Welcome back to what is, apparently (and unfortunately), National Sex Pest Forgiveness Week.
Earlier this week, we saw Bill Maher and Bill Burr calling for the public to forgive Louis C.K. for going around, for years, asking younger, less-established female comics if he could masturbate in front of them.
Now, following the debut of the BBC Channel 4 Documentary Kevin Spacey Unmasked, which is now streaming on Max (and which features 10 new allegations on top of the previous 15), several actors have come forward in statements given to The Telegraph to call for Spacey’s return to Hollywood.
These include Liam Neeson, Sharon Stone, Stephen Fry and F. Murray Abraham, who was notably booted from Apple TV’s “Mythic Quest” for, you guessed it, sexual misconduct.
“I vouch for him unequivocally. Who are these vultures who attack a man who has publicly accepted his responsibility for certain behaviour, unlike so many others?” Abraham asked, adding, “He is a fine man, I stand with him, and let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Has Spacey “accepted his responsibility” though? Because it sure doesn’t seem like he has. Spacey, for the same article, told The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson that he was a victim of a “rush to judgment” after the first 15 men came forward to accuse him of groping or otherwise sexually harassing or assaulting them.
As far as the stone-throwing goes? I don’t think that applies to this particular situation. Like, I really don’t think having, for instance, stolen eyeliner from CVS in high school disqualifies someone from being able to say “It’s bad for an adult man to grope a 14-year-old boy.”
“I was deeply saddened to learn of these accusations against him. Kevin is a good man and a man of character. He’s sensitive, articulate and non-judgmental, with a terrific sense of humour. He is also one of our finest artists in the theatre and on camera. Personally speaking, our industry needs him and misses him greatly,” said actor Liam Neeson.
Stephen Fry said that Spacey was merely “clumsy” and “inappropriate on many occasions,” so to “bracket him with the likes of Harvey Weinstein” and “to continue to harass and hound him, to devote a whole documentary to accusations that simply do not add up to crimes … how can that be considered proportionate and justified?”
I am also very clumsy. I have soberly faceplanted on thin air far more times than I care to name. But you know what I haven’t done? That. I’ve never done that. And if such a thing did occur, I like to believe I would really work on being slightly more graceful before it “accidentally” happened 25 more times.
Anyway, here: Allow Sharon Stone to just straight up ruin Sharon Stone for you:
She told The Telegraph: “I can’t wait to see Kevin back at work. He is a genius. He is so elegant and fun, generous to a fault and knows more about our craft than most of us ever will.”
She said it was clear aspiring actors had “wanted and want to be around him”, adding: “It’s terrible that they are blaming him for not being able to come to terms with themselves for using him and negotiating with themselves because they didn’t get their secret agendas.”
Ah, you see — it’s a secret agenda because no one has yet landed on what that agenda could possibly be.
Now, I am not a “people would never lie about that kind of thing” person, because obviously people have lied about all kinds of things. But I do believe that, in any scenario, if you’re going to claim that people did something because they had an agenda, you should probably have some idea of what that agenda is, no?
I don’t know what kind of motive or unified agenda musical theater legend Anthony Rapp, director Tony Montana, the son of a former Boston anchorwoman, eight people who worked on “House of Cards,” various actors who performed at the Old Vic theater in London when Spacey was artistic director there, and Richard Dreyfuss’s son Harry could all have to say that Spacey groped, sexually harassed, or assaulted them. What possible shared agenda is going to drive 15 or so adult men from around the world to come forward to say that the guy from American Beauty grabbed them by the crotch?
The extra disappointing thing here is that Stone herself previously came forward about being sexually harassed by the former head of Sony.
The former artistic director of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, Trevor Nunn, who directed Spacey in two productions at the Old Vic, explained that because the jury in his civil trial found him not guilty, he should be allowed to return to his career and be forgiven for everything he did.
“In light of the court’s verdict, surely it is time for this man to be forgiven for whatever poor judgments he may have made in the past and allowed to resume his career, after seven years of exile?” Nunn asked.
To be clear, he’s absolutely free to “resume his career,” but no one is obligated to watch him in anything.
People don’t get forgiven for the wrong they’ve done to others because a jury decided not to hold them accountable, they don’t get forgiven because they disappeared for a certain amount of time or have been “punished enough.” They get forgiven when they act to make things better for those they hurt, when they show remorse, when they take responsibility and demonstrate that they have learned and changed. Without all of that, it’s just empty. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s not asking for forgiveness, he’s doing cutesy Tucker Carlson Christmas interviews as Frank Underwood.
(I’m sorry, but I just discovered this exists and now you also have to know.)
You don’t get forgiven because your equally powerful friends come out and say “Can we let this go now? So he groped some men and boys without asking! Does that make him Harvey Weinstein? Get over it!”
Part of what we see happening now is a lot of what made it so difficult for people to come forward about sexual assault and harassment to begin with — the implication that, by coming forward, they are ruining everyone’s good time, as well as the career and social life of someone people value more than themselves. There’s this “OK, fine, we all recognize that something bad happened to you, but can you just please be cool and not take this person away from us?” thing that #MeToo seemed like it was starting to put an end to.
Clearly, we’ve all got some work to do.
PREVIOUSLY:
I remember when the news about Spacey first broke. The comment I saw was something like, "Dude, 'I was gay and drunk' is an excuse for table-dancing to Britney Spears, not sexual assault."
Fuck Kevin Spacey and anyone trying to make excuses for him. Sexual abuse in Hollywood destroys lives and careers. How long did it take Brendan Fraser to come back into the spotlight after allegedly being sexually assaulted by the head of the Academy Awards?
Also, obligatory Fuck Ted Cruz.