stake so he has to make something else of it. Why Mel or Warners chose him to work on this material is unknown. Maybe this time-honored story of Jewish history needed a "Showgirls" touch. Joe wants to amp up the perception that Mel Gibson is not only a lunatic but anti-Semitic. Is The Passion of the Christ a slam against Jews? I didn't feel it as such when I watched it. And it didn't motivate anyone to go out and commit acts of violence against Jews either. It is a very contemplative film. I don't know if Hindus deny that Hindus killed Gandhi or whether the Nation of Islam says their members had nothing to do with killing Malcolm X. The facts don't seem to be much in dispute. People see evil done do Jews OSTENSIBLY for the killing of Christ and therefore can't suffer the fact that not only a Jew named Jesus got crucified and that some high-ranking Jews insisted on it but that crucifixion was common, as was public flogging. I have not heard any dispute of the line "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" spoken supposedly by Jesus, which would (one thinks) wipe the slate clean for all of JC's persecutors. But even then to not know "what they do" is to assume they don't realize they are killing the Son of God but believe they are merely torturing and killing an ordinary person for blasphemy. So any way you slice it, people have been barbaric and stupid throughout history. Hopefully we will get to see Randall Wallace's Viking film which might very well push Viking violence to the limit. It's a little too easy for people to whine that they don't agree with their employer. It creates a climate where famous employers can't write you a letter or an e-mail without fear that you will release it to the public. I likely will read Joe's e-book, but I already don't respect it. Sascha Baron Cohen (The Dictator himself) has made a couple of digs against Mel Gibson but they are inspired digs. I can respect both in that case. Gibson is made an easy target for accusations of racism. Hopefully meanwhile I will soon find a copy of Get the Gringo. Apparently it is in theaters overseas.

G8 controversy on paying for abortion

Reading this article. . .

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=24037654

I just find it interesting that Bob Rae argues that Canada should extend "our" Canadian laws to third world countries, I suppose minus P.E.I. and any Canadian who isn't a big fan of abortion. If the G8 were to lump abortion in with contraception under the "birth control" banner, would it pay for sex sellection abortions as well? Because that seems to be a norm in the third world. At what point are we imposing our values on a culture and not just money? I think it's one thing to keep abortion legal where it is already legal in Canada; the genie is already out of the bottle. It may be another thing to allocate funds overseas for abortion unless the goal is to thin out the herd. I can see many Canadians just leaving the third world off the scope and figuring the more abortions the better over there. Reminds me of the MacLean and MacLean song, a choir prayer, "Keep it over there, Lord, keep it over there
Famine and diseases, keep them over there."

scandals and Easter

Happy Easter. If you are very retro, I suppose Happy Ester.

I don't know about scandals. I hear about them, read about them, but come away knowing nothing. There is the "church cover-up" of child sexual abuse by priests, which gets a lot of press. But not much about the other end of it. This is not to put any responsibily on the head of any victim or victim's parent. I can't put responsibility there, because it already IS there. If you have been abused, report it TO THE POLICE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You press charges, give whatever testimony you can, and see what happens. The church, or whatever institution an abuser belongs to, can't "cover-up" that. In fact, it'll likely hit the press without much filtration - from police report pretty much to the headline - so you are likely to get lots of satisfaction as the alleged abuser is pretty much tried and convicted in the court of public opinion ASAP. You can argue that gee, if priests were married they wouldn't be diddlers, which I don't know to be a fact. Aren't there married pedophiles? Aren't there hockey coaches and trainers and babysitters who are like that? I don't know how it is all on the head of the church. Yes, they ordained someone who turned out to be unfit. For that they bear some responsibility. But this business of cover-up? Versus what? I'm not sure publication of names of people who were accused merely in WHISPER CAMPAIGNS and NOT CHARGED by POLICE is something an organiation has any obligatin to do. If they have reason to believe someone on their staff is a pervert, moving them on to another community may be terrible and irresponsible. But WHAT reason do they have to turn someone over to the police if they haven't witnessed anything. It still must be a conflict between accused and victim. Why should the church be the middle-man? The parents presumably are also involved, so why can't THEY press charges or speak to police? If I were a Bishop and what I'm told is that a priest in my area has been accused of wrongdoing, I would ask why the wrongdoing isn't reported to the police if it so clearly happened. How is the Bishop, let alone the Vatican, involved in the conversation at that level except if a priest can't show up for work because he is being interviewed by police or behind bars? Anyway, I just think there are sharks who smell blood and want the church to go down one way or another. One picket says, "It is time for God to step down," which is either ironic or delusional. I'm not sure.

I don't know about celebrity scandals either. I recall a proonged story about an action-movie star who was "accused" by a fan of having a gay interlude. No names, because this movie star has been bashed enough. He responded with a defamation suit and won. The fan moped that he would never watch that star's movies again. Poor baby. I say accusation because the wrongdoing on the part of the star would be infidelity to his wife and lying to his wife. The accusation of a gay tryst actually says nothing concrete about the actor but tells us something about the accuser:
The accuser in this case is one of two things, either a liar or a backstabber. If he is telling the truth, he is recklessly jeopardising the career and fortune of someone who did him no harm and with whom he was intimate. Even though the shadow cast by this kind of scandal remains, the actor still has a degree of box office draw and respect. Even if the accusation were true, he would still be cool. But the would-be fan creating the scandal would still be a scumbag. Even if gossip and scandal come from ostensibly liberal sources, I think they are inherently catty and conservative in the worst way and it still is another version of the tall poppy syndrom - cutting someone down for being outstanding.

I don't know if these issues are well-served in the sound-byte culture. Too many levels. Too many granedes lobbed into a crowd by people with hidden agendas. If a priest compares the strain of churc scandal to the strain of anti-Semetism, of COURSE that is going to be a big story. I would have compared it more to the way TTC workers feel the day after subway and bus fares go up or the day after a striked that messes up thousands of lives to ensure the workers get better than merely twice our wages and three times the benefits but something absurdly more. I think the Pope could have slapped the scandals of the church down a long time ago. The abuse story is front and center, but we are still talking about a church with more mundane mess-ups on its plate. They went out of the way around 2005 to suggest girls should not be encouraged to be altar servers. Well, I used to work as a Sacristan in a church between the ages of 12 and 17 and told a girl to suit up as often as a boy, and one can hand wine to the priest as well as the other. The old boys' club is the problem. But as for who "covers-up" a scandal, I don't know if it's anyone but the victim. Some of them waited until 20 years passed before they went to police and got closure. Had they and/or their parents gone straight to police, instead of imagining there was some sort of internal policing, maybe there would be earlier publicity and fewer abuses. If a teacher abuses a student, would they and the parently merely go to the Principal? Or would they speak to police? I don't know.

New Year Crap-Clear

So I'm sorting through the gym bag that usually keeps vital work-related materials I take to the workplace, pills, work shirt, body spray and random free newspapers I have read on the subway with articles I hadn't finished importing into my brain. Garbage in, garbage out.

I can understand keeping an issue that boasts one of my letters to the editor. Those may not be thrown out except by accident. Whether I should keep them or not. But since it is perfectly acceptable and thoughtful to leave a Metro or Eye Weekly on the subway seat, I have chosen to stuff the most worthless material in my gym bag. So as I throw these papers out it's a review of the year's news that isn't quite news.

Jerry Lewis went to Australia and when asked if he liked playing cricket he said, "That's a faggot game" and did some physical comedy miming use of a cricket bat. So there's an article about GLAAD slapping him on the sturdy wrist and asking him for an apology. Like millions of Rat Pack fans will abandon Jerry for using the "new F-word." It amazes me how lobby groups seem to be in the business of telling people to lie to them. I don't have to pathologize Jerry for being out of touch with the latest edition of Newspeak. But you can understand if he has lingering resentment for the 2002 TV movie Martin and Lewis that was made about him where a guy from Will and Grace - Sean Hayes - played him. I remember saying to a friend after seeing a clip, "I didn't know Jerry Lewis was gay."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318908/

That gives an idea the kind of time and thought wastage results from reading a newspaper.
Did I have to know about that? When Issiah Washington was fired from Grey's Anatomy for calling T.R. Knight the same derogatory term for homosexual, my first instinct was that this is an over-reaction and extremely political (read: cowardly). T.R. crying on Ellen's couch didn't help boost his preferred image as the stoic leading man he was destined to be. Somehow since those articles we have more recent useless information that his role has been reduced on the show since Mr. Washington went to the Bionic Woman (much to the glee of snarky, fey critics). I'll be honest, I thought the Bionic Woman pilot episode was okay and I like Katee Sackoff as a satirical antagonist. A can't comment on Gay's Anatomy, because I've never seen an episode.

Still the new Bionic Woman pales by comparison to the original Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man which have been mired in a legal dispute between Universal and I forget what company. I try to google it and the term "Million dollar" is pretty common and "Bionic Woman" tends to bring up reference to the new-fangled version.

I seem to be finding a lot of blurbs about the apparent comeback of Tom Cruise after having supposedly killed his career. Imagine Tom Cruise in the early days of Top Gun and Rainman, with Barbara Walters bringing in a psychic to tell him this: "You will be very popular for many years until what kills your career is that you are so happy that you jump on Oprah's couch - but of course that's not enough to REALLY kill your career; you also criticise Brooke Shields."
What else hurt him? Of course Sumner Redstone making a point of saying that his behaviour hurt the box office of Mission: Impossible III. I see in another trash blurb that they have since reconciled and had lunch, but only after Tom had to become head of MGA/UA. Old Redstone seemed to be administering the death blow, and he was motivated because his lovely wife had a head full of this disposable tabloid crap. The guy manages to survive as a top Box office draw with a name like Cruise and what almost sinks him is an old man's wife reading the kind of crap I'm now finally throwing out.

What I can't have the pleasure of physically trashing is the sort of "news" feed you get signing into certain websites for e-mail. How do they choose these columnists? It has never been more true that somebody got a job by giving a blow. Do I really want to see an idiot's list of the "forgettable movies of the year" or a rant against Mel Gibson and the gossip about his marriage? Just another distraction. I have to reign myself in or I'll spend all of my time e-mailing incompetant cyber-columnists. Those that actually have a talk-back e-mail provided. Even then, likely it only bolsters the impression that people are reading the shite.

I won't mention a local Toronto film community that has a pressence on the web and sends out shameless viral marketing. I like the people involved but I've had to withdraw from involvement or the loop of promotions. It's too much. You get double and tripple versions of the same link and it takes up space in your Facebook feed even if you sellect "less from" this friend. And again I've had to confront this mentality and I've been told point blank that their columnists deliberately take extreme and controversial positions - many of which are inarticulate and non-persuasive - to get people fired up and attract feedback. I just thought why make myself crazy. Throw it all out. Ignore, ignore.

Now I'll have to look at my mostly blank Day-timer from last year, with its pages used as a notebook for some random ideas and snippets of dialogue. Maybe I'll actually have more time to plan things to do this year if I'm not wasting a little bit at a time paying attention to the sickening void of pop culture.

I should add another note for the sake of the few knee-jerks who might happen upon this blog and take offence at my issues with GLAAD and groups like them: I'm all for gay marriage and gay adoption and all of those many bench marks of progress that won't have an impact on what I want or have to do in my own life. But we live in a climate where we don't know each other and few intelligent people dare say anything that isn't affirmative. I'm not surprised to see a full-page article about the return of Andrew "Dice" Clay to comedy. People may very well need to listen to something that is expressing a very valid feeling of discomfort. I don't think discomfort should be lumped in with fear and certainly not hated to the point where someone's disinterest or a market's disinterest in something is branded "non-inclusive." I think it's great that the net version of Star Trek has introduced Captain Kirk's gay nephew, but I'm not rushing to find out how that is illustrated. Live long and prosper, as long as I don't have to pretend T.R. Knight is cool. Roddenberry was bucking the system to deal with race and staff the Enterprise with a multi-racial crew, but these days to buck the system is to be politically incorrect and outrage lobby groups.

All of this cluttering my head as I haul fresh new garbage out the door.