Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

They’re out there. Even stripped of context, manner of death was “homicide” on the autopsy, and people say “he/she was murdered.” They make no distinction with regards to intent, which a medical examiner does not consider, but a legal investigation would.

 

Gotcha. Yeah, journalists (and humans) can be sloppy with usage. I’ve been hammering at that for years here. The sexual assault/harassment issue is just a really rich vein for talking about it. I think child abuse would be another, for example. And guns, of course.

 

Hardly the only example of creepy sexual politics in the series. Ron is basically a date rapist.

 

Wake me when Jerry Seinfeld runs for a seat in the Senate.

Edit: My apologies. I read through more of the thread after hitting post and saw multiple comments like this. My bad.

 

This morning, I caught a few minutes of a How I Met Your Mother rerun that made me think of this topic. It was called "The Naked Man." For those that don't know it, the group met a guy who has this strategy that he claimed worked two out of three times. If a date was going badly, but he managed to get back to the woman's apartment, he would find a moment alone and strip off all of his clothes.

He got Robin into bed doing it. Ted tried it and succeeded. Barney tried it and failed, with the woman screaming at him and threatening to call the police. It was all played for laughs, with Ted saying that it was a key moment in getting over being left at the altar.

So, was the show glorifying sexual misconduct?

 

Absolutely. This issue is like gay marriage. Everyone swears they were enlightened all along. They weren’t.

 

Some people were put off at the time. I was, but honestly, I see the problem with it a lot more clearly now than I did when the episode first aired.This morning, I was thinking some networks probably wouldn't run an episode like that any more. Of course, that gets into a serious slippery slope.

There has been worse on television, but treating it so lightly struck me as odd.

 

On the other hand, there’s no way any journalist, no matter how good, can capture every single reader’s context, especially when using loaded terms.

So, maybe the language is purposely, and necessarily, broad.

 

That’s why I raised the idea at some point to just use “assault” to describe what Sepp Blatter is accused of.

 

Fair enough, shitbreath.

 

In terms of The Naked Man, it’s so obviously over the top I think it’s fine.

Are we going to boycott The Big Lebowski because one of the nihilists told Walter he was going to fuck him in the ass?

 

Good point. I remember watching the episode and thinking it was funny.

With all the raised awareness I've looked back at my own behavior and while I was never a groper I used to routinely slap asses when drunk and never thought anything of it.

One of our friends used to flash his dick at parties all the time and nobody thought it was a big deal.

Hope every generation gets better.