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

The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari - The Atlantic

 

I agreed with most of your longer post above, but I wanted to add a caveat, which, in a sense, this piece does for me.

The conversation that needs to be had that you're referring? It first needs to be had between women on all sides of the discussion.

The kicker graf is especially notable:

I thought it would take a little longer for the hit squad of privileged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men. I had assumed that, on the basis of intersectionality and all that, they’d stay laser focused on college-educated white men for another few months. But we’re at warp speed now, and the revolution—in many ways so good and so important—is starting to sweep up all sorts of people into its conflagration: the monstrous, the cruel, and the simply unlucky. Apparently there is a whole country full of young women who don’t know how to call a cab, and who have spent a lot of time picking out pretty outfits for dates they hoped would be nights to remember. They’re angry and temporarily powerful and last night they destroyed a man who didn’t deserve it.

 

*Is* Aziz Ansari ruined?

I mean, he's going to need some reworking because a lot of his image was built around being chill and non-threatening. But I'm not sure he can't weather this, career-wise.

 

It's a really interesting question, because you're right. This goes against everything that made him a "star," or at least a known entity. Seems like a death blow.

And then I remember that as the #MeToo thing was blowing up, Mel Gibson was starring in a feel-good Christmas movie.

 

The Shittiest Men in Media document is soon going to including the everyday man.

Ask a girl out the wrong way? On the list.

Take a girl to a restaurant she feels is beneath her? On the list.

Try to hold her hand and she doesn't want to yet ... perv!

Shit, you can be dating for a few months and it ends of its own volition for whatever reason but it'll be the guy's fault. He's on the list! LOL.

I know @Double Down wants to have The Conversation™ but I don't think that conversation's being had right now.

Women need to police themselves before men are allowed into that conversation.

 

I'll just say that, without reading the coverage. I still have no clue who Aziz Ansari is.

 

Plagiarized a Weekly Standard article about the Shitty Men in Media List:

 

I have a hard time with the “destroyed a man who didn’t deserve it” conclusion.

 

I know I'm a man and have never been in a position where I've felt as though I've had to do anything sexually that I didn't want to do. (One of the obvious biological discrepancies between men and women is that men have to be aroused to have sex, and I'm not sure how that basic design flaw is ever fixed.) But with all that being said, the part of the Ansari story that I just don't get... She's uncomfortable, she's unhappy, she says she is (and right there, he should have stopped all pursuits, absolutely, I get that), but then they go to the couch, she sits on the floor, he "motions" to her to blow him... and she does. Why on earth would she do that? I'm not saying that to be critical of her, because again, I don't know what it's like to be a woman in that situation. I'm asking. Because I honestly don't understand.

 

Here's what she said: "I think I just felt really pressured."

 

I understand that, absolutely, in a case like Harvey Weinstein—a physically large man with a lot of power over people's careers.

The woman in this case is a photographer, right? And Aziz Ansari is built like an underfed whippet, with no authority over her career.

I think I really just don't understand the psychology here. Again, not a criticism. I just don't get it.

 

The larger point: These stories aren't going away for two reasons:

1. They are traffic goldmines.

2. Anonymous sourcing for any kind of story is accepted as standard today and if one site doesn't like the story, another one will, because see point No. 1.

It's merely starting with the MeToo movement, but could easily grow. Shaming a mean boss, shaming your neighbor, shaming some couple who's talking about something you don't approve of - these things all happen now, but if these sites realize how much traffic they generate and can somehow channel their energy toward that...look out. White people will be shamed for trigger moments. Men will be shamed for trigger moments. Women will be shamed for defending men or, hell, defending women. Professors will be shamed for liberal moments. Professors will be shamed for conservative moments. Football will be shamed for being football. ESPN's Outside The Lines has become as much the Shame Beat as anything else.

Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame.

And when we lose all standards of what should be shamed - when pretty much everybody's the devil - the shameless and self-righteous win. The ones with enough cultural power, in the moment, to truly not give a fuck.

Right now, that's 27-year-old liberals on Twitter, and Donald Trump.

Fine culture we have going.