#MeToo Is Dead, and Doug Emhoff Killed It
Slapped to death
Once upon a time, Democrats pretended to care what happened to women.
In 2017, following the revelation that film producer Harvey Weinstein was a serial sexual predator, Hollywood and all their fellow liberals did a thorough housecleaning. They named and shamed men who had been abusing women for years. It was #TimesUp for toxic masculinity.
Or so we were told. And told. And told. Again and again and again.
Fast-forward seven years. The president of the United States is a dementia-addled basket case, and his even more inept VP is the Democratic candidate. Most of the “news” industry is frantically trying to convince you she’ll make a good president, because they don’t care about anything but keeping Donald Trump out of office.
So, what do the journos do in 2024 when a woman comes forward with a story of abuse by a powerful man? The first thing they do is check whether there’s an (R) after the guy’s name. If not, he’s off-limits.
They’ll ignore the story as long as they can. And when they’re finally forced to say something about it, they’ll minimize it as much as possible.
They’ll even transform the powerful Democrat into the victim.
That’s what Semafor just did:
Half of the political world focused Wednesday on a Daily Mail report that second gentleman Doug Emhoff “forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man” at Cannes in 2012. Others (including Semafor) haven’t matched the reporting, and as of Wednesday evening the incident didn’t appear in The New York Times or top outlets…
In a statement to Semafor, a spokesperson for Emhoff said “this report is untrue,” and that “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.”
They “haven’t matched the reporting,” but at least they got an on-the-record denial.
So now, Doug Emhoff is a “target.” Journalists and their fellow Democrats have dispensed with the old standard, by which an accusation alone was sufficient to determine guilt.
Just ask Christine Blasey Ford. If you can find her these days. She disappeared right after she got that “iconic” magazine cover.
She couldn’t prove a word of her story, and in fact her corroborating witnesses all said they had no idea what she was talking about. Yet millions of Americans are still convinced Brett Kavanaugh attacked her.
But never mind! Now the accused is given every benefit of the doubt. Now he’s actually the victim.
It would be enough to give an honest Democrat pause, if such a creature existed.
The Dems don’t want to know any details about this Emhoff story. They don’t care who his accuser is. They don’t wonder if there are any other women out there with similar stories. They’ve got four more weeks to drag Emhoff’s wife across the finish line, and they’re not about to get tripped up by their own standards.
They’re too busy trying to put a woman in the White House to care what happens to the rest of her gender.
Either Doug Emhoff is lying, or the woman who claims he hit her is lying. If you don’t want to know the answer because it might not help you win an election, maybe you’re not the good guys.
Streaming pick: Fringe on HBO Max, or Max, or whatever it’s called.
I just started rewatching this show from the beginning, an episode or two a day, and it’s even better than I remembered. The critical consensus seems to be that they didn’t hit their stride until season 2, but they really established the tone and themes right from the beginning. By the third or fourth episode, you’re given a clear picture of these three characters, what they mean to each other, and how they work as a team. Even when the mystery of the week ain’t that great, it’s still worth watching to see how they change and grow.
I care what happens to them. Especially Walter. John Noble is such a great actor.
As I recall, later seasons got even sillier, particularly the final one. But it still worked, because those characters kept the story grounded. Even in the middle of all the parallel universes and time travel and whatnot, the viewer is still rooting for those three outcasts from society to prevail.
Well, I am, anyway.
The show was never as popular as other genre fare like Lost and The X-Files, but after 10 years, I miss it a lot more than those shows. And I’d rather watch it than most of the streaming dreck that’s been flooding our screens over the past decade.
Man, I miss the good old days, before there were more full seasons of new TV shows than days in the year. I couldn’t watch half of it, even if I wanted to. And I sure don’t want to.
TGIF (Torpidly, Geoffrey Inhaled Freon), and thanks for putting up with me for another week. If you like this newsletter, please pay me so I can keep doing it. You’re the only one who can.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but #MeToo always seemed like it was meant to create a swell of moral panic large enough to wash away the Bad Orange Man, but when all they caught were a bunch of "male feminists" actors/media moguls and not the one they wanted, the left lost interest. The people that took it at face value always seemed like suckers to me.
Pretty sure #MeToo died as soon as the Democrats trotted out Bill Clinton for fundraising, campaigning, and speaking at the DNC for Biden's 2020 campaign.