Every now and then Ollie writes a post which becomes a little mind worm and forces me to write another post. He even put “worm” in the title of this one to help ensure it dug its way into my brain.

I must admit I don’t watch today’s news media. They are all pushing such an agenda I can’t hear any of them utter the word “journalism” without laughing hysterically and turning it off. The other thing I can’t deal with is when the media tries to horribly spin something Trump does or says. I don’t like the guy and didn’t vote for him, but any time I hear a media outlet start to spin, they lose me for a week. Gospel truth, the only reason I can still watch NCIS on Tuesday night is the fact I never turn on channel 2 news. If I ever did, it would be like all of the other channels I no longer watch. This recent brew-ha-ha over former Presidents not always calling the family of a fallen member of the military is completely manufactured. I saw the clips they were playing to justify their spin. He said “they didn’t always call.” The guy speaking right after him, who lost his son under one of the useless Bushes (they were both useless, the son even more so than the father) only to not have the useless Bush call.

Apparently you all skipped high school math. It only takes one time for always to be false.

Then the younger useless Bush puts out some statement claiming he always called or wrote a letter. Fine, but, when you wrote a letter you didn’t call.

It only takes one time for always to be false.

It totally disgusts me when “news” shows bother to cover this. This kind of shit should be on Entertainment Tonight.

Rico-Gate, on the other hand, is legit news. American citizens still without electricity and running water a month after the disaster. A lot of people should be going to jail for that. Hey, you can’t fix a power grid or a drinking water system. Both of those systems might even have been in horrible shape before the hurricane did them in and probably was. I mean CommEd defers maintenance here in the states because expenditures done as part of storm recovery can be used to justify rate increases, but ordinary maintenance can’t.

Having said all of that, there is absolutely no excuse for not having helicoptered everyone who lived beyond passable roads to a place where electricity and running water existed, even if that place was a commandeered passenger ship which, when full, would steam them back to an American port which hadn’t been hit by hurricane this year. That, to me, is Rico-Gate and people should be going to jail.

So, because of all that, I’m not up on the latest Harvey revelations. I do have a few perspectives to share in response to Ollie’s words.

Of all the stars humiliated into unwanted sex with master creep, Harvey Weinstein, which ones didn’t deserve to become a star? They all did, of course. Their subsequent successes prove it. No one ever made it to Weinstein’s casting couch unless they were good at their trade, making him all the more pathetic and us, the public, the SOB’s abettors.

Let’s ask this a different way. In order to reach their fullest potential, was boinking Harvey absolutely necessary?

A good many will hate me, but, it is what it is.

The Casting Couch Was Known

I grew up rural, with 5 (in good weather) television channels. From the time I was old enough to have some idea what sex was, even I had heard of the “casting couch.” Keep in mind I was doing chores and we had livestock so I had “some idea” as soon as I was old enough to carry a 5 gallon bucket of feed during spring. I’m not justifying its existence, I’m just saying that if I, barely old enough to read MAD Magazine and living in the middle of nowhere had heard about the casting couch . . .

The Casting Couch Wasn’t Just for Women

I’m not saying Harvey’s door swung that way, but, I know for a fact of at least one casting couch which was a female free zone. I suspect this type was and still is rather numerous. Probably not as numerous as the ones for women, but numerous. During my college days one of my friends worked at a diner and theater place. It wasn’t a place most of you would have heard about, but it was well known in these parts. It no longer exists, but it was a favorite place of corporations to have employee outings. The food was good and you went straight into the theater for a play or musical. It was widely known whoever was in charge of casting held “in depth interviews” for the male actors while females would chat a bit and read a few lines or sing a song and be out.

It’s the Money

During my younger years I was a consultant working on a trading floor system for a stock exchange. While we were quite a partying crowd and occasionally itches were scratched. While there were a few women with well earned reputations for dancing on top of the tables, we were nothing like the trading floor crew. They weren’t as open and blatant about it as portrayed in “The Wolf of Wall Street” they really weren’t that much different. Just a bit more discrete. I must note here that I was pleased to see the scene where both male and female prostitutes marched in for their “Friday meeting.” Most people paid not attention to that part. Having worked near that world I was well aware that more than one of the females in our building was just as bad, if not worse than the worst of the guys. It was the money.

You don’t have to believe me. You can read up on Heidi Fleiss, Eliot Spitzer and a host of others. How about the Google Exec Heroin overdose? There was one news interview I saw years ago with a woman who ran a call girl ring and in-house prostitutes talking about all of the “black cards” she had where employees from various brokerage firms could come in and charge it to the company.

Gospel truth, I ran into one of the people who used to work on a trading floor later in life. He wasn’t working in the financial industry, moved into the tech, but, he hadn’t changed. After a couple of drinks he started talking rather loudly about hookers and which were the best in the area. Honestly, I was regretting having met him at a bar I liked. More than one female in the place as giving him the evil eye and I was suffering guilt by association.

So, am I shocked that men, and possibly women, charged with spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie allowed the casting couch to become a reality? No. There are only so many movie and television creative works funded each year, but there are literally thousands of actors vying for each role. To really answer Ollie’s question, one would have to know just how many actors turned Harvey down only to have their career vaporize? It would be an interesting number. If the number was zero it would mean the answer to Ollie’s question really was no. If the number has a lot of digits then most definitely yes.

Confusion Reigns Supreme

During my young and impressionable youth with only 5 television channels to chose from when the weather was good, there was a made for television movie/mini-series about all of these actors and actresses sneaking around to sleep with each other’s spouses and a few single people. It was considered quite scandalous for network television back in the day. I will never forget the interview with the woman who wrote that screen play/book. The interviewer asked her if she played it up for ratings. She replied “We had to tone it down to get it on television and keep it believable. Nobody would believe the truth.”

You see, it used to be that Hollywood was considered the capital of wanton debauchery, despite the legalized prostitution near Las Vegas. The rest of the country was considered to be a bastion of Victorian Era Chastity. Granted that was roughly 40 years ago, but that was the mindset of the general public, no matter how many divorces we saw caused by cheating spouses.

Today thousands and thousands of ordinary people from all walks of life film themselves having sex and put it on the Internet for free. Obviously they aren’t doing it for a multi-million dollar paycheck. In fact, you have to turn “safe search” on to avoid bumping into such a site when performing just about any Web search these days. Even then you still bump into them. Let us not forget about the thousands and thousands of people who also turn their laptop camera into a live porn chat experience. While some of them are probably getting paid via ad revenue sharing, I think we can all agree none of them are making millions performing live sex acts for viewers. Honestly, if someone was paying that kind of money to film sex acts to post on-line the Internet and home computers would all run out of storage assuming there was enough money to pay all of the volunteers.

I’m not saying what Harvey did was right. Since I rarely watch the news anymore I don’t even know half of what Harvey is accused of doing. My point of confusion here is multi-fold.

  • Is Hollywood now reversing its role, becoming the bastion of Victorian Era Chastity while the rest of the world is leading “the Hollywood life” of old?
  • If this “casting couch” culture has been widely know for over 40 years, why is this coming to a head now? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning it, but with various streaming services now churning out more content than Hollywood, they can’t all be using the casting couch. They haven’t been around long enough to become part of the culture and many of them are way far away from Hollywood itself.
  • Roman Polanski is still operating at large and still a member of the academy and he’s admitted guilt, yet Harvey got kicked out of the academy almost instantaneously. Cosby is still a member as well last I heard.

These are the questions which fill my mind about the whole Harvey thing. Given that news media can’t really be trusted anymore, it is doubtful such questions will ever get a valid vetted answer.

It would be extremely interesting to know just how many people turned sex with Harvey down and what became of their careers.

All of this brings to mind the reason Carson ceased to be live on the air or at least the rumor behind why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtbbFCEbR4I