There was previously discussion about Russell Brand denying allegations that were to be shown in a TV documentary, and now things are developing.
There is zero chance the agent didn’t know what Brand was up to, this is nothing but an exercise in ass covering…
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They knew 3 years ago and suggested suing her:
I wonder if that’s why this guy turned into a right wing grifter around the same time? Elon Musk did the exact same shit with that flight attendant story.
Mah this is who they always were. If anything, they were a sort of left-wing grifter before; they said and did shit that would anyone from American libs and further left kinda say “ok thank god not all the rich privileged people are insane” but now that they’ve been caught out for doing terrible shit out of the spotlight, they go right back to their true selves and spout shit like “people with a conscience don’t want to bankroll my lavish lifestyle anymore! Can’t they just not vote with their wallets? I DESERVE that revenue! Cancel culture has gone TOO FAR now that affects my bottom line!”
Absolutely no self-awareness as to how their own hubris has done it to themselves; or absolutely no scruples about doubling down and doing anything they can to keep the cash flowing.
Remember, the worst think that can happen to a capital owner is they can become working class again. This is why they always kick and squirm.
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Matt Taibbi is on a related journey. He stopped turning up to his own podcast a couple of years ago, and you can now catch him on random NewsMax segments.
After seeing Naomi Wolf make the full heel turn to Steve Bannon acolyte, in the aftermath of her book and reputation being utterly destroyed in a single BBC interview, it seems like it’s not necessarily Me-too driving the flipping phenomenon.
The MAGA right provides the last bastion for people with huge egos and well-paying careers in the public eye who refuse to go away.
Checked in on Taibbi after you mentioned this. There’s something weird in that dudes past where he went off to Leningrad at the end of his college years and then was just kinda over there for a decade +. My guess there is some flavor of komprimat having to do with his past heroin usage and probably sex tourism. He’s really towed the line for the pro Russia narrative since he started being a “both sides” guy, and went out of his way to say the Ukraine invasion would never happen. Interesting that more recently he got a home visit from the IRS after pushing the whole Twitter files thing with Musk and then cut ties with Musk almost immediately.
I wonder if there’s a place where all these shit bags hang out together? A Club Shitbag, if you will.
He didn’t tow Musk’s line on the Twitter files, hence the fallout. He also spoke truth to power to Congress, which directly preceded the IRS house call.
That said, everything else you said, sounds pretty spot on, or at least, reasonable assumptions, based on his work as of late.
He’s pretty unbearable at this point. Which is unfortunate, as he’s done some great work in the past.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/pardon-the-expression/toe-the-line-vs-tow-the-line/
“toe the line” vs. “tow the line”
On your mark, get set, go! When you stand ready for a race with your toes on the starting line, you literally toe the line.
In fact, people used to say, “Toe your mark, get set, go!” These days, the expression toe the line is more commonly used to refer to doing what’s expected of you, or conforming. If you constantly misbehave in class, your teacher might tell you that you need to start toeing the line.
This phrase can also mean being right up against the line between two different things. If your short story toes the line between fantasy and science fiction, then it probably includes elements of both those genres but doesn’t neatly align with either one. Any way you use it, the idiom toe the line always uses toe as in the one at the end of your foot.
I was pretty sad about hearing about Naomi Wolfe, so I had to Google it and realized I was thinking of Naomi Klein.
Matt Taibbi was a bit of a disappointment.
The grift is lucrative. I guess I should be surprised the number of people you can squeeze money out of it before they get wise but it just doesn’t seem to run out.
You’re not the first person to have that moment. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories
Holy shit, I did the same thing. I hadn’t heard from Klein in a couple of years and when I read something about Wolf I was really surprised, thinking it was that No Logo writer.
I went through the exact same experience with the Klein/Wolfe mixup.
And, Klein has what sounds like a fantastic book coming out right now that was triggered by the confusion.
Check out some of her recent interviews on Qanon Anonymous, Conspirituality, and On the Media podcasts. She is a really shrewd person.
The wolf/Klien confusion is the subject of klien’s latest book, doppelgänger.
If it’s Klien it’s fine.
lol I’ll use that mnemonic from now on. I didn’t know it was such a common error!
The book is out, I’m definitely going to read it. Thanks!
I can’t take credit. I have up on both Naomi’s until I read the articles on Klein’s new book.
Tbf, both have plenty of other reasons to lean right (wealthy white cis hetero abled men, any or all of the above), my guess would be that eventually enough legit productions/companies will refuse to work with people with a certain reputation, so they end up grifting by default.
For people like them it’s all about having power and influence over others, they don’t care who, as long as their egos and pockets are fed…
Yeah, this was mentioned in the program I saw last night, I hadn’t realised it was still the same agent he had now, but that’s one of the reasons I had no doubt they knew…
What’s the documentary called?
Don’t know if the official link to Russell Brand - In Plain Sight works outside the UK, looks like it’s on dailymotion too, for now anyway.
doesn’t work outside the UK
But the daily motion link does work outside the UK
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Well I didn’t know he was guilty till I heard that list of defenders
Even at the risk of guilt by association, the people who come to defend tell a lot about a person.
It’s like a cavalcade of awful people. People who spout hate and misinfo and have somehow accumulated an audience of followers.
To be fair on the last one, Brand is married to Kirsty Gallacher’s sister. I’d be shocked if she didn’t know he was a wrong-un, and IIRC she had her own allegations a while back.
Does Ashton Kutcher still support him?
this guy is such a fucking cunt I literally felt like curb stomping him when I watched some of his videos regarding covid and the invasion of Ukraine, he is just so fucking stupid and he has no idea, same as Joe Rogan, well maybe even worse, more on the level of Peterson.
blamed the invasion of Ukraine on the West, because5if Ukraine opened it’s market to foreign investment so of course Russia had to invade, what an absolute wanker.
Look up “the wellness to fascism pipeline”. Brand is the poster child of someone who had very left leaning politics, became interested in self help and natural living, fell down the anti-vax rabbit hole, and is now a conservative grifter. He realized that he wasn’t getting more popular over time doing comedy, so he gravitated towards being a misinformation node.
So many assholes whose relevance is slipping do this. How many washed up stars continually thrust themselves into our consciousness because this is the one thing that gets a reaction from people these days?
Kevin Sorbo, The Nuge, Morrissey…
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Crowder, Shapiro, Owens, Walsh, Dore, the token gay dude who was on Young Turks. All failed at mainstream entertainment careers. It ain’t a coincidence these people are on billionaire payrolls. They were always narcissists.
Glenn Greenwald?
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You misspelled chode. Lol
Yea, used to really like him and then he just started spouting dumb shit. :/
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They knew
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Well I hope she gets that money now!!
Apparently, Brand has been running from this shit for a long time, and jumped on the Fascist conspiracy grift train because no reputable movie or TV studio will hire him.
This is the first I’m hearing about it, but doesn’t surprise me at all. If I made a list of famous people who seem like sex offenders Russel would very close to the top.
Slavoj Žižek for me.
elon musk, alex jones and andrew tate are vouching for him. So he is probably guilty. If piers morgan vouches for him he is definitely guilty.
But have Ashton and Mila written private letters to the judge yet?
This guy always annoyed me, if he’s “censored” because of his bad behavior, I doubt many sane people will miss him. I remember seeing him on Maher (yeah, yeah, I know) not too long ago and he was just insufferable - even more so than usual. If he went down the “just asking questions” rabbit hole, that’s little surprise.
And - unfortunately, I know a lot of people like this IRL - people that started off maybe a bit wacky, but at least on the surface, lefties, only to end up voting for donnie, and going full maga, with the gear and everything. And believe me - NO ONE wants to talk to them about anything past basic weather comments; the minute they start up with the ItWasAPlandemicChineseGlobalWarmingHoaxHunterBidensLaptop stuff, people are crawling over each other to get to the exits.
I feel like theres a “clever spiral” where witty and observant people become addicted to the praise and attention they get from seeing through the bullshit and pointing out overlooked thruthisms.
The trouble is, clever isn’t the same as informed. It takes effort to be informed, to be educated, and it’s pretty easy to spot flaws in other people’s logic. It’s subtly tempting to slide from “I think we should rethink the way we treat each other,” to “Maybe there is a government conspiracy to inject mind control via vaccines.”
Because the world is fucked up, and the vast majority of people take too much for granted. They live unexamined lives, and a person can come along and hold up a mirror for laugh and profit. Eventually, though, the observant ones run out of low hanging fruit, and if they want to stay relevant, they either need to put in some effort or start making shit up.
Oh my god, I remember the Maher bit, you could tell Bill was getting pissed off about this guy coming on and spewing conspiracy theories. Actively rooting against Brand ever since! I believe all these allegations are probably true, as Brand seems to have a very tenuous relationship with reality.
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And you still can! Only now you can see Brand, errr, Snow as the narcissistic womanizing asshole that he is!
Damnit, I love Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
The movie hasn’t changed.
I disagree. The past is frequently rewritten by the future.
Your interpretation of something may change. That’s up to the individual. The movie itself hasn’t changed and if someone wants to still enjoy it, they can still enjoy it.
It’s not like anyone was meant to root for Brand’s character in the movie.
What is a movie without its cultural interpretation by the people watching it?
Suspension of disbelief - Historically, the concept originates in the Greco-Roman principles of theater, wherein the audience ignores the unreality of fiction to experience catharsis from the actions and experiences of characters.
You don’t have to look at Aldous Snow as see, “Russell Brand: Sexual Predator”. You can simply see, “Aldous Snow: Pretentious Douche Bag Rock Star.”
This seems like a key thing for enjoying any movie, assuming someone watches works of fiction and not just documentaries.
The point is that as culture evolves the experience of cultural artifacts changes. Consider for example any Woody Allen movie.
What about a Woody Allen movie? The same applies. These people are actors pretending to be someone else, and during those two hours, we suspend disbelief and accept them as that other person. That is the whole premise of acting.
You might as well proactively swear off all forms of media, as someone involved in the production of every movie, tv show, song, or book has very likely done something that would make the content unworthy of consumption in your eyes.
I like to separate the person from the work, especially work from the past. People are flawed, but a movie or performance can still be good.
There are movies I’ve watched recently that would never be made today, at least not with some of the dialog in them. I don’t say to myself, “I really would have loved this movie, but they made some ableist comments, so I can never watch it again and now hate it.” I accept the movie for what it was and when it was made and recognize that a couple jokes, or actions in someone’s personal life, don’t need to take away from the whole, which is the film.
Get Him To The Greek is amazing, but I’m sure it’ll raise some eyebrows to watch these days lol
I really liked him. Get him to the Greek is one of my favorite movies.
Innocent until proven guilty, so I’m going to hold off on judgement ( not that my judgement matters). There seems to be A LOT working against him here. He’s not cancelling tours and losing his agent if people thought this was unfair - sometimes up.
There’s a lot of rape apologists in this thread though. As much as he’s innocent before proven guilty, so is his accuser. “All it takes is an accusation to ruin a perfectly good career”. Y’all should be ashamed. That doesn’t happen without MAJOR consequences for a false accusation, as well as consequences for any media outlet that ruins the story without due diligence. It’s extremely hard to prove rape cases, meaning that if it’s gotten this far, there’s enough evidence to put it into print. This is global news, and NOBODY has come out with any compelling story as to why the accuser is lying.
Bottom line, none of us really understand what actually happened, and everyone seems too eager to write off Brand or his accuser. Chill out. More info will come.
I’m not a real fan of his. He seems like a pretentious twat to me. I agree though, at this point it’s allegations so could be totally false. It is shit though that things like this can tarnish someone’s name when they turn out to be not guilty.
Reminds me of the “Stereophonics - A Thousand Trees” song
Well, on another site i saw a gif/video of Brand defending himself. To sum up, he said he has been very open about his past promiscuity many times in the past, all encounters were consensual, has witnesses contradicting the accusations, it’s a very directed agenda by specific media towards discrediting him and to stay tuned for how it turns out.
Well yeah, of course he’s gonna say that.
Well yeah, is it not what an innocent person would also say?
In a democracy, the premise of “innocent until proven guilty” is quite important and I’m wary of a trial by social media.
If he’s found guilty then he’ll get whatever is coming to him, but I’m not going to cast aspersions until that time.
Going out in the media to cry about cancel culture and how you’re innocent isn’t exactly the behavior of an innocent man. Someone who truly knows they’re innocent will clam up, beat the court case, and then declare vindication.
How many times has this actually worked? I’m not going to go on a very far limb to say that social media’s ability to revisit topics is very very very low.
In fact it seems like it’s the opposite and and once you’re out of the media cycle you’re gone.
I wouldn’t take your advice. 👍 By the time the court case is over and you’ve ‘won’ you’ve lost your job house and family to bad press.
Someone who’s innocent generally wouldn’t be dropped by their manager either. They know something we don’t and are jumping ship real quick.
They definitely know something we don’t and until they come forward with that knowledge, we still won’t know what that something is. And unless all doubt are cleared, the ambiguous situation will cast shadow on his presumed guilt.
It’s his word against hers/theirs now.
Not really, one of the women went to a rape crisis centre right after he assaulted her and the investigators were able to verify this, as well as text messages between her and Brand where he apologised for raping her. The MET are asking for other victims to come forward so I think it’s unlikely the end.
Oh he denied the accusations? Well that changes everything! Yes, it must be the mean ol’ mainstream medias fault then! Please.
Why not though? Media have been proven to create false stories before, so it’s not like they wouldn’t.
I know right? Just like they railroaded Masterson. He’s 100% innocent. He told me so.
Masterson already had a trial and was proven guilty. Has that happened in Brand’s case as well? If not, then please avoid treating it as such, for you would be incorrect.
I apologize if I gave you the impression I give a fuck about Brand, or your opinion on the matter. We’re done here.
Then why even start? …
Why do you care?
He didn’t have witnesses contradicting the stories of him using force on the women.
How do you know? Was he already on trial and failed to provide such witnesses?
How to destroy anyone’s life if you hate them:
- Accuse them of sexual assault from 2000 years ago, and rely on dumb people’s emotions and corruption.
- Profit!
Clown world.
- There hasn’t been any need to fabricate sexual assault allegations. Brand has had a long history of unwanted sexual advances and in the ages before #MeToo he could get away with it. Many women have come forward with their experiences about Brand and now the police is investigating this.
- Brand has been trying to profit for the last few years by grifting MAGA/QAnon folks.
The history is filled with fabricated sexual assaults. Kavanaugh, Justin Bieber, Justin Roiland, Andy Signore, and the list goes on. They all get completely destroyed before the evidence shows in the dumb court of “public opinion”, and then they get absolved of the charges because guess what… women lie, like everyone else. Humans lie. So, we have “innocent until proven guilty” and “due process”. That, or nothing. Shut your mouth and don’t make shit up. I hope this happens to you and you get destroyed and lose everything until the evidence shows you’re innocent and then no one gives a shit. Maybe then you’ll learn, you evil little piece of shit.
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I’m not lying. You’re just ignorant.
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Who’s profiting? Can you provide an example with Brands case?
Russel Brand is fighting the establishment and hurting the big pockets, see the video below, and there’s absolutely zero proof he did anything whatsoever. It’s just anonymous with zero evidence, zero investigations, and just anonymous nonsense. Once this goes to court, then we talk about legitimacy. Innocent until proven guilty.
Okay let’s rewind a bit, I asked you to provide an example of someone who was making money off this.
Saying “the establishment” and “big pockets” really isn’t cutting it, can you or can you not name one party who’s directly profiting off this? Can you actually prove the link between a victims testimony and someone being reimbursed?
I need names and dollar figures, not this sensationalist rambling.
Really? OK. Let’s ask the dictionary what “profit” means. This is the first answer from Merriam Webster:
“: a valuable return : GAIN”
So excuse me for not having that event listed in S&P500 reports… you petty little man.
Yeah, you got nothing.
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All it takes is an accusation.
If all it took was an accusation he would have been removed from any and all positions of power a long long time ago, and at least a few of the women he raped would have been spared.
Instead, and even with many accusations (and not only proof but essentially his own admission), assholes like you will still jump to the rapists defence and pretend as if the whole entire system isn’t rigged in their favour.
You are an active part of the problem.
I’m not on anybody’s side. If he’s guilty, there has to be proof. If the legal courts deem him guilty, then he should be punished to the full extent of the law. It shouldn’t be up to a kangaroo court, with a limited view of facts and primarily allegations, to make a judgement.
Instead, and even with many accusations (and not only proof but essentially his own admission), assholes like you will still jump to the rapists defence and pretend as if the whole entire system isn’t rigged in their favour.
Claiming to be promiscuous doesn’t make one a rapist. By that logic anybody going through their slutty years is a rapist. And if screenshots are proof to you, I don’t know under which rock you’ve been living, but you might have noticed that tech is able to fake voices and even video now.
People like you are the actual problem - jumping to conclusions. “They said he’s guilty, so I say he’s guilty”. Save your grandeur and moralistic posturing.
Four accusations in this specific case.
Wasn’t there a football player that was accused of his rape at a party and everyone thought he was guilty, until the proof of his innocence came out. These threads might not look good in the future.
There not being enough evidence to prove rape doesn’t mean rape didn’t happen.
Never mind that in Brand’s case there are texts of him basically admitting to it, and everyone around him knew, never mind everything he’s openly said on air that people like you brush off as “jokes”.
You are the one who won’t look good in the future, but of course you don’t care, you just want to stand in solidarity with a rapist.
There not being enough evidence to prove rape doesn’t mean rape didn’t happen.
Sounding like Bush there.
The absence of evidence, is not the evidence of absence.
What happened to “innocent until proven guilty” ?
The presumption of innocence died with the invention of social media. It’s guilty until proven innocent now.
Then if there’s plenty of evidence, then he will be convicted in a court of law. When that happens, I will call him guilty, but not until then.
Doubtful. When the evidence piles on like it is here, it’s usually a case of “where there is smoke, there is fire”.
And there is a more and more smoke showing up every day. More women are coming forward now.
Even of some of it is bullshit, I think enough will stick here.
False accusations are of course a thing, but they are extremely rare.
Are you deliberately trying to piss people off? Fucking incredible you know about Brian Banks, how that was a travesty of the US justice system and being it up as relevant for “all it takes is an accusation” when if you’ve been a college football fan over the past decade fucking Baylor and Penn State protected serial sexual abusers. Like are you fucking kidding me?
I was referring to Matt Araiza, not Brian Banks.
