The bottom of the swamp.

The following article is from one of my favorite columnists, Will Bunch, who writes for my hometown paper.

"Novartis is a global pharmaceutical giant that’s headquartered in Switzerland, employs 126,000 people, and pulls in $50 billion a year making newfangled drugs, including the medication that ought to be handed out like candy to the American media in the hyperactive age of Donald Trump: Ritalin. But this icon of Big Pharma prefers to deal with politicians the old-fashioned way.

It buys them.

At least that’s the knock on Novartis in places like Greece — when a decade-long bribery scheme that involved two prime ministers and several cabinet members was described by a government official there as “the biggest scandal since the creation of the Greek state” — or China, where Novartis has been accused of paying doctors to prescribe its drugs, or Turkey, where Novartis is linked to a consulting firm that may have kicked back money to government officials.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should, because there’s growing evidence that Novartis used the same heavy-handed tactics to gain access and influence with the despotic ruler of a backwater banana republic called the United States of America.

It was revealed last week, in a bizarre fashion, that Novartis had paid President Trump’s lawyer and self-described “consigliere,” Michael Cohen, some $1.2 million over the course of 2017 in order to pick the brains of Cohen — taxi-medallion king, phone-threatener extraordinaire, and graduate of America’s Worst Law School™ — for high-level strategy on complex issues like drug-pricing policy.
Or maybe it was because Cohen is one of a handful of people who can speed dial Trump’s personal cellphone. If so, it was slightly depressing to learn that the White House can be bought so cheaply. AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunications firm, paid just $600,000 over roughly the same period of time for Cohen’s deep insights into the button-down mind of our current president, while Korean Aerospace cited the New York attorney’s skill in accounting as why it sent him a $150,000 check last fall, right after the Pentagon delayed a massive Air Force jet-trainer contract the firm is up for. You can draw your own conclusion about the $500,000 linked to a Russian oligarch. 

Those of us rooted in Philadelphia know that pay-to-pay politics is nothing new in America, and in fact our lawmakers and judges have worked hard to ensure that much of it is legal. Still, there’s something especially crass and unseemly about the way Team Trump does it. Big cash payments to an unskilled and sometimes thuggish  “fixer” so close to the president himself — an autocratic ruler who continues to profit from his own business while he runs the country and puts his daughter and son-in-law in a position of great power — is the kind of thing you used to read about in some laughable central Asian dictatorship, Whereverstan, but not the formerly exceptional  U.S. of A. The only thing we’re missing is a glorious military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue…wait, what?
Still, Cohen — and by extension, Trump — have managed to place a uniquely American stamp on our presidential corruption, by making the whole thing look like the lost episode of The Sopranos.

When the FBI recently raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel room, Cohen — who has a long history of family and personal ties to suspected Russian organized-crime figures — put on a wild-patterned sports jacket that looked off the rack from Martin Scorsese’s prop room, and met his associates outside on the street while paparazzi snapped photos that looked like government surveillance shots. It was reported that — in addition to the big-name clients he did land — Cohen was rebuffed by at least one, Ford Motor Co., and one can only imagine his pitch to the executives in Detroit. “Hey, that’s a nice Explorer you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Welcome to the Bada Bing‘s new location on K Street.

The comic possibilities of Cohen’s racket shouldn’t obscure the fact that this is potentially a huge story, with Watergate-size implications. “Potentially” because there are still so many questions about the president’s lawyer and his consulting business, not least of which being how confidential business records ended up in the hands of Cohen’s worst enemy — attorney Michael Avenatti, representing purported Trump mistress and adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

But since Avenatti’s surprising scoop has been largely confirmed, there are now two important ways to look at this.

The most immediate concern is, quite simply: What did the president know about Essential Consultants LLC, a Delaware corporation, and when did he know it? Because consider some things we do know about the business of this shell company formed just as Trump was getting elected 45th president of the United States. Its cash inflows included more than a couple million dollars from powerful corporations seeking influence with the U.S. government. At other times, the cash outflows included the $130,000 intended to silence (and doing so quite badly) Stormy Daniels about her alleged Trump liaison, as well as a $1.6 million payout to a former Playboy model which everyone involved insists had nothing to do with the president, even as some pundits ask some very interesting questions.

Did Trump know which companies were hiring Cohen to influence him? Were monies from these influence-seekers somehow connected to the funds that seem to have directly benefited Trump, by solving problems in his personal life? If not, where did the money that paid off Stormy Daniels come from? The powers that be have made it almost impossible to prove the crime of political bribery in modern America. The wrong answers to these questions, though, could make the impossible suddenly seem possible, and raise serious doubts about the survival of Trump’s presidency.

But what if the dollars from Novartis, AT&T, et al, didn’t benefit Trump in any illegal way? What if Michael Cohen simply sold these large corporations a bill of goods, winning huge contracts for high-level access and insights that he then didn’t deliver. There’s a valid argument that what Cohen did after Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016 is no different from how other Trump insiders cashed in — what, for example, is the deal with Qatar paying Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski $500,000 a month? — and what close associates of both Democratic and Republican presidents or top Capitol Hill lawmakers have been doing for many decades. Under this scenario, the work of Essential Consultants is about as shocking as gambling in the back room of a Casablanca nightclub.
Politico’s Playbook, not surprisingly, spoke for the corrupt and contented classes the other day when it published this:

— YES, guys like Michael Cohen routinely get paid amounts like $1.2 million to offer insights about their boss or former boss. Yeah, it’s crazy. But many readers of this newsletter would not have their McMansion in McLean, their BMW, their membership at Army Navy, second homes in Delaware, cigar lockers and endless glasses of Pinot Noir at BLT Steak and Tosca if that kind of stuff didn’t happen. Newsflash: $1.2 million is not even a rounding error for massive corporations. (The smart companies route these deals through law firms.)

 First of all, why are wealthy fixers buying houses in Delaware, of all places? Second of all, both the cynicism expressed here, and the fact that few people are shocked by it, are in and of themselves … shocking. If what Michael Cohen did here is business as usual, and it may well have been, then why must Americans accept a level of business as usual that would look familiar to an Uzbek tinhorn dictator? Especially when it leads to outcomes that hurt everyday Americans.

How so? It’s hard not to notice the companies that hired Cohen got outcomes that were good for them and not for the public. Novartis hired Trump’s lawyer with a goal of keeping prices for prescription drugs artificially high, which is just what happened the other day when Trump broke his campaign promise for Medicare to negotiate with Big Phama. The AT&T lobbyist who hired Cohen got a private dinner with Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai just a month later — and not long before Pai announced the commission was scrapping net neutrality, a cherished goal of Big Telecom.

If America wants to become an exceptional nation, let’s pass some exceptional laws that restrict this kind of influence peddling. Let’s pass a bill to make it clear that the “strategic consulting” performed by Cohen and his ilk is really just old-fashioned lobbying, that needs to be disclosed to the public. And when the new Congress takes its seats next January, it needs to launch an all-out war on big money in politics, including the unwinding of the Citizens United case, even if that requires a constitutional amendment. We don’t know yet what this scandal means for Trump, but we can do some things to prevent the Michael Cohens of the future. Bada bing, bada boom!" [Source]

Mr. Mueller, please hurry. The Sopranos was great on television and we loved it. I am just not true that we are quite ready for the real live version, Washington style. 

*Image from slate.com

Misguided outrage over a comedian.

I am going to need the right-wingnuts and some of the other folks who took issue with Michelle Wolf's stand up routine at the White House Correspondence Dinner to give me a break.

Since when is a comedian not allowed to make fun of famous people? Besides, pretty much everything she said was true.

It's just amazing to me that some of the same folks who defend this president and his vile and reprehensible behavior every day are now saying that this comedian went too far. She did not. She did what she was hired to do: Tell jokes. Donald trump makes fun of disabled people, and he tries to fat-shame women he disagrees with, and some of these same journalists who are now complaining about Wolf failed to cal him out for his boorish behavior. Trump himself said some pretty outrageous and dangerous things at his rally in Michigan, while Wolf was entertaining journalists in Washington, but it's crickets from America's chattering class and those who should be calling him out on it.

Katherine Timpf, writing for the National Review, had a great take on this issue.

"Wolf then continued to suggest that Sanders was a sort of “Uncle Tom but for white women.”

Sanders was visibly upset the entire time, and many people on the right rushed to her defense — saying that Wolf’s jokes were inappropriate and an outrage. Here’s the thing, though: Many of those same people have absolutely no problem with it when President Trump makes fun of people, no matter how low the blow.  

 Yes. In case you’ve forgotten, Donald Trump also really likes to make fun of people. On the campaign trail, he referred to Marco Rubio as “Little Marco” and Jeb Bush as “low-energy Jeb.” During a debate, he readily agreed that he’d compare Rosie O’Donnell to a “fat pig,” “slob,” “dog,” and “disgusting animal.” He mocked Carly Fiorina, saying “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” During his presidency, he made fun of Mika Brzezinski, saying he once saw her “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” The list goes on and on.

If you find yourself being outraged about Wolf’s jokes about Sanders, I’d suggest you ask yourself: Were you outraged about any of the above jokes as well? If not, why not?

The way it appears now is that when Trump makes fun of Mika’s face, the Right says “Chill, it’s just a joke!” and the Left says it’s an outrage. When Michelle Wolf says Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s eyeshadow is made of lies, the Left says “Chill, it’s just a joke!” and the Right says it’s an outrage. There’s certainly an element of hypocrisy on this issue on both sides, but there’s also one difference: Michelle Wolf is a comedian, not the leader of the free world, so she does deserve a bit more leeway when it comes to making jokes." [Source]

Maybe that's the problem, we can't separate the two, since "the leader of the free world" is such a joke.



  

"Melania knew"?

I really don't want to keep talking about this Stormy Daniels story, but the trump White House just can't seem to get their act together when it comes to what went on between trump and this "adult film actress".

Now we are hearing that there might actually be sex tapes. I said this on twitter, and I will repeat it here: If there are in fact sex tapes, there better be a warning about the graphic nature of the contents before airing it on cable and network television.

Anyway, Charles Blow has an interesting take on this issue.

"Dear America: Come on, you can’t be serious.

The ongoing saga over a president, a porn star and a payoff is so lewd and tawdry that it can’t simply be added to the ever-expanding list of horrible misbehaviors of a womanizing misogynist.

It’s not even the infidelity that most bothers me. I view that as an issue between spouses and with the other person involved. I contend that we on the outside never really know what understandings may exist in a marriage, unless the two parties within reveal it.

In this case, Melania knew exactly the kind of man she was getting.

When Donald first meets Melania, they are at a New York Fashion Week party to which Donald has been invited by the wealthy Italian businessman who brought Melania to America on a modeling contract and work visa. According to GQ, sometimes, to promote his models, the businessman “would send a few girls to an event and invite photographers, producers, and rich playboys.”

Trump is on a date with another woman that night. He is also in the process of divorcing Marla Maples, his second wife, with whom he had had an affair while still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump.

According to GQ, “He sent his companion to the bathroom so he could have a few minutes to chat up the model he’d noticed. But Melania knew of Trump’s reputation — which was immediately confirmed by the fact that he had come to the party with a date and was now asking for her number.”

That’s right, Melania knew.

In April 2004, Donald proposes to Melania at the Met Gala.

By the way, just to underscore how vile this man is, in September 2004, Trump goes on Howard Stern, and while discussing with Stern how beautiful they both find Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Stern says, “Can I say this? A piece of ass.” Trump responds, “Yes.”

Trump marries Melania in January of 2005. They had signed a prenuptial agreement. Nine months later, in September, “Access Hollywood” records Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women — kissing and groping them without prior consent — and claiming: “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Six months after the tape is recorded, on March 20, 2006, Mr. and Mrs. Trump’s son Barron is born. (That means that Melania was pregnant when Trump was making his lewd remarks about assaulting other women.)

Four months after Barron is born, porn star Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, alleged that she and Trump initiated a consensual, sexual relationship after meeting at a golf tournament.

Clifford alleges that the “intimate relationship” began in July 2006 and continued “well into the year 2007.”

Trump also goes on “The View”  in 2006 and says of Ivanka: “She does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” His daughter! And remember, he is newly married to Melania, who will give birth to Barron just 14 days after his appearance on the show.

And through it all, Melania has remained. So, that’s their marriage. They clearly have some sort of understanding, some emotional elasticity — or financial dependency — that is beyond my comprehension.

So that part is what it is.

As for the present news, it is not clear to me if the money paid by Donald Trump’s personal attorney to Clifford, to prevent the disclosure of a sexual affair Clifford says she had with Trump, will be found in violation of federal campaign finance laws. Neither is it clear to me if the courts will allow Clifford to get out of her nondisclosure agreement.

Those are all legal issues. What matters most to me about this sordid tale is the way it fits into a pattern of behavior and a Trump worldview about women: that they are mere objects and opportunities, a reward owed to men of wealth, and that objections and protestations are invalid.

This is about the defamation of, silencing of, and shouting down of women.

At the very same time that the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have given voice to women, and led to men being held accountable, particularly in the private sector, Trump has almost single-handedly aided in the numbing of America’s sympathies for women who speak up about the sexual exploits, misdeeds and assaults of elected officials.

Yes, there have been some political resignations, but primarily among people who have confessed to their sins. But among the men like Trump who deny the accusations, little has been done. Indeed, Trump has made a habit of defending such men, using the forcefulness of their denials as proof of innocence. Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women.

America, this is not about partisanship; this is about principle. Each of us must proclaim that this situation is over the line, that women matter, that their voices and their stories matter, that propriety, honor and character matter." [Source]

*Pic from youtube.com

  

Dead children can't praise him, so he ignores them.

Those of us with a heart understand how important it is to remember the poor innocent victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

With a heart. 

"Not only did Donald Trump not tweet out messages of condolences for families who lost loved ones five years ago on Thursday at the Sandy Hook gun massacre in Connecticut, and not only did White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on that day insist there’s simply nothing that can be done to battle American epidemic of gun violence, but Trump himself managed to insult the Sandy Hook families in another appalling way.

In a craven display of collective indifference, Trump hosted Wayne LaPierre, the controversial head of the NRA, at the White House on Thursday night, as families and friends of the elementary school gun massacre were remembering the victims of the horrific killing spree.

The shooting rampage claimed 26 lives, including 20 young children. In the wake of the attack, LaPierre’s NRA spread lies about the emergency response to the attack, lashed out at critics, and urged that every school in America have armed guards in order to fend off possible gunmen wielding AK-47s.

And soon after that, LaPierre led the fight to obstruct President Barack Obama’s bipartisan effort to pass a wildly popular background check bill.

LaPierre represents everything that’s wrong and immoral with radical, far-right voices of the gun-obsessed GOP culture. And that’s who Trump invited to the White House on the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Gun safety advocate Shannon Watts, who founded the group Moms Demand Action, noted on Twitter the contrast between how Trump and Obama deal with families of Sandy Hook, as well as the memories of the slain:

Trump’s do-nothing strategy regarding gun violence was on display on Thursday at the White House, when Sanders was asked by a reporter at the daily briefing to explain “what President Trump has done to try to protect the American people against a similar type” of Sandy Hook massacre. Sanders at first started touting Trump’s tighter border security measures.

After she was reminded that the Sandy Hook shooter didn’t enter the U.S. from another country, nor did the shooters who killed nearly 100 people during the massacres in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas, this year, Sanders conceded that the White House hasn’t done a thing to try to stop the bloodshed, because the White House, echoing NRA spin, doesn’t think there is anything to be done to stop the bloodshed.

The White House now views gun massacres the same way it views the weather: It’s out of their hands. And it views the Sandy Hook victims as inconvenient reminders of the past." [Source]

Mr. Mueller, please end this nightmare. 

*Pic from heavy.com

"The 'Racist' Card"

Here is an interesting take on Republicans and racism via an interview with Peter Beinart. 

The Field Negro education series continues.

“Is American conservatism inherently bigoted?” That’s the question asked by Peter Beinart in a new piece for the Atlantic. It’s also a question that a lot of Americans have been asking over the past several years, particularly with the rise of Donald Trump. Beinart has been a passionate critic of Trump’s racism and bigotry, but he argues that liberals have been too unsparing in their labeling of people and institutions as racist. With Americans becoming increasingly progressive in some ways, Beinart recognizes that the ground is constantly moving beneath people’s feet. (Six years ago, Barack Obama was not openly in favor of gay marriage; now such an opinion is often considered beyond the pale.)

To discuss his essay and the American dialogue a year after Trump’s election, I spoke by phone with Beinart recently. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed Ed Gillespie’s Virginia campaign (before we knew his racial appeals didn’t end up working), the notion that political correctness causes racism, how to talk to people who embrace social change at a different rate than you do, and the costs and benefits of labeling people who vote for bigots as “racist.”

 

Isaac Chotiner: You don’t really mention this in the essay, but one thing that struck me while reading it is: However we want to define people, and whether “racist” is the right label for them, a lot of people—46 percent of voters—just undeniably voted for a racist. How do we talk about them?

Peter Beinart: One of the points that Ta-Nehisi Coates has made repeatedly that is very well taken is that journalists should not think like political consultants. So, it may be politically unwise to call those people “deplorable” and to call out their racism, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. But I do think that in applying the term racist or bigot, except in the really extreme cases, it makes sense to try to apply the term towards an act or a policy or a statement rather than to a person.

And I think if I were going to critique Hillary’s “deplorable” comment, I might critique it along those lines, which is to say that a lot of Trump supporters believe deplorable things—which they absolutely do; just look at how much support the Muslim ban had in all of the polls—rather than to call the people “deplorable.” Because I think there’s a way in which, again, except in really extreme cases, even people who hold bigoted views are more complicated than that. And it also, obviously, is going to get people’s backs up much more, and so we should try to focus these terms on policy and action rather than individuals.

To take an example in the news: Ed Gillespie in Virginia ran a campaign that I think you and I would say has racist elements to it.

Yes. 

In some ways, it’s a Trumpian campaign. But it’s also very similar to a lot of Republican campaigns from the pre-Trump era. And you see a lot of Democrats labeling the campaign racist, or labeling Ed Gillespie racist for running this campaign. How do you think we should talk about something like the Gillespie campaign, which really is mainstream Republican at this point?

My piece just came out, but I actually wrote it a couple months ago, and I actually think that the circumstances are worse now than they were back then, because I think it’s become more clear now that the Gillespie campaign and the New Jersey campaign are good examples of this—and the kind of exiting of Jeff Flake and Bob Corker—of how much Trumpism is the model for the Republican Party. I think it was a little bit less clear even this summer.

As much as possible I think we should try to be specific in the way we deploy these terms, so I think saying Ed Gillespie is racist—or even the Ed Gillespie campaign is racist—is less valuable both descriptively but also in terms of its impact than saying this particular ad of Ed Gillespie is racist in this particular way. I certainly am not suggesting that we should take these terms out of parlance, because goodness knows we are in the Trump era, where so much of this deserves that. But I also think that they have such power because there is this sense, rightly or wrongly, amongst conservatives, that conservatives genuinely seem to believe, a lot of them, that they are routinely and unfairly tagged with these terms. I think it makes it all the more important that when they are deployed, that they’re deployed as specifically as possibly, so I would want people to say, name me the specific thing that Ed Gillespie has said or done in this campaign that’s racist.

You mentioned in your piece what Marco Rubio said about Black Lives Matter a long time ago, where he kind of tried to show some empathy for people who are feeling like race relations in the country needed to change, and you pointed out that when Republicans do things like this that, Democrats can and should highlight them and applaud them. But when this is all happening under a paradigm of Republicans, especially Republican officeholders, supporting a bigoted president, it’s just very hard to have any sort of conversation.

I agree with you, but I think that this is so bad for the country. The country needs a less racist conservatism, or less bigoted conservatism, if not a nonbigoted—I mean, many people say our liberalism is bigoted too, so it depends on from what perspective you’re seeing this. I think that in some ways, we didn’t appreciate—you know, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush had lots of problems and all, but we are in so much worse shape now than we were then, that I think it’s kind of incumbent on liberals and conservatives to try to think together, those who oppose Trump, what it would take to try to breathe some life back into this, to have a Republican that actually wanted to compete for the black and Latino vote again, rather than purely running against them. I don’t claim to kind of have conclusive answers, but I think the project is one that liberals and conservatives of good will need to really both be engaged in.

There is this idea out there, which I see online if I ever write something about Trump and racism, that basically one reason white people are driven to Trump is because they get called racist all the time.

Right, right

“I’m so angry about being called racist that I’m going to vote for a racist president.”

Right! Doesn’t exactly disprove the thesis!

It’s a ridiculous thesis. But I also think it’s worth thinking about culturally what it means having a country where a lot of people are labeled racist.

This was something that I was really wrestling with and struggling with a lot in writing the piece. As I think the question implies, it’s somewhat ridiculous to suggest that political correctness is creating racism when America was pretty darn racist for a long time before anyone had heard of the term political correctness, and before any of this kind of culture of “political correctness” existed, right? So, obviously American racism does not require political correctness to exist and flourish throughout our history.

So I think that’s kind of obvious. I do think that, though—and I tried to cite a couple of studies in the piece—there are more and less effective ways of talking to people who hold views, some of which we would consider bigoted. And there is an art of persuasion, and that art kind of matters politically, and it also matters civically, like it matters in the way we interact. And while it’s true while Ta-Nehisi Coates says, like, journalists should just say what’s true, that’s definitely true, but it’s also important that we try to think about how we nurture and strengthen nonbigoted points of view, nonbigoted attitudes among people who we still fundamentally disagree with, you know? And I think that’s what I was trying to get at in the first half of the piece.

One thing that’s come up in conversations I’ve had about Weinstein and sexual harassment with people who are, say, over the age of 50, is this real discomfort about how things are changing in the culture. I hate the Mark Lilla thesis that, you know, Democratic Party PC-ness is what’s costing them elections, but I also think that, just for the health of our civic culture, it’s important to be aware of how people are different. I guess I don’t have an answer, because things like sexism and racism need to change, and going easy on them because it makes people “uncomfortable” is its own form of PC-ness. 

Certain cultural norms emerge, and sometimes they emerge quite quickly, like let’s say around issues about trans people. I mean, that’s been pretty recent in terms of its evolution in the broad public consciousness. And certain language emerges, and certain norms emerge about how you talk. And that’s very good, those things, and that’s partly why I am a progressive. I believe in that progressive impulse. But I think where it can be a problem is where you basically don’t give people any time and space to evolve a little bit more slowly, and one of the things I tried to say in the piece is I think it’s important to look at whether people are moving in the right direction, rather than necessarily demand that they move at the same speed.

To say, “Well at least we’re moving in the right direction on these things” after this election is really hard, when you are scared the country is in the broad sense not progressing but entering a reactionary time.

Right. I think there have been several moments in American history where progressives bought into the kind of famous Martin Luther King Jr. line about the arc of the moral universe being long and bending toward justice, and then you get shocked into the realization that actually there’s no inevitability about that at all. And I think that happened to liberals during World War I, I think it happened in the 1960s and ’70s and now it’s happening again. You’re right, in that moment it becomes much harder and unfortunately these are the wages of Donald Trump’s presidency. [Source]

I disagree with Beinhart's take, and I call bullshit on people who say that they voted for the racist because they were called racists.

No, they voted for the racist because they are racists.

It's really that simple.  

Some of these men are not like the others.

*The White House couldn't cover for him any longer, so Mr. trump finally came clean with his love for the "alleged" pedophile down in Alabama, Roy Moore. (That whole "birds of a feather" thing I guess.)

Anyway, it seems that it's now cool to be an "alleged" sexual predator, as long as you belong to the right tribe. Politics now trump (pun intended) all things, including morality.

Anyway, these are interesting times when it comes to sexual harassment, and one writer has an interesting take on why all these "alleged" sexual predators fit a certain physical profile.

 "You may have noticed that as this extremely depressing and never-ending “celebrity sex abuser” storyline plays out, there are at least a couple of patterns. One of them, which no one has had the courage to fully examine, is that almost all of the most high-profile alleged abusers from the world of media/entertainment/politics are men who would not be generally considered physically attractive. Some might even be called ugly, and not just because of their behavior.

I am always very skeptical of when the media takes a few stray data points and weaves them into a convenient narrative, but there is clearly something to this. Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Mark Halperin, Louis C.K., Roy Moore, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Glenn Thrush, John Conyers, John Lasseter, and Jeffery Tambor all clearly fit within this description.

So, is this just a coincidence, or is there a connection between a male celebrity lacking good looks and him being more likely to be accused of sexually inappropriate, or even criminal conduct? I have a theory that there is indeed an association here, one which may play a role in multiple directions.

Given the highly sensitive nature of this subject matter and the incredibly toxic current environment surrounding this topic, I want to first make very clear that I am not looking to in any way to excuse the very bad behavior, which, as the father of two young girls, I obviously abhor. Instead, I am only trying only to explain a portion of what is really going on here and make sense of what seems to be an overwhelming level of insane news stories all coming out at the same time.

Charlie Rose, in his ill-fated “defense” against allegations which led to his instant and shocking downfall, said, “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize that I was mistaken.” While the nature of the allegations, some of which he is denying, makes his perspective difficult to believe, let’s, for a moment, take him at his word. If one understands celebrity and power, this assertion may not be nearly as preposterous as it first appears to be.

Having spent a lot of time around many rather famous and powerful people, I believe that “celebrity” is effectively a disease. It completely screws with a person’s brain and often makes them quite delusional (which is why making someone whose whole life has been about achieving celebrity, the president of the United States, was a REALLY bad idea). In short, a person begins to believe, quite literally, that their crap does not stink.

This creates a situation where they really believe that they can do no wrong and that the people around them, who never tell them “no” and praise nearly everything they do, actually adore them. Much like animals in a first-class zoo, they begin to live in a world with no actual connection to reality and their ability to properly gauge personal interactions becomes greatly diminished.
Inevitably, this impacts their contact within “romantic” relationships, especially if they are heterosexual men. As Harvey Weinstein’s gorgeous and soon to be ex-wife proves, it is well known that some women are extremely attracted to–or at least pretend to be–celebrity, power, and money.
It is hardly a stretch then that these same men, who probably got no female attention in their formative teenage years, in their adulthood as a “celebrity” want to take their new fancy sports car (if you will) out for a ride as often as possible. Inevitably, this means that they will eventually drive this car too fast/recklessly, causing them to crash and burn.

In other words, these men get used to the idea that some women really will, just as Donald Trump infamously told Access Hollywood, “let you do anything” if you are a “star.” They start to think that they are George Clooney because some women actually really do treat them that way (and they are too egotistical to realize that these women are probably mostly faking it). Effectively, they end up WAY “over punting” their “coverage” and bad things, sometimes very bad things, end up happening, especially since these men also tend to have massive entitlement issues.

I know that a lot of people, especially liberal feminists, will be outraged by this analysis because they will wrongly perceive that I am minimizing these widely varied acts of abuse, but I am not. They will also say that I am portraying the motivation of the act incorrectly because sex abuse, to them, is all about power and not about sex.

As an actual heterosexual man, who knows a lot of other real heterosexual men, I believe that this perception is, for the vast majority of cases, way off. The reality is that these men want to have sexual relations with women more beautiful than their own level of attractiveness would normally allow. This is why they pursued the very attributes (fame, power, money) which would make this possible for them to achieve. (Part of why I know this is because, as teenage mega-geek, I started my career as a TV sportscaster for some of the same reasons and, after initially enjoying the “perks,” quickly matured enough to realize they weren’t worth the downside.)

It is instructive here to see how men view sexual abuse when it occurs in reverse. Take, for instance, female teacher sex abuse cases, which are shockingly common and which, not coincidently, get a lot of media coverage, at least when the teacher is considered to be “attractive.” There is zero doubt that the average male, whether they admit it publicly or not, judge the heinousness of these acts based solely on how good-looking the teacher is. For instance, right or not, I have never met a man who thought that the crimes committed on a teenage boy by “hot teacher” Debra Lafave were particularly horrible.

This phenomenon does not generally work the same way with women because biologically they tend to see the role and desirability is irrelevant in judging and interpreting the actions of men in the realm of sexual harassment and abuse. I am convinced, for instance, that if Al Franken looked like Brad Pitt, no one would have ever taken Leeann Tweeden’s charge remotely seriously.

As Tom Brady memorably taught us in a 2012 Saturday Night Live sketch, the rules to follow for not sexually harassing women in the workplace are: “Be handsome, Be Attractive, Don’t Be Unattractive.” [Source]

Now let's be clear, I do not agree with the author's views. I happen to think that if a woman wants to allow *Idris Elba or *George Clooney to flirt with her and not Donald trump or Roy Moore, that is her prerogative. If you happen to be an old unattractive white man who thinks that your money and power allows you to be a pig, then you  might want to do some soul searching and face reality: You are not Idris Elba, George Clooney, or brad Pitt.

It might seem like a double standard, but it's not. That's her choice to make, not yours.   

*Pic from lehren.com