Whitman

I noticed recently that prolific poster "RexB" is now listed as a non-member guest...

Did you notice that DeepSouthDad53 is now a guest too?

I have no information about either RexB or DeepSouthDad53, but the one person I know who became a "Guest" on this site did so at his request.

He initially asked for his account to be deleted and was informed by the administrator that this isn't done. Instead, he was converted to "Guest" status, meaning that his existing posts now carry that designation and his Profile Page is gone (or inaccessible).

(There are also many posters designated as "Guests" in the very oldest threads on the site, so my guess is that -- probably during some site update -- a number of them who hadn't contributed in years were converted to that status.)

I don't think that's generally how people who are timed-out or banished from the site are handled. One of the more infamous of The Banished is still listed as a "Viscount" (although his Profile Page is unavailable) and there are other posters with the punitive designation "Time-out" (also with unavailable Profile Pages).

The Sinister Influence of Charles Manson

By Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, November 20, 2017

The trial of O. J. Simpson took place in the charmless Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building, on West Temple Street, in 1995. When court broke for the day, those of us who covered the trial would walk out the front door and stare at the empty hulk across the street—the Hall of Justice, which had been built in 1925 but was damaged in an earthquake, and stood unoccupied and abandoned. Still, in some way, we knew that our work had been invented in that crumbling structure, because that’s where the trial of Charles Manson took place.

Manson died on Sunday—remarkably, he was eighty-three years old. His era had long passed by the time of his death, but his legacy was surprisingly durable. In media, in criminal law, and in popular culture, Manson created a template that, for better or worse, is still familiar today.

Manson’s name is virtually synonymous with mass murder, so for people who are only vaguely aware of his story it often comes as a surprise to learn that he never killed anyone. In the late nineteen-sixties, he was the leader of a cult called the Family—the trial ushered in the wide use of the term “cult,” to note one example of Manson’s broad influence. Based on a ranch in the desert outside Los Angeles, Manson exercised mesmerizing power over a small band of followers. On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles (Tex) Watson and three women, acting on Manson’s direction, went to the Hollywood Hills home of Sharon Tate, an actress who was eight and a half months pregnant, and slaughtered her and four of her friends. Two nights later, at a house in a different Los Angeles neighborhood, the same quartet, this time joined by two more Family members and Manson, killed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. (Manson left before the murders were committed.)

Manson and his followers were arrested some weeks later (on suspicion of stealing cars), and it took some time not only for police to connect them to the murders but even for the two sets of killings to be linked to each other. Manson’s trial in the Tate case began in June, 1970. The case was a media spectacle; although cameras were not allowed in courtrooms at that time, it helped create the demand for them. Manson had a dark charisma, and he enjoyed the attention. The trial was such a sensation that President Richard Nixon pronounced Manson guilty before the jury had gone out; the judge declined a request for a mistrial. (This anticipated President Donald Trump’s public condemnation of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, before his court martial for desertion was over.)

But it was really in the aftermath of the trial that the case, and Manson himself, became fixed in the public imagination. Vincent Bugliosi, the lead prosecutor, wrote an account of it, called “Helter Skelter,”after the Beatles song that Manson said had served as his inspiration. The book helped create the true-crime genre, which remains a publishing institution.

The Manson “Family” both anticipated and inspired the growth of sinister cults in American life, especially in California. In the decade that followed the Manson murders, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst, in Berkeley, and Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple, in San Francisco, transfixed supporters, more than nine hundred of whom committed mass suicide in Guyana. Before Manson, it was more or less a given that criminals chose to associate with one another in gangs or in crime families. But Manson told the world that people became criminals through the influence of others as well. Our fascination with Stockholm syndrome and brainwashing owes much to what the world saw in the Manson case.

The Hall of Justice reopened a few years ago, after a thorough renovation. Many who practice in its courtrooms today were not even born when Manson stood trial. But, whether they know it or not, the lawyers there, and the journalists who follow them, are working in the long shadow of the man who just died.

Total fan here - she added meaning to my adolescence and now to my nostalgic yearnings for those complicated times. A treasure to be celebrated, nourished, cherished.

She's a national treasure. I adore her.

I slightly disagree ... She is a world treasure.

Don't miss this piece on Joni Mitchell in the November 2017 issue of The Atlantic ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/the-unknowable-joni-mitchell/540618/

" ...Mitchell turns 74 this month, and may or may not make music again. She will almost certainly never seek out the Boomer-in-winter adulation that has proved so lucrative for many of her contemporaries. Nor does she need to. Her influence on popular music is staggering, heard in artists ranging from Taylor Swift to Frank Ocean to James Blake to Lorde. And it is only growing. “I am a lonely painter / I live in a box of paints,” Mitchell sang in “A Case of You” nearly 50 years ago. The box is still hers, but today we all live there."

From Movieline.com (2011): Mr. Yunioshi is shocking to behold. To say the character and performance don't hold up today is an understatement; at the time the caricature may have been accepted and written off as merely colorful comedic slapstick, but many decades of social progression later, it's clearly downright racist. "Miss Go-right-ry!" Rooney calls to Hepburn, affecting an outlandishly extreme "Asian" accent. With his gnarly prosthetic teeth, slicked back hair, Coke-bottle glasses and squinty eyes, he's an uncanny personification of WWII-era anti-Japanese propaganda cartoons. He's skeevy to boot; the film mines laughs out of his features, accent and behavior, not to mention Holly's efforts to shrug off Yunioshi's efforts to get her upstairs into his apartment for a private photography session. It may have been just another blip in a long history of movies featuring insulting ethnic stereotypes, but in the middle of an otherwise lovely film it became one of the more cutting examples of institutionalized racism in Hollywood.

actually as a kid at public baths, older men tried to, successfully and unsuccessfuly, as they did with other boys, even younger than 18, I found it unpleasant, but no it did not "traumatise" me

I'm sorry that happened to you, sorry you found it unpleasant, and glad to hear it hasn't had a lasting emotional impact on you.

I wonder if you ever reported it to anyone, or felt you had anyone to report it to? I wonder if any of the other boys did not do as well at you at managing to somehow "process" what happened and get over it. I wonder if the sexual misconduct of any of the older men who harassed you in the public baths escalated to acts of more serious sexual abuse.

Without condoning anything serious he may have done, surely being groped is something that happens to a lot of people, and an 18 year old may find it unpleasant, but is it really something that "traumatises" you for 30 years ...

I wonder, when you were an 18-year-old, did a man 40 years older, and with no invitation from you, stick his hand inside your pants in a public place (with other people watching) and grab your genitals?

And have more than 30 years gone by since that happened to you, thus informing your opinion that it would not be traumatic?

Fighting back tears, former Channel 5 anchor Heather Unruh told reporters on Wednesday that actor Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted her teenage son during an encounter last year at a Nantucket bar. “It harmed him and it cannot be undone,” said Unruh, who was flanked by her daughter and her lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian.

Mitchell Garabedian is the crusading attorney portrayed in Spotlight, the film about the long cover-up of Catholic priests in Boston sexually abusing children in their parishes. It's on Netflix, and worth seeing -- or seeing again -- particularly for the portrayals of adults still struggling with what happened to them as kids.

The mother is acting as if this guy was fucking her 10-year-old in secret when her 18-year-old had his crotch grabbed in public.

Maybe because he's HER son and GODDAMN KEVIN SPACEY doesn't get to GRAB HIS CROTCH IN PUBLIC.

Maybe because HER SON has been grappling with feelings of anger/shame/confusion that a man he admired, 40 years older, would do something so crude and demeaning to him IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE, something that prompted a stranger who witnessed GODDAMN KEVIN SPACEY's abuse to intervene and tell the boy to run.

Maybe because both mother and son had been feeling POWERLESS against GODDAMN KEVIN SPACEY, for the past year and now, finally feeling she could publicly tell her story, all the parental emotion toward someone who MISTREATED HER CHILD came out.

TV Anchor Heather Unruh says Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted her son

BOSTON GLOBE, NOVEMBER 8

Fighting back tears, former Channel 5 anchor Heather Unruh told reporters on Wednesday that actor Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted her teenage son during an encounter last year at a Nantucket bar.

“It harmed him and it cannot be undone,” said Unruh, who was flanked by her daughter and her lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian.

Unruh said her son, then 18, was initially “starstruck” when he met Spacey at the Club Car restaurant in July of 2016. She said Spacey plied her son with alcohol before allegedly touching his genitals.

Her son, now 19, fled when Spacey excused himself to use the bathroom and a woman urged the youth to run, Unruh said. She said the teen sprinted home to his grandmother’s house and woke up his sister after the incident.

“Shame on you for what you did to my son,” Unruh said, directly addressing Spacey, whose career is in free fall after several men have recently accused him of sexual assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Unruh described her son as “a very strong young man. He does his best to deal with it, but it’s always there.”

She said he filed a report last week with Nantucket police and provided investigators with evidence.

Unruh said she wants “to see Kevin Spacey go to jail.”

Garabedian told reporters his office will conduct its own investigation into the incident and then contact Spacey.

The Globe reported in July 2016 that Spacey had been on Nantucket, and Unruh said Wednesday that the actor had visited the island previously. “I know at least one other person who was on Nantucket who was also a target of Spacey,” Unruh said.

A lawyer for Spacey didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Spacey, 58, announced last week through a publicist that he was seeking treatment after another actor, Anthony Rapp, sent shockwaves through the film industry with allegations that Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance after a party at Spacey’s home in the 1980s.

Spacey was 26 at the time and Rapp was 14.

Spacey’s initial response to Rapp’s allegation was widely criticized. He tweeted that he’s “beyond horrified to hear [Rapp’s] story. . . . I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”

He went on to state publicly that he is gay, which was irrelevant to Rapp’s allegation.

In the days since, others have come forward to talk about their alleged experiences with Spacey.

Your point seems to be that everything is relative, and it is what people want it to be, in their perception.

No. That's a delusion of predators, especially powerful predators who use their power and then deny (maybe even to themselves) that there was any coercion involved ... that their victims were willing ... that they volunteered. Repeating what I already posted:

When one person has all the power, it raises legitimate questions about wants to vs. willing to, about choice, about consent. Even if both parties are of age.

Being intimidated into a sexual encounter by a more powerful person -- for whatever reason -- is not volunteering; a victim who doesn't fight back -- for whatever reason -- is not consenting.

I have to think out of 300 million people, there are some willing to sleep with anyone for the prospect of a career worth millions of dollars. I'm not saying that makes it "right" and I am not saying I do not believe the people coming forward now who were not willing. I'm just saying that there are people willing to sleep with someone for $250. Why is it so hard to believe that someone would be willing to give it up for a job paying hundreds to thousands of times that much? Lots of actors seem more interested in being wealthy celebrities than the art of acting. Look at all the people on the reality TV garbage shows out there.

You're talking about being willing to do something for a specific advantage. Or because one thinks he has to in order to have/keep that advantage. That may make the encounter something less than rape, something seemingly consensual, but is it voluntary?

At least one of the women who has accused Bill O'Reilly talked about a long term sexual relationship she didn't want to have but felt she had to. She didn't accuse O'Reilly of rape. She ... participated ... apparently without yelling, "No! Stop!" And maybe O'Reilly actually believes that the relationship was consensual, that the woman was willing. What she says is that the "relationship" was entirely unwanted on her part. She participated because she feared for her job. I wouldn't call that voluntary.

I also wouldn't call sleeping with someone for $250 voluntary. Nor would I call my own job--which I do for a paycheck--voluntary.

... that's also what makes this different than a voluntary "casting couch" relationship.

Is there any such thing as a voluntary "casting couch" relationship? I think that's an oxymoron.

If some young Gay stud who is 18 wants to sleep with a Director to get ahead, as far as I'm concerned, that's his choice.

Wants to? Or, is willing to? And if it's just a matter of being willing to, why? For what? Because he wants a job? Because he needs a job to pay for food and rent?

And why, in your construction, does he have to be a "gay stud" ... what if he's a nervous, inexperienced 18-year-old with a history of bad decisions ... does that make a difference?

When one person has all the power, it raises legitimate questions about wants to vs. willing to, about choice, about consent. Even if both parties are of age.

Do not waste your time... Let them enjoy the blaming.

"Enjoy the blaming" ... ??? ... Man, you really don't get it.

They have their witch to torch.

Not a witch. A predator. A man who takes advantage of those who are younger, less successful, less powerful, for some of whom Spacey was a mentor or a boss. A man who is sexually inappropriate with children.

... And then he -- HE! -- does the blaming. And he blames being gay like you.

No sir. In general I dissaprove this kind of relationship. What I am saying is that I would never rush to easily judge anyone in these controversial issues. And here too many are already condemning him so easily.

He judged himself before any of us "rushed" to do it. He offered no denial. He suggested the possibility of drunkenness. He apologized.

He said he was "beyond horrified" by what he might have done. Yeah, well ... me too! Seems to me, I was just agreeing with him!

Then he made things exponentially worse by trying to use being a gay man as an excuse for coming on to a 14-year-old who did not want to be come on to by Kevin Spacey. And that was disgusting.

I wish a man like Spicey would have seduced me when I was 14. It would have been perhaps the beginning of an amazing adventure for me.

@latbear4blk, please, just for a moment, put aside your opinion of an appropriate age of consent, and of what sex with an adult when you were a 14-year-old child might have been like for you, and consider the hundreds of stories available at your fingertips of children whose lives have been profoundly damaged by adult sexual predators.

It is amazing how easily we rush to judge and point fingers, when we ourselves participate in illegal activities and are easily judged and discriminated by mainstream society.

Are you suggesting that we should not object to non-consensual sex (or sexual harassment) between a man and a boy because we have no issue with sex between consenting adults? That's ridiculous.

This just in: Netflix is halting its current production of House of Cards, which began taping a week and a half ago. The powers that be want to review the Spacey situation a bit more closely ...

If production of what had already been announced as the last season of House of Cards resumes at all, you can bet now that it will resume without Spacey.

New allegations of sexual misconduct have surfaced against actor Kevin Spacey as questions mount over the fate of projects tied to the two-time Oscar winner.

--VARIETY (Nov. 1)

In the wake of multiple allegations brought against the 58-year-old House of Cards star throughout the past week alleging he made unwanted sexual advances toward young male actors, PEOPLE confirmed Wednesday that he is taking time to get help. “Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment,” a representative for the star said in a statement. “No other information will be available at this time.”

--PEOPLE (Nov. 2)

A representative for the actor said he "is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment". They did not give any information about what kind of treatment he wants.

--BBC News (Nov. 2)

Kevin Spacey scandal: London theater offers confidential email address for tips

USA TODAY Published 12:57 p.m. ET Oct. 31, 2017

Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey's troubles continued Tuesday as one of his former employers, The Old Vic theater in London, released a statement saying it was "deeply dismayed" by the allegations made against Spacey.

"The Old Vic would like to respond to recent media reports by making it clear that we are deeply dismayed to hear the allegations levied against Kevin Spacey, who was Artistic Director from 2004–2015," the theater said in a statement posted on Twitter.

"Inappropriate behaviour by anyone working at The Old Vic is completely unacceptable. We aim to foster a safe and supportive environment without prejudice, harassment or bullying of any sort, at any level ... We want our employees to feel confident, valued and proud to be part of The Old Vic family. Any behaviour we become aware of which contravenes these goals will not be tolerated."

The theater also announced it had established a confidential email address for complaints, noting: "Any experience shared will be treated in the utmost confidence and with sensitivity. We have appointed external advisors to help us deal with any information received."

Kevin Spacey chose to engage an old and toxic myth

By Kate Maltby, CNN - Updated 7:33 PM ET, Mon October 30, 2017

EXCERPT: ... Here in London, where I work as a theater critic, it's possible that stories will surface concerning Spacey's behavior during his time as artistic director of the Old Vic theater. Monday morning, on the flagship BBC "Today" program, a leading British theater director, when asked about the allegations made by Rapp, said, "I think that many people in the theater and in the creative industries have been aware of many stories of many people over a lot of years," noting that "Kevin Spacey would be one of the people that people have had concerns about, yes."