Whitman

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."

My primary point is its not right for anyone to make the claims that have been made over 30 years later ...

In your opinion.

In mine, it is never too soon, nor too late, to speak the TRUTH.

I applaud Anthony Rapp for speaking up -- which, as you may have read, he was doing AGAIN, not for the first time. (I mention this only because the time frame seems to matter to you. It doesn't to me because, again, TRUTH shouldn't have a statute of limitations.)

'The Advocate' knew about Kevin Spacey's encounter with teen, but didn't speak. Here's why

USA Today NetworkBruce Steele, The Citizen-Times Opinion Published 5:00 a.m. ET Oct. 31, 2017

My magazine had a 'no outing' policy and we stood by it...

This is not how we wanted Kevin Spacey to come out as openly gay. When I was an editor at Out magazine and The Advocate in the 1990s and early 2000s, the magazines asked Spacey's publicists for interviews many, many times, typically getting no response at all.

Behind the scenes, I had long known Spacey was gay, or at least bisexual, in part because my friend Anthony Rapp had told me his story of a sexual pass Spacey made at him in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was about 26. Rapp told me that in the mid 1990s, and we even printed his account of the encounter in The Advocate in 2001, with Spacey's name redacted, as BuzzFeed journalist Adam Vary reported in his thorough and eloquent report published Sunday night.

(Responding within minutes to the BuzzFeed publication, Spacey said he was "beyond horrified to hear (Rapp's) story." He did not deny it happened but said, "I honestly do not remember the encounter," nevertheless offering "the sincerest apology.")[/url]

Unlike Esquire (in 1997), the gay and lesbian magazines for which I worked never outed Spacey. At Out magazine, we repeatedly told everyone that the name of the magazine was an adjective, not a verb. We did not out people, preferring to give them the time and space to make that decision themselves, a healthier route to honesty on both sides. We were happy to pave the way, and often did, starting with Rupert Everett's coming out interview on the cover of Out's second issue in 1992.

At The Advocate, I had the honor to do coming out interviews with many people, famous and not so famous, including an NFL football player (Esera Tuaolo), an "American Idol" finalist (Jim Verraros) and actors such as Robert Gant. My predecessor as The Advocate's editor in chief, Judy Wieder, interviewed many more, including George Michael and Rosie O'Donnell.

But as Wieder describes in her new memoir, "Random Events Tend to Cluster" (Lisa Hagan Books), The Advocate had developed a "no outing" policy before I joined the staff, and we stuck to it. We cajoled, befriended and pressured, but we did not report on anyone's sexuality without their cooperation. Just as each of us had reached the decision to come out in our own time, celebrities needed the same opportunity, even if it took them years and years.

The result of a healthful, self-motivated decision to come out is often a stronger, more powerful person on the other side. In Wieder's memoir, she recounts our conversation about putting Nathan Lane on the cover in 1999. "I think he's waited too long" to deserve the cover, Wieder argues, but she changes her mind when I tell her what changed his mind: the murder of Matthew Shepard. Lane got the cover and gave an emotionally charged interview.

Obviously the situation is not the same with Kevin Spacey. Despite the Esquire story, Spacey has kept his private life extremely private throughout his career. Despite the Hollywood truism that "everybody knows" who's gay within entertainment and media circles, Spacey didn't flaunt his "secret" — unless you consider taking your mom to the Academy Awards a kind of declaration.

Of course, many close friends knew of Rapp's encounter with the actor in the 1980s, including some of us in the media. But what could be done with that story? There were only two people in the room, they had never met again and no parade of additional accusers was forthcoming — so, right or wrong, we told ourselves we could not report it.

In keeping with The Advocate's "no outing" policy, when Rapp related the entire incident to writer Dennis Hensley in 2001, we removed Spacey's name and identifying details. Rapp understood the decision, and he didn't share the story again via the news media until now.

Why now? That's an easy one. The Harvey Weinstein scandal and the resulting opening up of the media to legitimate accusations of unwanted sexual advances changed the rules, and Rapp felt compelled to share his story again, this time with names and dates.

His decision was not "to simply air a grievance," he told BuzzFeed, "but to try to shine another light on the decades of behavior that have been allowed to continue because many people, including myself, being silent. … I'm feeling really awake to the moment that we're living in, and I'm hopeful that this can make a difference."

It's a hope shared by many. The media's willingness now to report on behavior it long made excuses to avoid (and I don't exclude myself from that) is one thing. The real victory will be when the behavior itself is stopped, even behind the closed doors of hotel rooms and New York bedrooms like Spacey's.

In a statement clearly prepared in advance — he knew the story was coming — Spacey said the account "encouraged me to address other things about my life," alluding to "other stories out there about me." He asserted simply, "I now choose to live as a gay man."

As he asserted in his Twitter statement, Spacey may well not recall the encounter Rapp describes. It was more than 30 years ago, and Rapp says Spacey was drunk at the time. Whether what happened to Rapp was a singular mistake or a pattern of behavior may come to light in time, along with those "other stories" to which Spacey alluded.

The result all these revelations, and the decades of back story about what is told and what is withheld, both in Spacey's case and in Weinstein's and in so many others, should be a moral reckoning for the media. It reaches well beyond sexual misconduct. When immoral behavior of any kind is known to reporters and editors, what is our responsibility to "out" that behavior?

Clearly we have long erred, in certain cases, on the side of withholding until the evidence is irrefutable. That's not a sustainable standard.

What Rapp's revelation and Spacey's response prove is that even one person, with the story of one night, can make a difference. I will long ponder what we didn't do in 2001, I hope with concrete results about what we can do in 2017.

-- Bruce Steele is the planning editor at the Asheville Citizen-Times, where this piece first appeared.

Am I wrong for just wanting him to do a few more seasons of House of Cards though. Plus, this would be so in line with Frank Underwood's character. It's my guilty pleasure.

The sixth season of “House of Cards” will be its last.

The news, first reported Monday by TVLine, comes amid an allegation of sexual misconduct by star Kevin Spacey.

The final season of the Emmy Award-winning Netflix political drama will premiere in 2018, according to TVLine.

A Netflix spokeswoman confirmed the news of the show coming to an end...

Netflix and TV studio Media Rights Capital said in a joint statement on Monday that they are "deeply troubled by last night’s news concerning Kevin Spacey."

In response to the revelations from Rapp, the companies said, "executives from both of our companies arrived in Baltimore this afternoon to meet with our cast and crew to ensure that they continue to feel safe and supported. As previously scheduled, Kevin Spacey is not working on set at this time.”

Source: thehill.com, 3:54pm, 10/30/17

"I'm sorry, Mr. Spacey, but your application to join the gay community at this time has been denied."

— Dan Savage

"Men who improperly harass or assault do not do so because they are gay or straight — that is a deflection."

— George Takei