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    Walsh on his usual mission Archived Message

    Posted by walter on April 7, 2019, 8:12 am, in reply to "The powerful hounds hunting down Woody Allen"

    Some quick thoughts on the Walsh piece

    Walsh relies on cherry picking, misrepresentation and rhetoric to appeal to his readers.

    His McCarthyite comparisons are a real stretch. He talks of the "lynch-mob atmosphere created in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, on university campuses and elsewhere ", as if this atmosphere had nothing to do with actual sexual assault and rape.

    It's clear that the accusations against Allen played an underlying role in Amazon's thinking to dump him, and not just his comments (which did him no favours). Elsewhere in the article he attributes several motives for MeToo:

    "But the #MeToo campaign also has something of a pre-emptive character: it is intended to prepare the framework for the banning of genuinely radical artists or, if possible, to create an intellectually repressive climate in which it will be impossible for them to emerge."

    Walsh says this:
    Amazon’s motion continues: “Several months later, in January 2018, Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow recounted her memories of Allen’s sexual abuse. Allen publicly dismissed those statements as ‘cynically using’ #MeToo for attention.”
    Yet most people closely connected to the case, even those most supporting Allen, say they believe that Dylan Farrow is, at least, not making the allegations up; her brother Moses Farrow, Allen's lawyer - and indeed the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic that Walsh himself cites: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/13/wood-j13.html

    So Allen's public statement that Dylan Farrow was cynically seeking attention DOES create a bad impression, but Walsh presents it as simply a matter of free speech.

    Of course the underlying issue (the alleged abuse of a child) is a very serious one. Walsh tries to swing it with a cherry:

    "These “memories” have been looked into and dismissed by numerous bodies, including the New
    York Department of Social Services and a team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic."

    There is a LOT more to this, of course - Walsh should not attempt to settle the matter in this simplistic way (and neither will I). As ever, he seems to have no thought for the victim,

    Walsh might be a big Woody Allen fan of course, but his main interest here seems, as usual, to be trying to discredit #MeToo. He's not worth reading IMO, unless that's all you want to do as well

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