Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 271

4 takeaways as HHS relaxes rules on contraception coverage at work

(Credit: Getty/crankyT)

On Friday, the Trump administration announced new regulations governing contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The rules will make sweeping changes to the law’s requirement that most employers provide coverage of birth control with no out-of-pocket costs to women.

The changes were hailed by religious groups, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said it was “a return to common sense, long-standing federal practice and peaceful coexistence between church and state.” But others, including the National Women’s Law Center, said they plan to file suit against the rules. The National Health Law Program said that the rules appeared “legally suspect.”

Here are some frequently asked questions and answers about the new rules.

Q: What is the new policy?

Trump administration officials said they are significantly rolling back rules requiring many insurers to provide contraceptive coverage to women. Employers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptive services will be allowed to stop offering that coverage.

Under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration had issued rulesrequiring most plans to cover all contraception methods that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration with no out-of-pocket cost to women. The provision does not cover plans that have a grandfathered status under the law.

That guarantee was whittled back through regulation and court actions to exempt some religious-based organizations, such as churches, and some privately held companies in which the owners have strong objections to contraception. Other nonprofit religious employers were offered an accommodation so that they didn’t contract or pay for the insurance coverage for their workers.

The rules unveiled Friday expand those exemptions to any nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies with firm religious opposition, as well as health plans provided to students at colleges with a religious affiliation. A second rule extends an exemption to organizations and privately held companies that have moral objections.

If an employer doesn’t have any moral or religious objections to contraception coverage, current ACA guidelines still apply. Federal policy for programs that offer free or subsidized coverage to low-income women also will not change.

The rules become effective as soon as they are published in the Federal Register, which is expected soon. View them online here and here.

Q: Who is covered by the ruling?

Exactly who will be affected is in dispute.

In a news release, the Department of Health and Human Services said that the rules “will not affect over 99.9 percent” of the 165 million women in the United States. The exemptions announced Friday, HHS said, “may impact only about 200 entities, the number that filed lawsuits based on religious or moral objections.”

Groups that favor the ACA’s contraception coverage say the impact will be far larger.

“The Trump administration just took direct aim at birth control coverage for 62 million women,” Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “With this rule in place, any employer could decide that their employees no longer have health insurance coverage for birth control.”

Mara Gandal-Powers, a senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said that even though many employers will not change their coverage, women in some places could find it difficult to get the health care they need.

HHS estimated in 2015 that 55 million women were covered by policies that provide no-cost contraceptives. The number of women paying for contraceptives fell from nearly 21 percent in 2012 to fewer than 4 percent by 2014, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.  (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

While some employers will be exempt from the ACA rules covering contraception, they may not be exempt from applicable state laws. Eight states currently have laws requiring contraceptive coverage at no cost to employees, while another 20 states have laws requiring coverage of prescription contraceptives with the option of asking employees to pay some of the cost. Those state laws still apply, said Laurie Sobel, associate director of women’s health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Q: How have the courts ruled previously on the ACA and contraception coverage?

In 2014, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow a key exemption to the health law’s contraception coverage requirements when it ruled that closely held, for-profit businesses could assert a religious objection to the Obama administration’s regulations.

The court’s majority said that the companies that filed suit — Hobby Lobby Stores, a nationwide chain of 500 arts-and-crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a custom cabinet manufacturer — did not have to offer female employees all of the Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives as part of a package of preventive services that must be covered without copays or deductibles under the law. The companies had argued that several types of contraceptives violate their owners’ religious beliefs.

The companies are family-owned, and they said that the health law’s contraception requirement violated their religious views. While both employers’ health plans covered some forms of birth control, they found some forms of emergency contraceptives objectionable, such as Plan B and Ella that can prevent a pregnancy if taken within a short window after unprotected sex. They said these contraceptive methods prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the woman’s uterus and therefore are a type of abortion.

In another lawsuit, religious groups, including the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Roman Catholic nuns, said that complying with an Obama administration accommodation for religious-affiliated groups violated their religious views. In May 2016, the Supreme Court sent that lawsuit back to the lower courts to see if a compromise was possible.

Q: How does the Obama administration’s accommodation work?

The Obama administration’s policy also did not apply to churches or houses of worship. And in response to protests from other nonprofit religious organizations — such as church-affiliated hospitals or schools — officials set up an accommodation that allowed those employers to not contract for contraceptive coverage as part of the insurance that they offered workers. Instead, the insurance plan that served their employees would provide coverage, at no cost, to the workers. Some of those groups, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, objected to this setup and challenged the policy in court.

Southern states rally to remove Confederate monuments

City workers drape a tarp over the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Emancipation park in Charlottesville, Va. (Credit: AP/Steve Helber)

On August 14, Nashville protesters demanded the bust of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, be removed from the capitol building. The Tennessee Historical Commission, a state agency charged with historical preservation, denied a request to remove the bust on September 1, in a 7-5 vote.

The August 11 and 12 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia has cast a light on what Confederate monuments represent around the country, even in the deep-red South. Tennessee State Representative Craig Fitzhugh, one of two Democratic gubernatorial candidates for Tennessee in 2018, has called for the removal of Forrest’s bust from the state Capitol building.

“The horrific events [in Charlottesville] came as no surprise to African Americans across this country who — 150 years after slavery ended — still contend daily with its legacy of weakness, avarice and evil,” Fitzhugh said in an August statement statement about the Confederate monuments. “I cannot ever truly know what it is to carry the burden of that legacy. I can, however, acknowledge that it exists, check my own privilege, and use whatever platform I have to help plot the way forward.”

A discussion at the Memphis City Council meeting on August 22 focused on finding a resolution for getting rid of of the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in Health Sciences Park and the statue of Jefferson Davis and related artifacts from Memphis Park Downtown. In 2015, the council voted to remove the Forrest statue, but the Tennessee Historical Commission denied the request.

House Bill 2129 passed with a vote of 71 to 23 in February last year, which requires approval of the Tennessee Historical Commission to alter any historical monument in Tennessee. The bill defines a “memorial” as any public property, park, preserve, reserve, statue, monument, memorial, bust, nameplate, plaque, flag, artwork, historic display, school, street, bridge or building that has been constructed for, named or dedicated on public property in honor of a historical figure or event.

Republican State Representative Steve McDaniel, a civil war re-enactor who introduced HB 2129, has said removing such Confederate monuments ignores a difficult part of United States history and the legacy of a controversial figure like Forrest. Strickland and the Memphis City Council support removing the Confederate monuments, but Tennessee state law requires the Tennessee Historical Commission’s approval before any historical monument can be taken down. The commission has denied a waiver to take them, so Strickland pushed Memphians to “voice their concerns” to the commission and state legislators.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam discussed tourism’s economic impact on Tennessee counties in 2016 during a press conference at Clayborn Temple in Memphis on August 22, and after the press conference, Haslam said Strickland had reached out to him several times about removing the city’s Confederate statues. As governor, Haslam has a membership to the Tennessee Historical Commission.  

“I have to follow the law like everyone else does,” Haslam said. “I would like it dealt with sooner rather than later for everybody.” Haslam said local governments should be charged with deciding this issue. Haslam also addressed the controversy due to next year’s anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.

“We put money in our budget for that commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s death,” Haslam said. “And, I think it’d be really appropriate to have these statues gone by then.”

The commission’s next meeting will take place in October, and they will not vote until February. Haslam said he will not tell the commission to meet earlier.

However, in the neighboring state of North Carolina, protesters took matters into their own hands and took down a Confederate statue in Durham, just two days after Tennesseans issued their demand. The statue named the Confederate Soldiers Monument was dedicated to the city in 1924 and stands outside an official government building. The statue is intended to depict a young Confederate soldier, with the words, “In memory of the boys who wore the gray” — the color the Confederate forces wore during the Civil War — engraved below. According to WNCN, Durham’s CBS affiliate, a young woman climbed a ladder and wrapped a rope around the middle of the statue, and with sheer force, protestors pulled the statue down. Video footage from the protest shows bystanders taking their turn at kicking the fallen statue and shouting, “We are the revolution,” and “No KKK, no fascist USA.” Seven protesters were arrested in connection to the events.  

In the days following, Governor Roy Cooper called for the removal of more Confederate statues and issued the following statement, “I don’t pretend to know what it’s like for a person of color to pass by one of these monuments and consider that those memorialized in stone and metal did not value my freedom or humanity,” Cooper said in a statement. “Unlike an African-American father, I’ll never have to explain to my daughters why there exists an exalted monument for those who wished to keep her and her ancestors in chains.”

Under a 2015 implemented North Carolina law, all historical statues or monuments are prohibited from being removed or substantially altered. This includes all statues honoring Confederate soldiers and the Confederacy. However, in the wake of the events in Charlottesville and Durham, Cooper has stated he would like for the 2015 law to be repealed so the monuments can be relocated. Unfortunately, no further action has been taken.

With the recent protests and the removal of certain statues, a nationwide conversation has begun and if moderated well, a just and fair historical outcome can emerge. Unfortunately, the party lines that divide the debate are deep rooted and historical in and of themselves. For many Americans south of the Mason Dixon Line, Confederate statues are a symbol of Southern heritage and a reminder of their ancestors. However, the Confederacy is an intimate symbol of racism and slavery for so many more.

While North Carolina officials have yet to make a decision on the fate of these statutes, local citizens showed solidarity for those arrested in connection to the protests by turning themselves in to police stations throughout Durham. Activist Lamont Lilly spoke to a crowd outside a station and stated, “Very often, it does take one person to be the spark — to be the initiator like sister Bree Newsome. But it takes a movement, it takes a mass of people to support that — and keep those movements sustainable.”  

“White Famous”: If it weren’t so funny, we’d weep

Jay Pharoah as Floyd in "White Famous" (Credit: Showtime/Michael Desmond)

For Jamie Foxx, the road to an Academy Award and Hollywood A-list status was paved by Wanda Wayne.  Billed as the ugliest woman in the world, Foxx puckered his lips to an offensive degree to bring the “In Living Color” character to life, in addition to wearing a series of inappropriate dresses and a trashy wig. Wanda helped win Foxx his own sitcom. Then came movies and superstardom but first, he had to play the buffoon.

Foxx’s story inspires Showtime’s “White Famous,” his collaboration with “Californication” creator Tom Kapinos, and the actor appears in pilot as a kinky, inappropriate and out-of-touch cartoon version of himself. When rising stand-up comedian Floyd Mooney (Jay Pharoah) meets him for the first time, Fox has a naked woman writhing on top of him and sees nothing inappropriate about the encounter.

Floyd, on the other hand, is appalled. But he also wants to impress and possibly work with one of his idols. So Floyd remains in the same room as Foxx keeps on chatting and grinding away, doing his best to downplay the obscenity of the situation.

Hollywood is a vault of unseemly peccadilloes and sick secrets, a side celebrated in HBO’s bro-culture comedy “Entourage” and witnessed in the real world with the speedy plummet of Harvey Weinstein. Everybody who works in the town or even adjacent to the industry knows a few stories they’d never take on the record for fear of ruin. The sexual harassment accusations current dragging down Weinstein and Amazon’s Roy Price — and Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly before them — are just the tip of the iceberg. The industry will make examples of them, and other predators will quiet down . . . for a time.

Performers of color have long known that the place is far more libertine than truly liberal, and we see Floyd live that truth as he break through layer upon layer craziness in his quest for fame.

Floyd is a successful comic with a devoted black fanbase, and the series opens in the midst of his stand-up performance, As he cues the audience to sing along with him as the rolls into a lyric from Tupac Shakur’s “Hail Mary.” Pointing out the lone white woman in the audience, he gets laughs by calling her to the stage and announcing she’s been adopted by the community. The room breaks into convivial laughter.

I can envision this scene playing out again later very differently, after Floyd’s brand has exploded and his audience’s racial makeup has shifted.

For the time being “White Famous,” premiering Sunday at 10 p.m., answers the frequently posed question as to how black people, especially rich black people, can claim to be oppressed at a time when a number of performers, athletes, entrepreneurs and politicians have reached the upper echelons of wealth and success.

“White Famous” has its flaws, particularly with regard to the pilot’s denigrating view of gender; in a key scene elements of femininity are used, literally, as a tools of emasculation. (Kapinos’ humor palette is overwhelmingly male-centric, as he proved in “Californication,” so this isn’t particularly shocking.)  Even so, it’s a legitimately pointed examination of the perils of attaining mainstream fame, exposing the apprehensive churn people like Floyd are subjected on their way up the ladder. For Floyd, there’s the matter of being true to his brand while expanding his profile. His fans adore his down-to-Earth nature, but his idol wants to offer him a shot — contingent on a condition Floyd finds to be embarrassing.

At just about every step Floyd is objectified and taken advantage of in ways he rarely seeing coming. Entitlement, cluelessness, bravura and simply craziness rule the world around him, and he’d be more than happy to opt out of the madness entirely.

But the series also suggests that our new age of rampant capitalism and branding the cautionary concept of “selling out,” while not entirely obsolete, may be antiquated. Floyd doesn’t believe that to be the case in his heart of hearts, and his best friend Ron Balls (Jacob Ming-Trent) co-signs that idea when he warns Malcolm to help Floyd stay true to the fans that brought him up. But Floyd also has a son to raise, Trevor (the adorable Lonnie Chavis) and a girlfriend to win back, Sadie (Cleopatra Coleman).

As his aggressive agent Malcolm (Utkarsh Ambudkar) relentlessly reminds him, the opportunities he’s getting are only available to a select few — and if he wants to secure a solid financial future for his family, he has to roll with the ridiculousness to some degree. But at what cost?

During the third episode a network executive manhandles Floyd moments after meeting him for the first time, raving about his physique. The exchange falls just shy of a modern version of examining a slave on an auction block and in response, a shocked Floyd asks the guy if he wants to check his teeth. The man laughs, because we’re all friends here, we’re all just kidding, right?

The writing of “White Famous” is light and scathingly funny, a remarkable trait in what may be the most comfortable uncomfortable portrayal of fame and racism on television this season.

Pharaoh, who famously departed “Saturday Night Live” to take this role, exercises a dramatic flexibility that shines through in Floyd. He makes him brash and unfiltered without making him excessively jaded, and when he’s teamed with Ambudkar’s ambitious but determined Malcolm his delivery is exceptional.

Kapinos, the comedy’s showrunner and executive producer Tim Story, who directs the pilot, present Floyd as a stubborn but genuinely enjoyable guy to whom viewers can easily connect — who can afford to drive a nice car and dine in expensive places but nevertheless is mistaken for the valet.

When that happens, and he calls out the offending party, who happened to be powerful producer (wonderfully played by Stephen Tobolowsky), the man responds with, “This is so not a thing . . . I am the farthest thing in the world from a racist! I am working with Jamie f–king Foxx right now . . . and he’s black as the ace of spades!”

Ours is becoming a culture of outrage, Tobolowsky’s character observes later, giving voice to the comedy’s reason for being in the process. We’re stuck in a swarm of discord, and the loudest, angriest buzz hums concerns racial injustice and a stubborn denial of its existence. The racism on display in “White Famous” is brazen enough to be served with booming laughs and smiles, but presented as an unpleasant appetizer to be swallowed in order to gain entry to prosperity’s banquet.

Therein lies the answer to the previously posed question — regardless of what level of fame Floyd reaches, he’ll never shake off the way white people see him.

“A man could live a very comfortable life in a world that doesn’t want him in the first place,” a chauffeur assures Floyd on his way to a very big break, one of the most honest warnings he’s given in a land of false smiles and success by way of degradation.  It’s enough to make you weep if it weren’t absurd enough to laugh about.

Healthy choices are neither good or bad; only thinking makes them so

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Doing healthy things can feel like a battle between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. The devil impels me to order the bacon burger for lunch, but the angel nudges my hand toward the salad.

This dichotomy goes way back in Western thought. Plato likened the process of making such choices to the charioteer of the soul commanding two horses, one “noble” and the other wicked. This allegory echoes throughout history in various forms. Other ready examples include reason versus passion as described by the Greeks, the Judeo-Christian battle between sin and redemption, and Freud’s account of the psyche’s superego and id. Our intuitions about healthy behaviors are deeply shaped by this history. Plus, hard choices simply feel like we are being pulled in two directions.

Getting to the root causes of healthy behaviors is important to science because they are a big part of individual and public health. The leading causes of death in the United States – cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness, among others – are all caused at least in part by our behavior. As a society, we could reduce the onset of these afflictions by learning new ways to change our behavior.

Despite the intuition, health behaviors are not the result of a battle between two opposing forces. So what are they? My colleagues and I recently suggested that they are the same as any other choice. Instead of a battle between two forces, self-control of unhealthy impulses is more like a many-sided negotiation. Various features of each option in a choice get combined, then the total values of the options are compared. This is kind of a fancy version of a “compare the pros and cons” model.

Problems with the battle analogy

These days, psychologists refer to the dichotomy in Western thought as “dual-process” models of health behavior. Such models come in many varieties, but they share two notable features. First, they describe behavior as a winner-take-all battle between two opposing forces. There is no compromise. Whichever force is stronger dictates behavior.

Second, beyond being in opposition to one another, the forces are also inflected with a moral tone, with one being good and the other wicked. The devil impels you to do bad things, the angel advises toward virtuous ones. Psychologists call the warring parties impulse and control, or hot and cold processes.

Casting behavior in the stark terms of pros versus cons is intuitive but might not be accurate. After all, our minds contain many more than just two systems for making decisions. As Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.”

Plus, people have many ways to choose healthy options that don’t involve a battle. Avoiding a temptation in the first place is effective. If I know that I have trouble not ordering the bacon burger, then I can choose to go to a restaurant that doesn’t have one on the menu.

Also effective is fighting fire with fire by getting excited about a healthy option. And being healthy doesn’t need to be moralized. Indulgence can be a good thing, such as when it serves as a reward. Some people even plan indulgence in advance to give themselves a break. In studying healthy choices, scientists have learned that they are more complex than we previously thought.

Advantages of thinking of many choices

Let’s revisit the burger-vs.-salad example. Sure, the burger tastes good (a “hot” feature) and you know that the salad is healthy (a “cold” feature). But many other features could be relevant, too. Not all of them will fall clearly into the hot-cold dichotomy. The salad will seem more attractive if you want to impress the friends you’re with if you think they value health. Or maybe I think of myself as a “bacon person,” so I know ordering the burger with that topping will affirm that part of my self-concept.

The key point here is that people can have many reasons for making the healthy or unhealthy choice. A good psychological theory will be able to account for that diversity of motives.

Beyond being more realistic than hot-cold models, there are several ways that thinking of health as a choice can help us better understand it. Researchers working across a variety of disciplines have uncovered what they call “anomalies” in choice. These anomalies are quirks where choice differs – predictably – from what would be optimal. If health is a choice, then these anomalies apply to health, too.

One of my favorites is the decoy effect. There are cases where having a third option in a choice, even one that someone would never choose, can change behavior. Suppose I always prefer a burger to a moderately healthy salad. A restaurant owner could add a decoy choice to the menu, such as an Extremely Healthy SuperFood Salad, that would nudge me to choose the moderately healthy salad over the burger when I considered all three options. This behavior is anomalous – why would an option that I never choose influence my choice between two others? – but it is also useful in helping change health behaviors.

Another anomaly that can be useful for changing health behaviors is realizing that the value of something good is not constant. This is called the law of diminishing marginal utility. The value of something good depends on how much of that thing you’ve already consumed.

This is intuitive, but technically irrational. If I like M&M’s, eating the first one (going from 0 to 1 M&M’s) should feel just as good as eating my 104th one (going from 103 to 104 M&M’s). But we all know that is not the case. The deliciousness of things like M&M’s wears off as you keep eating them – their utility diminishes. In a clever series of studies, researchers found that merely imagining eating tasty treats before being served them reduced the amount people ate. Imagined eating, it seems, caused their utility to diminish.

Casting health behaviors as choice also helps clarify their neural underpinnings. The brain systems involved in simple choice are increasingly well-understood. The science has even progressed to the point that researchers can use computers to predict what people will choose and precisely how long it will take them in specific conditions. This improved understanding will eventually lead to more effective interventions for behavior change.

But wait – if healthy is just like any other choice, why does it feel like being pulled in two directions? We tend to moralize health behaviors in our society. Part of that feeling is probably related to the anticipated guilt of choosing the “bad” option.

And, morality aside, choice models show that people will feel torn when their preferences vacillate between options.

Just because there are two competing options doesn’t imply there are two competing systems. Feelings of conflict and indecision can arise even in a simple choice system such as the one described here.

Remember that your health is not helpless amidst a battle between temptation and grace. It’s your choice, and science offers solutions to making a better one.

 

Stay entertained anywhere with this “off-the-grid” DVR

It’s great being incommunicado, but going offline doesn’t mean you have to leave behind the things you truly enjoy. Most of us will gladly set up that out-of-office reply, swap Google Maps for real maps, and send postcards instead of instant messages. But the whole point of straying off the beaten path is to limit distractions and free you up for the things you really love —  like friends, family, and, after a long day exploring the local sights, some well-earned downtime in the form of really good TV.

Obviously, no one is going to drag a heavy DVR box with them on vacation. But now you won’t need to: Introducing the world’s first “off-the-grid” DVR, yours for just $99.

The HopperGO® from DISH was first touted as a one-of-a-kind pocket DVR. A sleek black box about half the size of your smartphone, it runs on its own rechargeable power source and holds approximately 100 hours of TV. Just fire it up and watch the magic happen: the HopperGO creates its own Wi-Fi network, allowing you to stream shows on up to 5 devices at the same time, including phones, laptops, and your little one’s Kindle Fire.

Take 100 hours of TV and movies anywhere.

One of the best things about going away is the opportunity to do nothing. But what do you do while you’re doing nothing? Testing the HopperGO on a recent family vacation, the benefit was instantly clear: we’d never be bored again, whether on a long road trip, long-haul flight, or simply waiting for the rain to clear. Loading the device up was relatively straightforward: just connect the USB cable from the HopperGO to your DISH DVR. The on-screen menu was intuitive enough, and we were able to transfer an HD movie in under 2 minutes. It’s great for parents — you can stock ample shows for each kid and adult, as different shows can be streamed on multiple devices simultaneously. Best of all, while many video streaming services restrict you to domestic-only use, the HopperGO can work anywhere in the world. And with a price tag of just $99, what’s not to love?

Should we forgive Billy Corgan for his politics?

Billy Corgan (Credit: AP/Dan Hallman)

In 2014, Billy Corgan told the Guardian that the three-star review their publication gave his record was fake news. “Nobody believes I made a three-star record. Nobody!” he said. The album he was referring to was “Monuments to an Elegy,” the most recent album under the Smashing Pumpkins name, one with only Corgan from the band’s original lineup.

Other publications gave him roughly the same semi-positive score, yet in Corgan’s mind it was a criminally underrated masterpiece. He didn’t use the term “fake news” exactly, but did call it a “false narrative,” and painted a picture of the “gatekeepers” gathering and collectively deciding to not let him “in” to the establishment.

Asked by the reporter if he thought all those reviews were pre-written, Corgan said, “yes.”

The whole thing was a strange response, considering that the reviews were actually relatively positive for a rocker who’s well past his prime, with album sales reaching new lows, and has been unraveling in the public eye the better part of the past decade. In this interview, Corgan even questioned whether his legacy has ever been treated fairly by the biased mainstream media.

“If young Billy had gotten the credit he deserved, when he deserved it, then things might have been different,” he said. “I’m never going to get the credit. That game is over. So, I’m going back to being an aggressive, street-level artist.”

This was hardly the craziest thing Corgan has done or said. Remember when Corgan printed “Fuck Anderson Cooper” shirts after Cooper poked fun at him for posing on the cover of Paws Chicago with his cats? Or how about when he launched the kooky spiritual website Everything From Here To There?  How about when he tried to take down Courtney Love on Twitter (“Thought #1: my face is my face, my heart is my heart, my money is my money. Oh, and my songs are MY songs+If you can’t write your own songs?”), and then she — believe it or not — played it cool?

The point is that Corgan’s dissociation with truth is hardly headline-worthy news. The question is, has Corgan gone from harmless reality-star-level-insanity to purveyor of toxic ideologies, and what should we do about it?

He may have not used the term “fake news” in 2014, but he sure is now, and he’s dishing it out towards all the wrong people. “If you’re over here and you’re sitting on this side of the pond, looking at what’s called ‘fake news,’ the street read is that the institutional part of the media can’t be trusted,” he told Channel4.com recently.

More troubling is watching Corgan pal around with Infowars’ Alex Jones, a man who called the Sandy Hook mass shooting a hoax and has refused to apologize for it.

On his program last year, the two chatted in confusing circles with the familiarity of old paranoid college dorm roommates and the smugness of faux intellectuals about some sort of lurking shadow government or some vague liberal, corporate force trying to control minds. Of course, they also bellyached about social justice warriors to no end, which they both vehemently agreed was some sort of growing cult.

“We see the rise of the social justice warrior movement as another propaganda control arm,” Corgan said. “They’re weaponized anti-free speech.”

Does it matter? Does anyone still care about what Corgan has to say at this point?

On October 13th, Corgan releases his second-ever solo album, “Ogilala.” Produced by the brilliant Rick Rubin, it’s actually pretty good and could earn him back some of his credibility. There’s even talks of an original Pumpkins lineup reunion in 2018.

As Corgan seemingly pulls himself from out of the shadows of obscurity, oddball projects (an 8-hour synth interpretation of “Siddhartha” anyone?) and notably bad live shows, he flirts with a larger audience once again. But should we listen to him?

I myself was never a huge Pumpkins fan, though I like some of his music. I asked my friend Mike Shirley-Donnelly — who adored Smashing Pumpkins growing up — how he reconciled current Corgan with ‘90s Corgan.  

“’Siamese Dream’ is why I learned guitar,” he tells me. “It’s just so weird because I viewed him and his music with the kind of ‘image of alternative culture’ of the ’90s. It’s virtually impossible to listen to this stuff that had significant meaning for me during my 13-early 20s knowing what he’s become.”

Now, as Corgan leads up to the release of “Ogilala,” it feels — not to sound too Corgan-level-paranoid — like he’s trying to soften his recent right-wing conspiracy nut image. Even he realizes this is a bad image for a counter-culture icon.

In a recent interview for News Journal, Corgan frames himself as a regular, easy-going “nice” guy that is setting aside politics and celebrity beefs. “I don’t want to be part of the negative culture,” he says. “I want to see the rhetoric turned down and see people move towards a centrist, libertarian conversation that involves free speech and human rights.”

In that Channel4.com interview, the reporter asked Corgan about his affiliation with Jones. Corgan brushed it off and presented himself as being a “suspicious” person due to being raised by a drug dealer father. For a moment he almost seemed to have some self-awareness.

“When your dad’s telling you, ‘don’t believe the world that you’re in, don’t listen to your teachers, don’t listen to your government,’” he said, “you grow up in this paranoid state, you’re raised to be suspicious.”

But he’s not letting go of his conspiracy theories, or backing down. He’s just soft-selling them, which is potentially much more dangerous and insidious than full-on crazy Corgan.

As Corgan releases new music that isn’t half-bad, let’s not forget who post-’90s Corgan really is. He’s still the guy who, in 2011, unleashed a transphobic tweetstorm then deleted it. He’s still the guy who, just last year, made the tasteless comparison of SJWs to the KKK on Jones’ show. He’s still the guy  who once consciously chose to date Tila Tequila. There’s so much of this.

His music may stir up all your youthful, anti-establishment emotions, but reconsider who the establishment floating around in Corgan’s mind really is the next time you put on one of those Smashing Pumpkins albums you love so much.

Even in pop turn, St. Vincent sends jolt through dying rock ‘n’ roll

St. Vincent (Credit: Loma Vista)

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” was always bad advice. Futile, for one thing. Reductive, for another. And misguided to top it all off. A book’s cover is part of a book — not the only part, but a part nonetheless — and not factoring that initial image into a judgement of the book is like not factoring in the first line, paragraph or page of the book. Imagine being told not to judge “Moby Dick” or “A Tale of Two Cities” by their first lines. You’d say, “You mean don’t judge those books by just their first lines?” And, yeah, same goes for covers.

Albums covers, too. An album cover is not the music, but it’s not nothing. Take for instance the cover of the new St. Vincent album, “Masseduction.” A woman who we might assume to be St. Vincent (Annie Clark) is wearing a leopard-skin onesie, hot pink tights and glossy ruby pumps that might just take her back to the ‘80s if she clicks her heels together three times and repeats, “I want my MTV. I want my MTV. I want my MTV.” Her head isn’t visible because she’s bent over with her back to the camera and her legs perfectly straight. Behind her is a pure red backdrop that is probably computer-generated but also might just be the space between two zips in Barnett Newman’s “Vir Heroicus Sublimis.”

Like with Newman’s painting, if you stare at the cover of “Masseduction” close enough for long enough the image transcends what your brain knows it to be. Are those legs? Are they connected? What is red? Those were my initial thoughts when I studied it. And then I thought about an interview a friend conducted with the photographer Greg Hazel. Hazel takes these almost-absurd self-portraits where he’s doing things like climbing into a washing machine, lying on the floor of a tool shed, slithering through doorways, all with his body exposed and his face hidden. In the interview, he talks about how he often frames his photos the way he does because he feels uncomfortable giving away too much. “The upper lip is really personal, but I don’t really think my gooch is that personal,” he said.

I suspect Annie Clark feels similarly. Prior to “Masseduction,” she released four solo albums and a collaborative album with David Byrne. Her face is on the cover of four of those five albums (the exception being 2011’s “Strange Mercy”). And there’s a progression within the covers that mirrors her artistic evolution. On the cover of her debut, 2007’s “Marry Me,” she is shot from the chest up in front of a light gray backdrop, wearing a gray blouse. She is looking directly into the camera, her mouth slightly agape and her dark, curly hair falling where it will. On the next album, there is color and her gaze moves into the distance, like an at-attention soldier. By “Love This Giant,” her 2012 collaboration with David Byrne, her face is distorted so that it looks as though her right jaw is rippling away. And on her last album, 2014’s “St. Vincent,” she is an electric empress: her hair is dyed white and purple, she is wearing a long sparkling gown and she is sitting atop a chalky pink throne.

Looked at together, you can see Annie Clark become St. Vincent. You can see her become more confident in the character she inhabits. It’s an evolution from wide-eyed ingenue to laser-eyed dominatrix. And the evolution is not just in appearance. On her first album, she sang over virtual nursery melodies, with childlike voices providing choruses on songs like “Now, Now” and “Your Lips Are Red.” On this album, she is in forceful command. Verses include “You put me in a teacher’s little denim skirt/ Ruler and desk so I can make it hurt” (on “Savior”) and “I can’t turn off what turns me on/ I hold you like a weapon/ I don’t turn off what turns me on” (on “Masseduction”).

Outside of the album, in real interviews and conceptual Instagram interviews, St. Vincent has created a plastic pop world full of chromatic colors and dry sarcasm. The act is a way to satirize the lifeless monotony of being a pop star, life on the internet and the unthinking misogyny latent in questions asked of female artists.

But the costumes and conceptual videos also serve as a shield. “Masseduction” is, by St. Vincent’s own admission, her most personal album. She sings barely veiled songs about her break-up with the model and actress Cara Delevingne (“Young lover, I wish that I was your drug/ Young lover, I miss the taste of your tongue,” on “Young Lover”). She sings about self-medicating (“Pills to wake, pills to sleep/ Pills, pills, pills every day of the week,” on “Pills”). And she sings about death — about loss of loved ones, suicidal thoughts and plain impermanence.

All of which is not to say that “Masseduction” is a 40-minute dirge. St. Vincent is still St. Vincent and not Adele or Sam Smith. There are a few tender ballads on this album (“New York,” “Slow Disco” and “Smoking Section”) but they’re arrived at after hopping arcade beats, manic choruses and waves of blissed-out exultance.

On “Masseduction,” St. Vincent is moving closer to pop from where she stood in rock’s left field, but her arrangements remain intricate, and she frequently juxtaposes bright hooks with macabre lyrics. Also, to these ears, there remains no more inventive guitar player strumming today. “Fear the Future,” a woozy, rocking, end-of-days search-plea, sounds like mainlining adrenaline. Who needs pills?     

The album is 13 songs long and it is tight, packed with enormous punch — of both the gut and heart. Production credit is shared between St. Vincent and Jack Antonoff. Antonoff is the producer of the moment, and though he clearly had a hand in helping St. Vincent reach a new peak of sonic sublimity, his hand can be heavy. The power-pop anthem “Sugarboy” is what it sounds like when a singular voice meets an omnipresent sound. The track uses ‘80s-inspired call-and-response choruses (“I am a lot like you (boys)/ I am alone like you (girls)”) that make it sound too much like Lorde’s single, “Greenlight,” as well as other Antonoff-produced pop tracks from artists like Pink and Taylor Swift.

“Sugarboy” does pulse, though. And the way it recalls other pop hits rather than future pop hits provides another function: It is a rare reminder that St. Vincent is fallible. That fact, admittedly, couldn’t be gleaned from the mannequinesque body and solid backdrop pictured on the cover of “Masseduction.” Beneath that retro plastic artifice is the fear of that which we cannot curate. And beyond it is one of the best albums of the year.  

Carla Bruni takes on ABBA in acoustic Salon set

“All these songs from this album, they’re so special,” singer, songwriter and France’s former first lady Carla Bruni said on “Salon Stage.”

Bruni is preparing for the release later this month of her album of English-language cover songs, “French Touch,” produced by David Foster. For “Salon Stage,” she played “The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA and was accompanied by Taofik Farah on guitar and Johanne Mathaly on cello.

“Most of the songs were very nostalgic for me,” Bruni said, “because those were the songs I was playing as a teenager, and when my parents got me a guitar — I must have been 10 or 11 years old. Before I wrote my own songs, I would play other people’s songs.

“I actually know them by heart more than my own songs,” she added.

The classic nature of the track list and the memories the songs evoke is nostalgic for Bruni, which she compared to the experience of smelling perfumes. “You know when you smell a perfume, it brings you right back to the time you were wearing that perfume or someone else was wearing or maybe your parents,” she said.

Bruni sees songs as much the same. “They hit into your memories and they bring you back like souvenirs.” Songs are like time capsules with a direct line to “your brain and into your heart.”

While the songs Bruni chose are in English, it was a deliberate choice, as she feels the covers are universal. “There are songs where you don’t even need to hear the lyrics to get them, because they have something that is above the lyrics with the melody and harmony,” Bruni said. “These songs, they belong to everyone.”

Watch the full “Salon Stage” performance on Facebook.

Tune into Salon’s live shows, “Salon Talks” and “Salon Stage,” daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on Salon and on Facebook.

Fears Themselves: With “Lore,” a hit podcast comes to TV

"Lore" (Credit: Amazon Studios)

Listening provides a decidedly different experience than seeing. This explains some of the attraction of podcasts. To workers saddled with rote tasks, the podcast is a stimulating friend that keeps them entertained, fascinated or terrified. Podcasts such as “Lore” stealthily educate as well, unearthing the origins of legends or bizarre chapters in science by tracing their paths through history.

Aaron Mahnke builds each of his episodes in a way that maximizes ambiance. Equal parts storyteller, journalist and historian, Mahnke’s genial manner of speaking never changes, regardless of the stark and often chilling twists his tales take. Minimalist piano melodies languidly sparkle behind his smoothly written fact-based mysteries and, in a way, the accompaniment completes the transformational spell that turns his history lessons into ghost stories.

“Lore” as an aural experience already has seduced millions. “Lore” as a television series, currently available to Amazon Prime subscribers, sacrifices some of the magic by removing the space the podcast leaves for the listener’s imagination to run free. Even more disappointing, some of the live action sequences have the tone of the cheap re-enactments that formerly served as the bread and butter of the History Channel.

Not even an actor of Campbell Scott’s caliber can save an episode initially about consumption, known as “They Made a Tonic,” although the charming animation sequence that opens the chapter maintains a portion of the original format’s relative whimsy.

But then, a person’s enjoyment of “Lore” may be largely dependent on how much affection she has for podcasts or any audio storytelling format.

Years ago, Showtime made a limited series based on the public radio program “This American Life” that hewed closely to the original’s style and feel. As a fan, seeing made-for-TV versions of the stories that host Ira Glass curated was pleasant and charming but, within the larger context of the medium, entirely unremarkable.

And the creators of the radio program acknowledge this in a post about the series on its website. “Some things about the radio show were easy to duplicate on TV,” it reads. “The hard part was everything else. First of all, there are lots of shows on television that tell true stories about real people: newsmagazines like 20/20, reality shows like ‘Intervention’ and ‘The Bachelorette,’ hard news documentaries like ‘Frontline,’ and just about every single program on MTV. How could we make our show stand out from this crowd?”

Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t. The TV series ended, but the radio show remains very popular.

You can witness “Lore” wrestling with these same issues. It has the benefit of trafficking in the freaky, fascinating and (for the most part) lesser known chapters of history. On the show, as in the podcast, Mahnke’s monologues glide with grace and aplomb, though his narrative style works better on his podcast than in the series. To an uninitiated viewer, Mahnke’s signature inflections and crisp halts have an odd choppiness, and at times they distract from the action as opposed to augmenting it.

Mahnke is a talented curator of historical tales, however, and the nature of some of his subjects do the heavy lifting for him. “Echoes” is a gut-churning look at the disturbing story of Dr. Walter Freeman (Colm Feore) and his development of the icepick lobotomy.

Mahnke uses Freeman’s story as a jumping off point about the medical profession’s barbaric, backward history regarding the treatment of mental illness. Feore is unnervingly cheerful and frigid as Freeman, who nonchalantly adopts the pep of a door-to-door salesman as he butchers a patient’s brain in a demonstration for colleagues and the press.

But in that segment, Mahnke and the brand he created almost seems unnecessary.

“Lore” may have been better served if its executive producers, including Ben Silverman and Gale Anne Hurd, granted the title more stylistic distance from the podcast, allowing the auditory format to beguile in its own way, while fashioning a totally original experience for television. As a visual series, it is stuck between the bulky, stiff material plane and the ethereal, failing to successfully transform into something at least as powerful, if not stronger, than what it already is.

All the people and things being dragged to hell along with Harvey Weinstein

Harvey Weinstein (Credit: Getty/Loic Venance)

Harvey Weinstein is on a long, winding road to hell right now, but he is far from alone.

Mainstream society has long excused men from sexual harassment and assault charges, but with so many women coming forward to accuse Weinstein, more perpetrators and complicit do-nothings are being brought out of the woodwork — and it’s about time.

Here are just some of the people and companies being dragged down to the fiery pits along with Weinstein (this piece would go on forever if we were to list them all.)

Naturally, the Weinstein Company is at the center of it all. It quickly denounced sexual harassment and claiming the allegations shocked them to no end. “Any suggestion that the Board had knowledge of this conduct is false,” the company said in a statement. But the evidence suggests otherwise.

However, a New York Times report revealed that “interviews and internal company records show that the company has been grappling with Mr. Weinstein’s behavior for at least two years.” It went on to say that Weinstein’s former lawyer, David Boies, “said in an interview that the board and the company were made aware at the time of three or four confidential settlements with women” in 2015.

The company’s guilt doesn’t end there. As it turns out, Weinstein’s contract indicated that he could not be fired due to sexual misconduct, so long as he could produce whatever sums of money — ranging from $250,000 to $1,000,000 — to cover damages, according to a TMZ report. Apparently, you can get away with anything if you pony up . . .  well, at least for a while.

Next up is NBC, which faced controversy over killing their own exposé on Weinstein, and then failing to make jabs at him on Saturday Night Live. Ronan Farrow, who was working on the story, had the piece quashed by NBC, the reason being a supposed lack of evidence. He ended up taking the story to the New Yorker, where it was published on Tuesday.

But NBC continued to flounder; it failed to cover the story on Thursday night after the initial Times story broke, while other news channels were covering it. Then they made excuses for cutting jokes about Weinstein from “Saturday Night Live” — namely claiming that the Weinstein jokes would fall flat to people living outside of New York, which never seemed to have been a concern of theirs before.

And they aren’t the only media organization at fault. Headlines and articles from 2015 issues of the New York Post resurfaced, which were mocking and questioning the credibility of one of Weinstein’s victims, Italian model and actress Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.

Some of the front page headlines read “Secret life of Harvey’s shy accuser” and “‘Grope’ gal asked for movie part” — delegitimizing her claims that Weinstein had grabbed her breasts and put his hand up her skirt. As Mic reported: “When Page Six reported on the contents of the now-infamous audio recording, the Post defended Weinstein’s alleged actions: “Weinstein did not deny that he grabbed her breast — but would be able to argue that it was appropriate because as a producer he would need to know if her breasts were the real deal.”

Media, society and now social media are all to blame for mainstream attitudes challenging women’s credibility and ignoring their harassment. Twitter is no stranger to this type of behavior (it is known for doing absolutely nothing to punish users who harassed women during the Gamergate scandal.) But when Rose McGowan, a victim of Harvey Weinstein, tweeted about his harassment, Twitter was quick to suspend her account.

Twitter explained the suspension of her account was because a private phone number had been visible on the screenshot she tweeted, which is against Twitter’s terms (though Trump got away with it). Fine. But McGowan was quick to fire back once her account was restored, tweeting: “when will nuclear war violate your terms of service?” in an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s threats to North Korea. Her point was essentially that Twitter tends to be lenient when it comes to following their terms of service — but is generally quick when it comes to silencing women.

But if there’s any positive that has come of the Weinstein scandal, it’s that more women have been empowered to speak out and name their assaulters. Issa Hackett, an executive producer for Amazon, has gone public with her claims against Amazon’s programming chief, Roy Price, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The report detailed that Price allegedly told Hackett, “You will love my dick” and whispered “Anal sex!” in her ear. Amazon has since suspended Price, reported Variety.

Unfortunately, society tends to applaud men for doing the bare minimum. They’re are praised for condemning sexual assault — as any reasonable person should — but now, due to social media, sexual-assault condemners are being called out for their own past misconduct.

When Ben Affleck issued a statement denouncing Weinstein’s behavior, Rose McGowan was there to fire back — implying that he knew about Weinstein’s actions towards her and did nothing at the time.A video from the early 2000s also resurfaced of Affleck groping actress Hilarie Burton’s breast on camera. In a tweet, he responded saying, “I acted inappropriately toward Ms. Burton and I sincerely apologize.”

That was followed by a video of him harassing reporter Anne-Marie Losique and another allegation, this one from makeup artist Annamarie Tendler. He’s not apologized for those other incidents yet. And, besides, the feeling of being violated stays with a woman forever, half-hearted apology or no.

And sometimes, men are just unapologetically indifferent to sexual assault. Oliver Stone defended Harvey Weinstein at the Busan International Film Festival on Thursday, saying that he believes “a man shouldn’t be condemned by a vigilante system” as reported by Variety. He later retracted his comment once he found out that almost 25 women have come out to accuse Weinstein.

But — surprise, surprise — Stone is not so innocent himself. Variety reported that ex-Playboy model Carrie Stevens has alleged that Stone groped her at a party 26 years ago, and remembers “the cocky grin on his face like he got away with something.”

And, like everything else, sexual harassment is political. Since Weinstein was such a staunch supporter of Democrats, and heavily donated to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, among others, Republicans pressed for a statement from Clinton denouncing Weinstein.

Eventually, they got it. “I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein,” she wrote. “The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior.” So a woman denounced sexual assault. Terrific. Isn’t it great that women recognize sexual assault is a bad thing? Groundbreaking.

In light of the allegations, many Democrats have decided to give Weinstein’s donations to charity, according to Buzzfeed. But his connection to Democrats is bound to provide fodder for any right-wing conspiracy theorists who loved the Pizzagate.

We now come to Cyrus Vance Jr. Vance, the Manhattan District Attorneywho refused to prosecute when the NYPD had Weinstein more or less dead to right for groping Ambra Battilana Gutierrez. A statement read in part that “a criminal charge is not supported.” David Boies, a former lawyer for Weinstein, gave Vance’s election campaign $10,000 following his decision not to prosecute, according to the International Business Times. Hmm.

And if all this weren’t being uncovered, Jason Momoa’s rape-joke apology surely would’ve made many more headlines this week. Page Six reported that at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, the Game of Thrones actor expressed that he loves sci-fi and fantasy “because there are so many things you can do, like rip someone’s tongue out of their throat and get away with it and rape beautiful women.”

Momoa issued an apology via Instagram, saying in part, “I am still severely disappointed in myself at the insensitivity of my remarks that day.” Great that he at least recognized what he did wrong, but the trend of men making rape jokes or lewd remarks and then apologizing is getting old. The jokes do nothing but normalize rape culture and the objectification of women. Maybe instead of apologizing, men should just stop making these remarks in general.

As if enough people weren’t being sucked into this pain vortex, even the New York Times may not be in the clear. A report by The Wrap founder Sharon Waxman, formerly a reporter for the paper, claims that the Times scrapped a story she worked on in 2004 about Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, which would have shed light on his behavior much sooner.

Waxman claimed that her editor at the time asked her “why it mattered”; she also said that Weinstein pressured both Matt Damon and Russell Crowe to call her and vouch for Fabrizio Lombardo, who was then-head of Miramax Italy but whose “real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs,” the piece said.

Current executive editor of the Times, Dean Baquet, released a statement about Waxman’s piece. He said that although he wasn’t at the Times in 2004, he finds it “unimaginable” that “The Times killed a story because of pressure from Harvey Weinstein.” He went on to say that Waxman “did not have anything near what was revealed in our story. Mainly, she had an off-the-record account from one woman.”

In response to the article on The Wrap, Matt Damon spoke with Deadline about what he thought really happened. He claimed that he had a one-minute phone call with Waxman and discussed what he knew of Fabrizio from just working with him professionally — and needless to say, he didn’t know of him in any sexual harassment capacity. He also said “we vouch for each other, all the time.” Uh, maybe vouching for people who do bad things behind closed doors is part of the problem, no?

“Look, even before I was famous, I didn’t abide this kind of behavior,” Damon told Deadline. “But now, as the father of four daughters, this is the kind of sexual predation that keeps me up at night. This is the great fear for all of us.”

By the way, people are sick of men using the “I have daughters” line to condemn sexual assault, considering women are still human beings worthy of respect regardless of their relationships to men (and sometimes also have daughters). But that’s another story.

But, in all this, there was at least one person who openly and righteously defended Weinstein: Lindsay Lohan. The ex-actor came to Weinstein’s defense in an Instagram story, saying: “I feel very bad for Harvey Weinstein right now.”

Lohan went on to say “He’s never harmed me or done anything to me. We’ve done several movies together. And so I think everyone needs to stop. I think it’s wrong. So stand up.” Apparently, since he never did anything to her, none of it is real. She also asked Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapman, to “take a stand and be with her husband,” despite the fact that she had already, and quite rationally, fled him at high speed. Chapman is currently initiating divorce proceedings.

Lohan ended up deleting the stories, but stands by her words, according to The Los Angeles Times. Bless her heart.

Going down with all these people and things is Hollywood itself. There’s simply no denying that the atmosphere in Hollywood is toxic for women. In an anonymously-written Guardian article, an actress details the mistreatment, objectification and vulnerability she experienced working in Los Angeles. She would meet with directors and producers, but when she rejected their sexual advances, she would never hear from them again.

“Harvey Weinstein’s alleged behaviour was not unique to him,” she wrote. “It is absolutely just the accepted way of things.” She went on to say that even though she told her manager, “no one thought it was a big deal.”

This is the harsh reality for women working in the movie industry. Men can get away with what they want if women’s careers are on the line. They know who has the advantage.

Patricia Arquette put it perfectly in her Twitter thread, highlighting the hypocrisy of the public’s reaction to sexual harassment, which brings us back to Oliver Stone:

THREAD 1/ Years ago Oliver Stone wanted me to do a movie.We talked about the Material which was very sexual.The meeting was professional.

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

2/ then I received from him long stem jungle roses. It’s not uncommon to receive flowers but something about them felt weird. I ignored it

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

3/ then his assistant called to make sure it got them. I thanked them. He then invited me to a screening of Natual Born Killers.

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

3/Something felt weird so I asked my boyfriend to go with me. The room was packed. Oliver stopped me coming out of the bathroom

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

4/ He said “Why did you bring him?” I said “Why is it a problem I brought him? It shouldn’t be a problem. Think about THAT Oliver.”

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

5/ anyway never heard about the movie again & didn’t care to.

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

What I am saying is women are always f-cked. 1)Why didn’t you say something? 2) nothing happened! 3)it’s not professional if U bring BF!

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

4) why DIDN’T you bring your boyfriend? 5) Believe women! & seconds later Don’t believe women!

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

6) Trust your instincts! 7) Your instincts are not valid!

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

What I am demonstrating is the craggy and uncertain terrain women negotiate in Entertainment and all businesses.

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) October 13, 2017

Yes, the Hollywood sign now looks even more tarnished at the top of Mount Lee along with the entire entertainment industry. But there’s another far larger group that is leaving this week coated in ash and fire: Men. Yep, half the world’s population is looking pretty terrible right now for what they’ve done to the other half.

Of course, many men have spoken out to support victims of sexual harassment and condemn this rampant, inappropriate — and sometimes even criminal — behavior. Some have even reminded us that sexual harassment isn’t limited to female victims; two men in particular — James Van Der Beek and Terry Crews—have come forward to tell their own stories, in spite of society’s expectations of “masculinity.” But the fact remains that it is most often women who are targeted and those doing the target, to men and women alike, are the male of the species.

Another Guardian article detailed the injustices and crimes that have occurred against women in just the last week, and it shows that we have a long way to go. There are undoubtedly men out there vouching for women, but this practice needs to be more widespread. In order to achieve equality of the sexes, we need to start believing the allegations of sexual assault victims and be more critical of men in positions of power when they are accused of misconduct.

Harvey Weinstein went three decades harassing and assaulting women without paying for it. Over the last week he took a deserved nosedive into the abyss and we all, to one extend or another, shared the ride. Now, let’s gang up and claw ourselves up and out. Only some of us deserve to be down here.