Cat

Finally caught up on Dallas:

I really love this show. I love how it has real housewives. I love how it has a good mix of the HWs doing their own stuff or interacting with their family each episode, and not just fighting with each other. I loved D'Andra with the Lab Technicians scene. I love that D'Andra is a genuinely accomplished woman and and doesn't get into the crazy drama is much, but she is no less interesting for it.

Like @Cheap21 I wonder sometimes if Kameron would have been better as an eccentric FOH (a bit like Marie was. Remember pot-stirring Marie?). I am SO OVER hearing about the damn pink dog food. Oh, and her way of speakinggggg? Is totally annoyinggg? However, whenever she calmly goes toe-to-toe with Brandi I always enjoy it. Brandi may not be fancy and educated but she has shown all season that she is no dummy, by getting away with talking behind everybody's back. But Kameron has her pegged, and Brandi is unsettled by that.

Brandi has been great for story this season but I hope she gets exposed at Reunion. Though somehow I have a feeling the Reunion will be all about tearing Cary down. Brandi and Stephanie really are the kind of mean girls who thrive on isolating somebody from their friendship group for the most arbitrary of reasons, and then tearing her to pieces.

Even though she is a cold, hard-nosed, homewrecking bitch (nurse or nanny -- does it matter? We know what went down), I still root for Cary when it comes to her and the other women. I hate the way they have turned on her when she has actually been a good friend to most.

Damn, that was some Southern smooth talking from LeeAnne with Mark! Gotta applaud her for turning that all around -- even though she says she was just retaliating as a result of Cary's comments about Little Rich. Girl, that was weeks after you brought up The Round-Up! Hopefully LeeAnne will finally see Brandi's true colors next week.

11 hours ago, WTGH said:

NYC: TamaraTattles is reporting that Tinsley and Scott have broken up. 

Too bad. He seemed the perfect fit for her after getting burned so many times. Also, selfishly, I was hoping he would marry her and whisk her off to  Chicago. I don't think Tinsley is interesting enough to warrant a second season on NY. Heck, at least Jules stood up for herself! Or bring back Aviva. But I'm just not invested in Curls. 

@DaytimeFan yep, I saw this somewhere: HEPPP -- Hot Exhausted Pain Pale and Puke. Call an ambulance. Vicki looked in a really bad way too. (Btw Kelly really hates Peggy huh. It was obvious even in that scene).

@Nothin'ButAttitude Absolutely they should be shorter. NY should have been cut down this season. OC definitely -- Bravo should have wielded the editing scissors the moment they saw what awful footage they had pre-Iceland. Even Atl earlier this year could have withstood seeing 4 or 5 episodes dropped off the total count.

And man you really delivered the receipts on Shannon! She's been throwing dramatic tantrums against Vicki for kicks! Shame. She was actually growing on me this episode. That ridiculous comment about the text group apart, she was actually empathetic with Lydia (probably because she would be able to relate if Tamra left her off the text chain).

@Nothin'ButAttitude YES that clip of D'Andra at the research lab was straight of Y&R and Jabot 15-20 years ago (sniff... so long ago already). It made me want to purchase this damn product tbh. And did you notice that all the experts in the lab are ladies of a certain age? I love that detail!

OC:

OK, so this episode finally felt like the OC of old. They should have condensed the first 15 episodes into 3 or 4 episodes and just gone straight into Iceland (P.S.: In answer to Vicki and Lydia's question, Iceland was the name given by the Vikings to the country; it means Island. Similarly, Greenland is actually Groenland which means 'Great Land' because of its large land mass. #TheThingsYouKnow).

Even Lydia's little tantrum about being left off the text group was relatable. Though Shannon saying she would never have a meltdown about being left off a text group  Uh huh. And then the edit showing her throwing a wobbly when Heather sat in her chair a few seasons back was  Also Shannon making it all about her on the walk down the iceberg was TYPICAL. You'll notice Vicki didn''t say a peep even though she looked under some pressure -- that says to me that her heart pains were real. Otherwise she would have wanted everybody to make a fuss of her.

Vicki was great this episode, from the Good Old Times drink with Tamra in her room to talking Lydia on a walk and reasoning with her about letting the text stuff go. And it ended with a pretty great cliffhanger! Hope she is ok.

Iceland looked stunning, especially from the aerial shots. Sad to know that in 20 years the glacier will be no more. It's good for these ladies to see completely different parts of the world -- not everything should and can be like their McMansions in the OC.

22 hours ago, Antoyne said:

It’s funny we have OC and Jersey on, but NYC is still a hot topic. I think it says a lot about the shows. I’ve actually enjoyed OC a little more than others this season, but it’s definitely starting to run on fumes. I just don’t like when any of the shows run a story for years on end without an end in sight.

It is unfortunate that the two franchises performing the most poorly are on the air at the same time. Well, I am being harsh on NJ, which hasn't felt this light and silly in years. But there is no way to come back intact after five (FIVE!) seasons trying our loyalty to death. Meanwhile OC is in a REALLY bad place. It needs serious life support. If Bravo execs are not worried about OC, they all need to be fired.

NJ:

In some ways, I understand Soggy (legit typo, but it stays) is miffed that she brought Margaret into the group, and Margaret, recognizing who is Queen Bee around here, basically made a beeline for Teresa. Siggy is taking it all WAY too seriously, though. She bitterly hates Margaret, and it makes no sense. That sad, pathetic pigtails pajama party with Delores? Arguing over who knew Joan Rivers?  C'mon now.

The obsession over the cake-throwing makes no sense either. I see in the previews Saggy is bringing it up again. OMG please [!@#$%^&*] stop. Please don't let the cake thing be 'the' issue that dominates the rest of the season.

Either Sigs wants badly to be relevant -- or she believes her own hype that she is the new queen of NJ (and god knows it must be her own hype because I have never seen that view expressed anywhere!). She has literally become Jaqueline who never got the memo that she wasn't the central HW. Well, Siggy has not got the memo that she is deeply annoying and unfunny. Margaret by contrast is coming across cool, calm, collected and fun.

The View feels so old-fashioned to me. Like it is representing old-time politics circa 2005, the usual Dems vs Reps. But it is not business as usual. The two-party set-up has fractured. Really, there should be at least four parties, or representative voices, on this panel. The Dems are torn by factional infighting between the Bernie Sanders lot and the Democrat establishment as exemplified by Hilary Clinton. The Republicans, meanwhile, have almost entirely sold their soul to the evangelical Christians and mega business, trying to reconcile the tax-cuts Reps with the Trumpians, who are much more hands-on/interventionist than the classic Republican would ever usually tolerate. And then we have the Libertarians, which consist of a few tax-cuts/no government ex-Republican voters and is a growing political voice out there. In some ways, Jedediah Bila's inclusion was a nod to these wider fractures, as I would class her a mostly Libertarian voice. I am a Democrat-leaning female voter (who lives outside the US but still pays taxes and votes in elections), I voted for HRC, but I found Bila's departure murky in the extreme. She asked two mildly pressing questions after Hilary had had a cosy chat with everybody else, and it almost seems like TPTB punished her for it. If that's the case, then we must assume TPTB are beholden to the Democrat establishment in some way. And the fact that Megan McCain is now representing the Republican voice when her father and her are NOT toeing the Republican line, the Trump line, makes her defense of his presidency sounds like dialogue she memorised two minutes before walking on set.

Just as Fox News feels like a mouthpiece for the current White House, deliberately burying stories or misleading its viewers, so too has a show like The View become ossified in its Democratic establishment voice. It does not feel like it is representative of swathes of US society, with a multitude of differing opinions, ideas and yes ideologies (as scary as I find that last word). It feels like it is just pretending that we are still in this two-party system where Democrat represents one broad view and Republicans another. Maybe it's just me who feels this way. As a voter upset with the election of Trump, I have a lot of questions about what is going on in the world right now, in the US. I don't always find these questions discussed on The View, however, and I am pretty sure some Rep-leaning people I know would feel the same way.

Maybe these questions are just too far beyond the remit of a panel of 'women' (because we know how TV and the media feels about women in general!) who have been instructed to keep things simple and at a certain low level of discussion.

Wow, I wrote too much. Sorry for the rant.

6 hours ago, Khan said:

If the employees "have nothing to hide" by releasing this, then why is it anonymous?  (And don't give me the same old jive about "non-disclosure agreements."  Those are way past being null-and-void.)  Women throughout the industry have spoken publicly about their encounters with him and with others -- and they have done so, I might add, at great risk to their careers and reputations.  Surely, Kevin in Accounting could've remembered where he had kept his balls and then signed his name at the bottom of the statement.

Thank you for bringing up the non--disclosure agreements. Do people seriously think that Harvey Weinstein was some kind of legal superbrain who was able to bash out a bunch of these on his computer, and legal counsel at TWC never knew? The Board of Directors were never informed? An expensive law firm was never consulted every step of the way? PAs were never asked to receive delivery of the NDAs from the law firms? Staffers close to the situation were never asked to go over their contents with a fine-tooth comb and make sure there were no loopholes that victims could take advantage of? 

Everybody was involved, staffers KNEW FULL WELL about 'the fat one' as he was nicknamed and his 'rapacious appetites' (see Peter Biskind's best-selling book about Miramax). They also knew about Bob Weinstein and who knows how many other execs. This was par for the course and their job was not just to cover it up, but to facilitate it.

As far as I'm concerned, a bunch of these long-time staffers are accessories to the crimes. And it wasn't just within TWC -- all of establishment Hollywood knew, covered up and in some cases made it happen. For Weinstain and for others.

14 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:

Wendy is looking exhausted on the show - these Big Kev cheats stories seem to be taking a major toll.

Her hair looked good in the Luann interview though.

Before she went on summer hiatus, Wendy was in a really bad way the last few episodes. She was off, emotional (she snapped at her producer Suzanne on air) and darting from thought to thought in an unstable way. I was actually worried she might have slipped back into some bad habits but now that the news has broken about her and her 'man,' I wonder if it wasn't the emotion. She sounds a bit more stable now but god knows how she is going to untangle herself from his grasp. He is her manager and is probably elbows-deep in all her business affairs -- and her money. 

Just now, Antoyne said:

I’ve definitely become ride or die for Luann. I think it started the season she was demoted but they still featured her every episode. She seemed much lighter and free and her looking at the camera laughing when Aviva threw her leg was amazing.

Let me dig into my database of treasured Luann gifs...

And don't forget 

4 minutes ago, Taoboi said:

MMMM....beautiful diva.  I think I've somehow become ride-or-die for her. If anything over the last few years she has shown that she is willing to follow her happiness for better or worse and I just find that relatable and inspiring on a personal level.

She looks stunning! IA it kind of crept up on me, but ever since The Pirate (and maybe even before, when she got camel-tossed and laughed it off?), I've been rooting for her to have a good ole time and dismiss the slut-shamers. It is inspiring! She's had some knocks but she always gets back up with a smile on her face, a positive attitude, and relatively few recriminations. Even in yesterday's Wendy Williams interview, when asked about the HWs she enjoys the most, she mentioned Dorinda, Sonja... and Bethenny. She really has let bygones be bygones.

Just now, Nothin'ButAttitude said:

 

That did not go as I expected! I thought it was going to be a messy ass mess of screaming and make-up running down one's face (and that's just with Mark! I kid, I kid).

Actually, I enjoyed how upfront, direct but relatively unvicious it was. LeeAnne could debate her way out of a Trump cabinet meeting. I guess this is how Southern ladies do it. By the end, Mark had stated his respect for Rich, squeezed her arm and offered her congratulations for her engagement! #Impressed

Cary is probably gonna be hearing it when he gets home though.

45 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

 

That last sentence is why I think Bethenny has to go.  If she weren't on, we would see more equal focus on all the women.  This is an ensemble, not the Bethenny show.  Why the show caters to her demands, I'll never know.

PREACH

15 minutes ago, Antoyne said:

Lu’s story will be Bethenny’s thoughts on Luann moving on.

3 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:

 

Fashion Police hasn't been itself since Joan died. The show should have ended after they aired the tribute episode to Joan (which was one of the funniest and most lovingly produced hours of television I have ever seen). Much as I like Brad, he wasn't George Kotsiopoulos, and Melissa wasn't Joan, and Nene and Margaret Cho weren't Kelly and without the original group it made no sense for Giuliana to be there. Ultimately, losing this gig is the last tiny bit of independence Nene had from the RH franchise - she better play nice or she's going to be lose big time.

 

Lu is fabulous and word on the street is all the NYC ladies are being brought back. Lu will be A-OK in the long run. 

ITA it wasn't the same after Joan died. However, after Kathy Griffin and Kelly Osbourne departed, I felt the show was sort of hitting its stride -- or at least in a more comfortable place. Though, like you, I never understand why Nene and Margaret Cho were part of the panel. Both should have been replaced by Tim Gunn who lit up the place every time he was a guest. Also, one reason why I started warming towards Erika Girardi was because she made an appearance on the last episode and spoke knowledgeably about the designers. She also would have made an interesting panel member. Anyhoo, it's all moot now. Too bad for Melissa, who wanted her mother's legacy to carry on (I truly believe this, and not money, was her motivating factor), but she didn't pick a strong enough panel.

Nene better know which side her bread is buttered, but she's bit the hand that fed her before: during her first time on Fashion Police, she put Brad and Giuliana on blast on social media for being a bit cliquey. From then on in, Brad and Giuliana made concerted efforts on screen to agree with her 'fashion insights' -- when she wasn't gurning like a fool. I suspect they were a little afraid of her -- as Andy seems to be sometimes. Maybe that's the secret to her burgeoning TV career?

Lu is one of the few HWs on any franchise I am actively rooting for. I am personally relieved she has dumped that press-hungry albatross and moved on, and I cannot wait to see where the Countess takes her brand next! Hopefully we get to see it next years and not just Bethenny's VTs moaning about the other women.

6 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:

Fashion Police has been cancelled by E! Nene is out of another job.

Wow. That's too bad. I've watched that show for years and hung on Brad's every word!

3 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:

Lu was on Wendy Williams today, she's bouncing back for sure:

 

 

Apart from her Queen Latifah comment, which went down like a lead balloon with the audience, Luann was great. Resilient and pragmatic. I sense her sadness too, but this is a lady who is rarely going to let the blues get her down.. Onwards and upwards, Lu!

Bravo would be fools not to bring her back next season. She made headlines for NY this year and kept people talking about the show.

I am torn between kicking out Shannon or Vicki -- until I watched the WWHL that @Nothin'ButAttitude mentioned. I love how Vicki came across, measured, comfortable with herself for the first time in a long while. I thought Andy seemed pretty into her, actually (and on another note, Rita Wilson was also on and she was fabulous! She'd be great on BH but she would never).

Like @Chris B said, Shannon brings something to the show that no-one else does. She really puts her life out there. I don't want to reward the powerhungry crazy, though. It is clear she is projecting everything that is wrong in her life on Vicki. At this point, she needs to set fire to David"s clothes in his car, Waiting to Exhale styles. Then she needs to move her daughters out of that depressing rental and use the I Magnin money daddy gives her to get a new place. Basically burn everything that represents her current life to the ground and start over. Close the chapter on a marriage of dead-ends and resentment. It will be cathartic for her... and for us who have endured the agonizing death of the Beador marriage for over three seasons.

But if it's a case of Shannon screeching "Are you kidding me??? I'm done! It's either me or Vicki!!" for a fourth straight season, then I choose Vicki. Because I can't with this emotional vampire blocking any movement in the show.

I forgot to mention this when talking about Dallas.

Even though D'Andra's skincare/vitamin supplements company is, yes, still stuck in the late 80s, you have to appreciate that it remains in business, and that it was early on the wellness scene.

I enjoyed watching this segment (below) with the chemist, talking about the formulation of a new skincare product that D'Andra is spearheading. It's her way of proving to her mother she can dedicate herself to a project and take the company forward.

Honestly, I don't know why I find this clip so satisfying. I think because it has a touch of old Y&R about it! It makes me wish Y&R did more with the skincare/makeup business that was actually somewhat realistic (instead of just a random pretext to show Amelia HeinBore everyday and push Villy, but that's a rant for another thread).

The clip also made me somewhat curious to try this L22 product lol.

15 hours ago, ChitHappens said:

 

I read an article on Twitter and it was interesting and true.  It pretty much said that HW is vulnerable right now because he's not making the hits he once was, which is why it was easy for him to fall from grace.  This is decades old, but many have voices now.  Trust that if W was making some huge hits right now and keeping that money flowing, folks would still be taking pics telling us about his genius and wonderfulness while KNOWING he's trash!

 

As long as folks are making money, anything can be swept under the rug.  Corey Feldman has been talking about the predators for how long now?  Even Barbara Walters laid the burden of Hollywood and what these allegations would do at his feet.  

Ugh! The moment when I truly hated that vicious old crust of skin and hairspray! I can't believe she guilted him in front of everybody, when he was putting his story out there. It was one of the grossest things I have ever seen done to a survivor of sexual abuse. He must have felt traumatised afterwards.

You've hit the nail on the head, money buys anything and everything, it launders everything, it sweeps everything under the rug. HW did what he did because he had power and $$$ rolling in. He felt he could buy all the women in Hollywood -- because what are they but glorified prostitutes/pieces of ass, right? When the bottom line became squeezed, that's when his power diminished. Have you noticed who all the bigwigs are now? The major players are Amazon, Silicon Valley, hedge-fund men with ties to Trump (that's who Bob Weinstein is selling TWC to), China... This is bigger than Hollywood. These are major players. They are nations, or institutions even bigger and more powerful than one single nation. Best believe that they will do anything to maintain the status quo and continue to silence those who speak out. Harvey Weinstein is the sacrificial lamb. The other head honchos have thrown him and Ron Price to the wolves, banking on this being the general public's pound of flesh. Then, in a few weeks, when all this has died down, when another horrendous shooting or the threat of nuclear Armageddon dominates the headlines, when people's disillusion hardens into apathy, things will return to 'normal' -- they hope.

I hope this is the beginning. Fling open all the doors and clean house. The magnitude of rape and sexual abuse people are going through continues to shock me. In particular, I hope Corey Feldman's abusers are named and shamed. We should be talking prison for people like this.

9 hours ago, dragonflies said:

Plus isn't Kate Winslet doing or did a Woody Allen Movie? I can't with some of these celebs either. Meryl Streep I'm looking at you

When she isn't reminding us every couple of months that she and Leo DiCaprio are still BFFs y'all (while he looks like he can't even remember her name. If it ain't got a pair of DD knockers and Victoria's Secret angel wings attached to it, it ain't worth remembering), yes, Kate Winslet is promoting a movie that she made with Woody Allen. She also did one with Roman Polanski.

12 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:

 

Absolutely agree - I loved tonight's Dallas. This episode should earn the show a third season - it is so superior to OC and NJ this season it isn't even funny how boring those two old bag franchises are in comparison to youthful Dallas. 

 

LeeAnne is a live wire and I've been waiting for that glass to get thrown all season long and as her diamante belt went flying off her jumpsuit it felt worth the wait. 

 

I agree that Kameron had the line of the night with that comment about the plastic glasses. I laughed. Hard. 

 

And yes, the reveal about Cary being the nanny, then the nurse, then the wife, was a thing to behold. I wonder if she'll return for a third season if they land one. That's a pretty heavy revelation. 

Oh hell yes Snark Queen Cary better return for a third season! This nanny revelation is soaptastic fodder. It is a big and embarrassing revelation but speaking for myself, I felt sorry for her at the way Brandi, Stephanie and LeeAnne planned the attack and rounded on her. I wish LeeAnne could see how Brandi uses her to do her dirtiest dirty work and then trashes her behind her back.

Is Cary a homewrecking hussy? Probably. But whether she was a nanny or a nurse, does it matter? Now she's married to that mean little man who demands to be serviced daily and treats her like garbage and openly resents his toddler daughter. So in a way she got karmic revenge thrown back at her. 

Brandi, sigh. I really dislike her. I can't deny that she is great for this show, stirring up all the drama, but she's so jealous of Stephanie confiding in Cary more than her that she threw somebody who was a friend to her under the bus. Twice. Also, I blame her for fobbing that picture of her semi-naked hubby at a Christmas party on us. My eyes!

LeeAnne's glass throw was so LeeAnne that if you watch cat-faced Tiffany, she is literally peeing in her pants with delight.

This was a thrilling episode full of soapy goodness. I must say I loved D'Andra having the wherewithal to apologise to her stepson -- and when she 'showed up' robot-styles at Brandi's White Gala (she better hope Kyle Richards and The Agency doesn't sue her ass).

OC

I just watched the confrontation at the table posted on Bravo's YouTube channel. Shannon is honking bully and has literally emotionally-vampired this show. She has sucked every ounce of blood from it and from the audience. She is still holding onto [!@#$%^&*] that happened 3 years ago. If she can't let it go, she needs to end it: both her marriage and her participation on the show.

And in somewhat more uplifting news... Carrie Fisher sent a Hollywood exec who tried to force himself on her screenwriter friend a cow tongue in a Tiffany box. She personally delivered the gift with a note that said 'If you ever touch my darling Heather or any other woman again, the next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box.'

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/17/carrie-fisher-gave-predatory-producer-cows-tongue-heather-robinson

14 hours ago, juniorz1 said:

Don't hide!  I like Erika MOST of the time!!!

Haha ok I feel less out-there then. I do have to agree with @Antoyne and @alwaysAMC about last season. Erika had all her ducks in a row to be everything the BH fans adore in a HW, but she really messed up. I'm not talking about DWTS which nobody cares about. I'm talking her cold, disdainful attitude, especially in Hong Kong. In a weirdly insecure way, Erika looks down on the other women, including her minions Eileen and Rinna. She is like Bethenny in the sense that she treats her 'friends' like paid employees -- which TBF many are. Even the way she talked about her mother was belittling. It may or may not have been justified, but that judgement of her mother's "weakness" as a single mother came across coldly and badly.

I wasn't really a Dorit fan -- until the Junk Boat Massacre. Erika and her two minions were on the attack, but Dorit punched right back, even though she technically did not have a leg to stand on re: PK's comments. Erika should have won that fight easily. When Dorit explained that she tried to be friends but Erika never let her in, Erika basically let her know that she didn't want her friendship and to shut up. Erika made such a meal of the situation that I realised she needed to keep this issue alive, so she could play poor little victim -- just like she did with that stuff with her mother. But she milked it too hard ("YOU...DON'T KNOW... WHAT I GO THROUGH AT NIGHT" was like an audition reel for Y&R). She took herself too seriously. And it backfired.

I know it sounds like I must despise Erika here ^ but in actual fact I find her interesting. I find her weaknesses (lol) and mistakes and failures interesting. I wonder if this season she will have learned from last year or whether she remains disdainful and snotty. She is going to have to loosen up and get over the deep insecurities she hides under a wall of costumes and spackle.

I need to rant. Some celebs are jumping on the "I hate Harvey Weinstein too!" bandwagon now for publicity purposes and it is starting to really grate.

Case in point: Kate Winslet, who after giving a self-important "I am shocked, shocked I tells ya" press release last week, has come back to inform the world of her incredible courage... when she 'purposely' left Harvey Weinstein's name out of her Oscar thank you speech for The Reader.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-kate-winslet-harvey-weinstein-20171014-story.html

Is this her idea of The Resistance? Does she want a medal for her bravery? Admittedly I have always disliked this woman's shtick. But I can't believe she wants plaudits for not kissing Pervey's gross, hairy ass that one time nobody remembers. 

I like Erika sometimes 

*hides*

1 hour ago, Cheap21 said:

that looks like a scene right out of Days! Go Billie! Like seriously, who took that shot bc its definiely not a phone photo. It looks like an NBC preview image of the soap

lol it really does! Like a studio shot that Michael Logan then uses on his TV Guide Twitter to announce that somebody is OUT!

54 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

 

It looks like a very low-budget adaptation of Grease.

lol omg Rinna is Stockard Channing playing Rizzo, and Erika is Olivia Newton John playing Sexy Sandy. I got CHILLS! THEY MULTIPLYIN' !

48 minutes ago, Khan said:

ICAM, Cat.  No one who was complicit in this deserves "golden parachutes."  They, along with Harvey, deserve nothing less than criminal prosecution.  Moreover, whatever monies they all have should be paid to their victims, or at the very least, donated to non-profit organizations that promote awareness of children's and women's issues.  I'm sure others will disagree, but it's just how I feel at the moment.

 

 

In theory, Emma Thompson's suggestion that we need more women in positions of power within the film industry sounds wise.  However, who's to say that some women haven't or wouldn't abuse THEIR power by sexually harassing men or even other women?

 

I just think we need to stop keeping this [!@#$%^&*] under the rug whenever it happens.  As the saying goes, "If you see something, say something;" and the rest of us need to rewire our brains so that we don't automatically blame the victims, but instead support them and see to it that the proper authorities prosecute the offenders to the fullest extent of the laws.

It needs to happen, but it cannot overnight. Not unless all these longtime studio bosses are replaced across the board by more representative young talent. Daytime is a microcosm of all this: we complain about the same incompetent names on our soaps' closing credits, well, I am seeing a lot of the same names in these entertainment companies since the 90s/2000s.

I used the word omerta purposely earlier because it comes from Sicily and the culture of silence there regarding the Mafia. Once this attitude becomes ingrained and part of the culture (a culture where it is ok to treat women/minorities as commodities, as second -class citizens, as your personal blow-up doll, your personal punching-bag) then that culture becomes very difficult to change. It becomes about changing mentality (and as the marches on Charlottesville showed, how much has mentality changed with regards to 'old ways'?). People become attached to this way of doing things. Even people who don't directly exploit sexually are happy to deal because 'that's just how the system is,' 'better the devil you know,' 'I don't have time for your hysterics.' So many women, as Ellen Barkin said on her Twitter, were expected to work around this kind of sexual harassment, this workplace atmosphere, until it became quietly normalised, expected even. Given the synergy between Hollywood and other creative industries, I feel like there is an unspoken synergy in workplace culture too. Certainly when I worked with literary agents, in publishing and later in fashion publishing, there was talk, things were 'known,' you did as you were told, you didn't make a fuss, and your bosses were literally feudal kings and queens with the power to make you or break you with their crazy demands and temperamental mood swings.

Sorry for rambling about this subject; it is interesting to me all the big stars (mostly male) who are shocked, shocked I tells ya about Harvey Weinstein's crimes... and yet women all over the world sigh knowingly at this news, at the details of what happened and how the coverup/public blacklisting went down.

15 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

 

She just seems somewhat unstable to me in her tweets and some of her responses...yesterday when she was angry over James Corden she did the whole "if you replace the word 'women' with the 'n' word imagine the response you'd get" type of argument, and then when she got blowback for that she said she had been high. I guess she's glad to finally be able to speak out but I think the culture of social media puts people in a bubble which isn't very good for them.

 

Maybe I'm over-reacting.

Hey maybe you are, maybe you're not. I haven't seen yesterday's tweets, just the ones from last week where she calls out some big names and presents screen-grabs for proof. I thought it was pretty ballsy of her, considering she is a confirmed victim of sexual assault and had to sign a non-disclosure agreement by the Weinstein Company (if there was nothing to disclose, why gag her with one?). When Twitter tried to shut her down, I was incensed. But I also agree that being on social media does delude people into thinking they are at the epicenter of something, inciting major change. I've seen it with Rose, and with some other famous Twitterati. I hope she can make a movement out of this and trigger change for the better, but as with any kind of fame, sometimes it goes to your head and distorts your perception, your ability to relate to others.

3 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

 

Agreed.

 

If any of these people with money want to make change they need to try to help these women. I'm very disturbed by Rose McGowan and I wish someone would get her off social media and get her real help. 

DRW, what in particular disturbs you about Rose McGowan on Twitter? I haven't been following her minute-by-minute, but she has been speaking truth to power from what I have seen. She has called out Bob Weinstein for the coverup and Jeff Bezos of Amazon (specifically Amazon studios) and other execs. I guess I am inclined to believe what she is saying, that it took a village to effect a coverup.

And yeah, Scotland Yard is investigating Lysette Antony's claim that Weinstein raped her after getting her drunk, I believe. But from what I understand, the NYPD had Weinstein on tape admitting to harassment and a case ready to prosecute in 2015 but the NY District Attorney ordered them to bury it... after Weinstein conveniently donated to the DA's re-election campaign. Is NY planning to prosecute again?

2 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

Oh but it does!  Much like what happened in the Niger region, Trump has changed course on the policies that had been in place there and we're likely looking at the tragic results of that policy change to a more capricious strategy.

 

It is absolutely horrendous what has happened to the victims. It is likely that it will only be the African Union that steps in to help try and remedy the aftermath of the carnage.

 

Speaking of Africa and Niger. Fanta Fascist still has yet to acknowledge the servicemen who died.

Wasn't the GOP supposed to be all about patriotism and respect for the military?

 

This image has been floating around social media for the past few days on various Twitter feeds. 

 

"Capricious strategy" is right. Trump really pulls it out of his Adderall-riddled ass. And why am I not surprised he was golfing when the bodies were flown home? Why am I not surprised the news outlets are barely talking about it or Mogidishu?