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jammerbirdi



Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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PostPosted: 07/14/18 11:53 am    ::: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

LONG overdue thread here. So let me start things off with two very current examples. One slipped by the world, while the other caused quite a backlash. First the one that went unnoticed.

From Time magazine (by God, Time magazine)

The headline read...

Robin Wright Opens Up About Former House of Cards Costar Kevin Spacey

That was some juicy click bait. But long ago but not long after the Weinstein story broke, I wrote here on Rebkell's that responses from Hollywood had already fallen into an unmistakable pattern. Claim to have known nothing, seen nothing, heard nothing, and say something positive about the now disgraced Hollywood compatriot.

jammerbirdi wrote:

Isolate the perpetrator and the behavior. Humanize him in his struggles. Be careful what you say. We're watching.


Okay, so let's see what Claire Underwood... er uh... Robin Wright has to say in the Time Magazine piece that blares all over the internets of her opening up about her co-star Kevin Spacey.

Quote:
In an interview with Today‘s Savannah Guthrie, airing on Monday, the actress, 52, opens up about her interactions with Spacey on set of the hit Netflix series.

“Was there any kind of red flag, or anything that would have made you think this was possible?” Guthrie inquires as Wright recalls, “Kevin and I knew each other between action and cut, and in between setups where we would giggle.”

However, when the cameras were off, Wright says she did not interact with him.

“I didn’t really– I didn’t know the man. I knew the incredible craftsman that he is,” she explains.


This is not opening up. This is CREEPY. As I said, Claire Underwood. Robin Wright is supposed to be some great lefty that takes no shit nor gives any fucks. But it's ALL bullshit. Because here we see her making a very brief comment that fits the pattern of so many others that were highlighted by me here.

But that's a bone to pick I have with Hollywood. Claire and Hollywood aren't the perpetrators of the problem that this thread is devoted to, that of Fake News. No, that would be what was once the great news magazine of our nation's journalistic legacy, Time. If you grew up in a certain generation, you would almost want to write, as I want to, Time magazine 'itself' as if it's like God Almighty.

This is not opening up about Kevin Spacey. That headline is a lie. It's a deception. It's the kind of click-bait title you see employed by so many shady newsy websites that aren't actually real news resources at all. Number One Food This Cardiologist Wants You To Stop Eating TODAY, etc.

So the other one, you've mostly probably heard of by now. I won't waste my time gathering and formatting links. Forbes Magazine announced a list of rich fucks. On that list was Kylie Jenner of the Kardasian clan. She's 20 and she has amassed, in only the last three years, a fortune Forbes estimates to be 900 million dollars. Forbes says that she's a self-made almost billionaire. And the internets lit up with that shit as people were (for once) rightly outraged and pointed out all the reasons why she most certainly is not a self-made almost billionaire.

This one is actually much more creepy on a larger level than the other. But don't you see people, they are doing the same thing. They are protecting the rich and powerful. How can you hope to win when your free press is so dishonest about these things that are so wrapped up in power and class? The answer is, you can't win. And that's where we are in the fake news thread.

I would LOVE to see people here go against the grain in this thread. Go against their OWN grain and the obvious leanings of the group. That would be encouraging. Point out where this very powerful mainstream media is fucking lying in our faces. But I suspect this thread will end up being a repository of right wing lies, paranoia, and Trumpian misinformation. Hey, do whatever suits you. But we know what Trump, Monsanto, and Faux News is all about. We've gotten OLD in that era, saturated for decades together with the knowledge of the lies and misinformation from the right and corporations.

But what good are we serving by preaching to ourselves things we've all known for decades? Why DON'T we talk about what the New York Times is doing. What misinformation is being passed on by the Washington Post, CNN, Morning Joe, etc.? I suggest we need that because I have NEVER bought that they are the 'liberal' media. They are a rich dynasty that wears sequins covered gowns to galas and OWN their own tuxes. And they are lying like the Ministry of Information in Orwell's Animal Farm.

Anyway, that's my gloomy assessment and now rare contribution to the conversation here on Rebkell's. Fake News. It's very real.



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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17
mercfan3



Joined: 23 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: 07/14/18 12:41 pm    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

Jesus Jammer, you just ignore being human.

There AREN’T always bright red flags. People don’t usually mo,est in public, particularly a predator.

Say you know (or think you know) someone really well. You like them. Have worked with them for a long time. And then you find out they’ve done something awful

The first response? Almost always it’s “That doesn’t sound like the person I know.”

Also, how about we stop blaming the women in abusers lives. Robin Wright can’t do shit about the power structure in Hollywood. Or America. God, most “liberal” male Americans even refuse to acknowledge a patriarchal system.

Weinstein and Spacey are at fault, not Wright and Streep.

#rantdone

That being said, I agree with you completely about the Times and Post. They are just as, if not more, responsible for our current situation than any other media. This is why Howee and I only trust Stewart. Laughing



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Howee



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PostPosted: 07/14/18 3:45 pm    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

jammerbirdi wrote:
It's very real.


....and always has been. BUT--now, in a far more Far-Reaching way. Now, EVERYBODY has access. Jammer you and I are of similar vintage. I remember, at age 10, *hearing* the (boring) CBS news headlines as my father tuned in. For a half hour. And he had his newspaper. That was it. And THAT was enough to twist his knickers on a regular basis. Me? I got to watch Leave it to Beaver. If I had my chores done. (Fake Life of another sort, eh?)

Now, the information age. "News", "Journalism" are all part of Corporate America. Click bait = $$$.

I stand by my own credo: watch PBS newshour.
Speaking of which, here's a clip of their regular Friday segment, where 2 journalists analyze the week in 10 or so minutes. Ezra Klein (Vox) does a nice job of explaining how journalists need to re-think the way they swallow all the shitty 'leads' Trump, et. al., throw out. It's at the 7 min mark, or so.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-klein-on-trumps-supreme-court-shortlist-scott-pruitts-scandals



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tfan



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PostPosted: 07/15/18 8:40 am    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

mercfan3 wrote:
Jesus Jammer, you just ignore being human.

There AREN’T always bright red flags. People don’t usually mo,est in public, particularly a predator.

Say you know (or think you know) someone really well. You like them. Have worked with them for a long time. And then you find out they’ve done something awful

The first response? Almost always it’s “That doesn’t sound like the person I know.”


Victims talk and people talk. People on the set with Spacey would not have to see him do something, they could hear about it from the person he was after. Or they could hear about it as it traveled around the set. But it appears that there was only one charge against Spacey related to House of Cards, some low-level employee driving Spacey home says Spacey put his hand down the drivers pants in the car. In recounting that he talks about Spacey being powerful and him being a nobody, and doesn't mention telling anyone connected with the show at the time. Unknown if the other charges against Spacey were circulated in Hollywood.

But with Weinstein it seems like people must have heard something. There was the actress Angie Everhart on the boat in Europe who Wienstein walked in on, exposed himself and masturbated in front of her..

Quote:
‘You’re a really nice girl. Don’t tell anybody about this,’ and left.”

The actress refused to keep it a secret and told everyone around her about the alleged incident, but they simply brushed it off.


Courtney Love either experienced Weinstein or heard about him when she said on a red carpet interview when asked if she has any advice for "a young girl moving to Hollywood" (I expect she discussed it with people privately).

Quote:
Love first hesitates and says, "I'll get libeled if I say it."

["If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons [hotel] don't go," Love says.


Seth MacFarlane had been told by someone about an encounter with Weinstein, but his only public statement was to make a joke which he now says "had venom in it" at the Oscars (the joke suggests that he has heard more than just the one person telling them of an interaction with Weinstein):

Quote:
“Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein,” the Oscars host snapped.


The Jane Krakowski character on 30 Rock said in 2012:

Quote:
'Oh please, I'm not afraid of anyone in show business,' she tells Tracy Morgan's character Tracy Jordan.

'I turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions... out of five.'




Last edited by tfan on 07/15/18 10:17 pm; edited 2 times in total
cthskzfn



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Location: In a world where a PSYCHOpath like Trump isn't potus.


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PostPosted: 07/15/18 2:08 pm    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

Howee wrote:
jammerbirdi wrote:
It's very real.


....and always has been. BUT--now, in a far more Far-Reaching way. Now, EVERYBODY has access. Jammer you and I are of similar vintage. I remember, at age 10, *hearing* the (boring) CBS news headlines as my father tuned in. For a half hour. And he had his newspaper. That was it. And THAT was enough to twist his knickers on a regular basis. Me? I got to watch Leave it to Beaver. If I had my chores done. (Fake Life of another sort, eh?)

Now, the information age. "News", "Journalism" are all part of Corporate America. Click bait = $$$.

I stand by my own credo: watch PBS newshour.
Speaking of which, here's a clip of their regular Friday segment, where 2 journalists analyze the week in 10 or so minutes. Ezra Klein (Vox) does a nice job of explaining how journalists need to re-think the way they swallow all the shitty 'leads' Trump, et. al., throw out. It's at the 7 min mark, or so.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-klein-on-trumps-supreme-court-shortlist-scott-pruitts-scandals


Ezra Klein used to be a semi-reg on MSNBC, several years ago. He's what I consider to be a "sober journalist".

Anyone remember when listening to Counterspin was one of the few ways to get a clear look at Corporate Media malfeasance? At that time there was basically one enemy. Now there are all these idiotic fuckwads like the FOX NEWS lineup and Alt Right numbnuts like Alex Jones, etc etc, as the Limbaugh/Michael Savage cancer has matastasized into a endless shitstorm of authoritarian racist nationalistic tribalism.



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jammerbirdi



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PostPosted: 07/15/18 5:25 pm    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

mercfan3 wrote:
Jesus Jammer, you just ignore being human.

There AREN’T always bright red flags. People don’t usually mo,est in public, particularly a predator.

Say you know (or think you know) someone really well. You like them. Have worked with them for a long time. And then you find out they’ve done something awful

The first response? Almost always it’s “That doesn’t sound like the person I know.”


Of course you know better. Thanks for sussing this out for me, merc.



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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17
mercfan3



Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Posts: 19725



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PostPosted: 07/15/18 6:41 pm    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

jammerbirdi wrote:
mercfan3 wrote:
Jesus Jammer, you just ignore being human.

There AREN’T always bright red flags. People don’t usually mo,est in public, particularly a predator.

Say you know (or think you know) someone really well. You like them. Have worked with them for a long time. And then you find out they’ve done something awful

The first response? Almost always it’s “That doesn’t sound like the person I know.”


Of course you know better. Thanks for sussing this out for me, merc.


You struggle with disagreement, don’t you.

Sorry, I’m just going to continue to call bullshit on blaming anyone BUT the powerful men who continue to abuse.

Kevin Spacey is to blame for his bullshit. Not Robin Wright.
Harvey Weinstein is to blame for his bullshit. Not Meryl Streep. Not Jennifer Lawrence. Not Hillary Clinton. Not Michelle Obama.

Your take on this isn’t new or thought provoking. It’s a consistent pattern, where the media manages to find women to blame for abusive and powerful men.

It is totally reasonable for them not to know. Or to be shocked. And even if they did know for sure, there is an environment created that prevents people from speaking out.

You started this thread about corporate media, and how it protects the most powerful..and yet you start it off by repeating a typical corporate media trick. Find anyone to blame (especially a woman) when talking about sexual assault.



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jammerbirdi



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PostPosted: 07/16/18 2:33 pm    ::: Re: Rebkell's Unofficial Fake News Thread Reply Reply with quote

mercfan3 wrote:

Sorry, I’m just going to continue to call bullshit on blaming anyone BUT the powerful men who continue to abuse.

Kevin Spacey is to blame for his bullshit. Not Robin Wright.
Harvey Weinstein is to blame for his bullshit. Not Meryl Streep. Not Jennifer Lawrence. Not Hillary Clinton. Not Michelle Obama.


Yeah because that’s what I was doing. Blaming women. Blaming Meryl and Robin. I see that now. After this grinding up of my intentions by your perspective.

What I was shooting for actually was a much more nuanced conversation about how an entire industry has been responding in an unmistakably lock-step and closed-ranks manner to an unprecedented scandal and how they were and obviously continue to be aided in selling this one-note response by a news media that routinely, and most definitely because of media conglomerate entanglements, uses its "news" reporting mechanisms to promote the idea of an isolated problem in Hollywood that no one left working in the industry knew about. On two levels, fake news, yes. But my presentation of this example being two-fold I’m not at all underplaying what it means to blare in a headline that Robin Wright "opens up" about Kevin Spacey when in fact she only says she didn’t know and that, by the way, he’s a fine actor.

But what Time did wrong there is not what has offended you. I have offended you.

In my misogynistic sexist blaming of these actresses, which I wasn’t even aware of, I wasn’t actually thinking of Meryl and Robin as women. I was thinking of them as powerful long-established luminaries in the entertainment industry, and as currently contracted industry properties themselves. (I watch House of Cards, Robin Wright has been listed as a executive producer a number of times.) But, now that you mention it, if an industry long known for the problem of sexual predation of women needed to defend itself from the harsh spotlight a scandal such as this would bring, female voices would be an essential part of that process of denial and deflection. I've seen that from day one of the Weinstein story and I've sought to emphasize what I see as a concerted damage control effort by the Hollywood entertainment empire, which has numerous corporate entanglements with the news media we are depending upon to cover or uncover this story.

mercfan3 wrote:

Your take on this isn’t new or thought provoking.


This would hurt me deeply if there were any truth to it whatsoever. But I'm secure in the knowledge that there is none. From the early days of the Weinstein story breaking I have sought to express an opinion that the Hollywood entertainment industry as a whole was presenting a suspiciously unified face on the matter which relied upon a very short list of bullet points. Deny any knowledge of this type of behavior in the industry and, if possible, suggest something wonderful about the perpetrator. If you're creative and spontaneous enough, jazz it up a little by blaming Trump or something, as Chelsea Handler did. But always make sure to assert the fact that you, a current entertainment industry property with contracts shooting out in every direction and effecting scores of infrastructure entities, personally saw nor heard no evil. Now you must finish your part by speaking no evil about the perpetrator.

So that has been my take. The one which you call not new or thought provoking. So hey, show me, mercfan. Other than Rose McGowen screaming 'everyone knew' here in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, show me someone, anyone, making the point I'm making in regard to Hollywood's post-scandal message discipline. If what I'm saying is nothing new then I imagine you'll have no trouble producing some examples. I imagine there are some on Twitter that you could find. I'm not suggesting I'm totally alone in my thinking. I think Hollywood itself, both the geographical region and the industry, would be crawling with people who would privately say the same thing. But show me please someone saying what I'm saying in the press. Because I'm not seeing it.

As to whether what I say is thought provoking. When I came to LA I studied acting for a couple of months at the Stella Adler Theater with someone who I had no idea was as important an acting coach as he was. When I was offered a job managing an exciting restaurant and bar in Beverly Hills, what I thought was my financial foothold here in a ridiculously expensive city, I quit acting classes and took the job. Had I known how important William Traylor was in the acting community, I would have answered the many messages he left on my answering machine trying to get me to come back to his class.

For the next ten years or so in the restaurant business, in this town, all I knew basically was actors and actresses. And comedians. And the older more-seasoned bartenders and foodservers who fancied themselves writers or producers, managers, etc. Basically everybody in the restaurant business here has their attention and hopes on doing something in Hollywood. Everyone has an agent. Checking their messages all day. Anyway, people talk. A lot. This is a place where information moves like large ocean currents but inside those currents are thousands of small stories told by little fish.

So in terms of proximity, interest, and focus, the entertainment industry has been all around me for over three decades and that is the context from which my perspective comes. There's more I could share but, you know, there's a problem with that. It's called I have something to lose. Like everything. Because speaking out, I mean honestly and without taking any prisoners, on this topic, is potentially opening up a treacherous pandora's box in the life of any person even peripherally dependent on... hmm... let's just say the economy of Southern California.

But I have spoken out here and in other places. Very harshly and pointing fingers. I do it for one reason and that is because I don't want women across the entertainment industry and especially newcomers to Hollywood to be faced with and forced into dealing with the sexual predation that I know is and will be ongoing unless something MORE happens in the context of this scandal and the metoo era that forces further exposure and change. Right now, it is my position that Hollywood is not going to be changed by the Weinstein revelations. The casting couch will endure. Starlets will be set upon. Sexual favors will be traded for parts or representation or advancements or meetings. Women will be victimized and choose to abandon their dreams. The culture will be the same. There will be no systemic changes in the response from law enforcement. The power that exists in this industry to deflect the scrutiny of the public as well as the ability to bedevil the legal mechanisms that we all naturally assume are in place to protect women in the work force will remain as powerful as ever and, most likely, even more resilient in the ability to deflect and survive unwanted outside attention.

These are the things I've been saying in one way or another since the Weinstein story broke. They could only be seen as not thought-provoking by a person who is not capable of intellectual thought. I know this isn't you so I can only assume that, in your anger, you were typing scattershot jabs at me.

Quote:
You struggle with disagreement, don’t you.


I'm struggling with trying to have nuanced granular discussions here without having exactly what happened in this thread happening. I'd like to show my face on Rebkell's once in a while and have a conversation and not immediately have someone angrily accusing me of all these now politically toxic things. I never remotely said that Robin Wright was to blame for Kevin Spacey's bullshit or that Meryl Streep was to blame for Harvey Weinstein's bullshit. I certainly disagree with you that I repeated a typical corporate media trick by blaming a woman when talking about sexual assault. I'm saying listen to what everyone in this industry is saying on this topic. Listen to how it rhymes so poetically. Hear what they are saying and try to imagine or even find it in your intellectual capacities to accept that there might be a shared motive for such a unified similar response from just about everyone in Hollywood.

But really, this thread is supposed to be about fake news. There is so much of that. Something has broken in our news media. The press SHOULD be vilified and called out as purveyors of fake news and misinformation. And, as the discussion in this thread touches on, the misinformation almost always serves a larger purpose. This title regarding Robin Wright suggests that the public is hearing the truth from Kevin Spacey's co-star. That she is indeed "opening up." Thus the public thinks it's hearing the truth, the actual inside perspective. This is as dangerous as anything in Orwell. The connections between Hollywood and the actual news media, even law-enforcement and government, should scare the hell out of all of us. You may think Hollywood has nothing to do with you or your life, that it doesn't have the power to reach out and touch you, but you are sadly mistaken.

Wait. While that IS my thought and I had it a LONG ass time ago, I'm not the only one.

“You may think that what happens in Hollywood doesn’t affect you. You’re wrong. My darlings, who do you think is curating your reality? Who is showing you who and what you want to be?”

― Rose McGowan, Brave

Hollywood pushed a button and Ronan Farrow's original NBC piece on Harvey Weinstein was killed. Hollywood lawyers pushed a button and the New York County District Attorney put the brakes (for a time) on his office's investigation of Weinstein's sexual assault on a model in NY. The two writers for the New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who wrote the two magnificent stories on Weinstein's misdeeds and his network of enablers, only four months after their stories broke, signed a contract selling the rights to their story to Hollywood, the industry that they were heretofore investigating, effectively getting into the commercial motion picture business themselves. This is a scary scary world and Hollywood is, in its own unique way, as big and as powerful a force as anything the world has ever seen.

Think about this. Just five families of uneducated Italians controlled sanitation, construction, the waterfront, city governments, not to mention the illegal income streams associated with narcotics, prostitution, gambling, etc. IN New York City for well over a half-century. And many many other places. Do you have any idea how much bigger, richer, smarter, better educated, the thousands of families who wield power from California are?

Now mercfan go grab a thought that people plaster on protest signs and hit me with it. Just beat me over the head with it. I'm sure I deserve it.



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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17
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