What does the old actor William H. Macy have to say to "the younger guys" about how they should behave in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp?

He's fielding the question on the fly after winning the Screen Actors Guild Award for his role in the TV show "Shameless." I like the somewhat scattered quality of the collection of ideas:



"In what we do for a living, we’ve got to be free to speak the unspeakable and try things. So I don’t want it to throw a wet blanket on things, and I don’t feel that it will, because half the business is women and they’re smart and they’re hip. It’s a good time to be a girl. I’m proud of this business, because such things as safety in the workplace, that’s done. We’re not going back. It’s changed. It changed in an instant and it’s not going back. When it comes to equality in pay, it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen quickly. My hat’s off to our business.... It’s hard to be a man these days. I think a lot of us feel like we’re under attack and that we need to apologize, and perhaps we do.... We had a meeting. A bunch of guys got together under the auspices of Time’s Up. That’s good for men. Men don’t talk enough. Men don't talk to other men. And we talked. What the hell, a little bit can't hurt you."

The first thought is: Preserve the men's freedom of expression. He starts down that road. Perhaps he's thinking that male vitality must rage on or the work product will go to hell. And who will choose to go into film? How can it work?

But he self-censors and shifts to praising women. They're smart and they're hip.

Then he promotes "the business." He's "proud" of it. And he's even eager to credit it with already having solved its problem, because the culture has changed. We're not going back. Hats off! Yay, business!!

Then he gets back to the question. He must feel some obligation to the questioner, now that he's done the necessary promoting of The Business and genuflected to The Women. But what can he say? It's hard. We feel attacked. We feel that we're asked to apologize. We can talk. Well, we were wrangled into a talk session by Time's Up, so we talked. We can talk. It could happen. A little bit anyway. We can talk a little bit without feeling entirely emasculated.