May 25, 2019

"As some time has passed I've realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid."

"I also fully recognize that it was truly inconsiderate of me to not let her know about her inclusion in the book beforehand, and equally inconsiderate for me to not fully respect her reaction. I have a lot of admiration for Natalie, for her intelligence, creativity, and animal rights activism, and I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress. I tried to treat everyone I included in Then It Fell Apart with dignity and respect, but nonetheless it was truly inconsiderate for me to not let them know before the book was released. So for that I apologize, to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand. Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago."

Instagrams Moby.

It's a real apology, I think, but within a particular scope. He's saying three specific things: 1. He should have informed her that the writing was going to come out (not that he would have given her veto power or would have changed any of what he wrote, such as the fact she seems to dispute, that they "dated"), 2. He should have been more respectful of her feelings about what he wrote (not that he shouldn't have written what he did that caused these feelings), and 3. He should have been more respectful and responsible when they actually had that relationship (though he doesn't say exactly what he would have done differently and certainly doesn't concede that he was wrong to pursue a relationship with her).

There are 2 earlier posts on this celebrity psychodrama, so if you don't know what this post is about, click on the "Moby" tag and bone up before commenting that you don't understand. And please don't comment about not liking to talk about Moby/Natalie. Just go cheerfully on your way. Or grumpily.

54 comments:

rhhardin said...

Actresses are very sensitive.

rhhardin said...

There's sensitive in the sense of meter goes off scale very easily.

Sensible is probably what you should aim for, not sensitive.

Rob said...

So Moby's saying he was a dick?

Yancey Ward said...

I haven't read the memoir, and surely won't. I do think he should have contacted the people mentioned within and gotten their feedback- I definitely would have done so before naming people. I would have given those the people the right of veto, even if I didn't like them.

So, yes, it is an apology with a narrow scope- narrower than I would have done.

rcocean said...

I'm still trying to understand why Portman was so "worked up" about this Moby relationship that happened 20 years ago. Is she that ashamed she chased after a guy that look liked Moby? Or is it, they didn't really have a sexual relationship - she just tried to help a disturbed Gay guy and now he's making it into a sexual relationship?

Or maybe she just wants the publicity - as does Moby. After all, she's an actress and he's trying to sell books.

Martha said...

Isn’t it Moby’s story to tell?
Natalie Portman is free to write her version when she writes her memoir.
Clearly Moby remembers a very special “relationship”.

rcocean said...

All these posts by Althouse have led me Eminem (aka Marshall Bruce Mathers III), who evidently hates Moby. He threatened to punch him out, and thinks Moby's a pussy Gamma. This in turn led me to Youtube, where I tried to listen to Venom a rap "song" by Eminen, that has an incredible 283 MILLION views. Its 4 minutes long, but I gave up after 2 minutes, since I couldn't discover anything reason to listen to more.

Why 283 million people like the rap song is a mystery to me. Usually I can understand why people like certain music. For example, i would rather stick a fork in my eye than listen to Neil Diamond or Babs striesand but i can UNDERSTAND why others like them. But Eminen? I just don't get it.

themightypuck said...

This is easily explained by the postmodernists like Michel Foucault. In the olden days people were judged on actions. Nobody was gay but there were plenty of sodomites. Nowadays actions are just clues that point toward the true being. Thus Moby thinking he could have sex with NP is a grave affront to NP since thinking it is pretty much the same as doing it and NP clearly was thinking no way.

themightypuck said...

I just realized "And then it Fell Apart" was the roll credits song for The Bourne Identity.

mandrewa said...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I saw a quote in the comments earlier from an account that Portman had written earlier, or someone else had written for her, of her relationship with Moby.

So if Portman has already publicly discussed her relationship with Moby, why would Moby need permission to discuss his memory of it in his memoir?

gilbar said...

so, Wait a Minute!
You mean; he got on the internet for the purpose of spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension ?
Don't they have a Word for that?

Bay Area Guy said...

When Beta Males apologize........

Not an oldster. said...

Moby is a white guy...

Still processing.

Narayanan said...

Quite possibly off topic by Galactic proportions ...

My biggest beef with Star Wars ...


Its scope - Intercontinental as all get out ( Obama ism). But woman died having baby?

Bay Area Guy said...

Did Moby and Natalie do it in the Harvard dorm rooms or not? The rest is static, gibberish commentary.

Marc in Eugene said...

Am wondering what I'm missing in this 'psychodrama' that is of such moment that it's merited at least three posts but am not going to re-read all of 'em. I don't plan to, anyway.

Big Mike said...

I'll go grumpily.

Kevin said...

Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago.

Again, which is it?

A. At 18, Natalie was a consenting adult, fully able to make and take responsibility for her choices, up to and including putting another party's unborn child to death, and no one has a right to question them or suggest otherwise?

B. At 18, Natalie should have been treated more gently when dating anyone significantly above her age, because they know more and thus must take action to shield her from any harm they might cause.

There always seems to be an "eat your cake, and have it to" oscillation to these things.

Ice Nine said...

Where does this ludicrous idea come from that the memoir writer necessarily must get the permission of those who participated in the personal experiences he is recollecting, to write about them and their roles in those experiences??

Also, don't date guys named "Moby." Get a clue.

BarrySanders20 said...

The promo tour for his book "Then It Fell Apart" is falling apart.

He should write a sequel called :"Dang! It's Still Falling Apart Right Now"

William said...

I like to speculate on the nuances and intricacies of the sex life of beautiful actresses. This story offers some amusement, but it lacks prurient interest. If only Moby had tried to arrange a threesome with Mila Kunis, the story would have been so much better.....The story is remarkably discreet. Do Natalie or Moby have any weird kinks? Did they even have sex? As stories about romantic liaisons involving celebs go, this is remarkably chaste......I rank Natalie Portman higher than Daisy Ridley as a Star Wars princess.

readering said...

I can see that Moby should have alerted those he was still close with, but everyone whose paths crossed in an interesting enough way to merit a mention in an memoir? Especially a woman who was not an actual lover/partner/spouse? Makes no sense to me. But hey, if he was getting death threats . . . .

daskol said...

Moby over-shares. A man his age ought to have better control over his reactions.

dreams said...

I think sometimes it's best not to respond, it takes two to play.

eddie willers said...

There are 2 earlier posts on this celebrity psychodrama

I'm just glad you didn't run that photo again. It made coming to your page yesterday a chore.

rcocean said...

I love how Althouse drags me into the strange bizarre worlds of Celebrities, Techno-rockers and the New York Times.

Coming here is like getting an education in Alien life. Thanks to her, I now know who Eminem is. And why Natalie Portman sucks. Live and Learn.

Tank said...

I still don’t get why he apologized.

Hari said...

If they were both current Harvard students but with their ages reversed, Moby an 18 year old undergraduate and Natalie 32 grad student, then Natalie could simply have him expelled.

Krumhorn said...

I'm still aligned with the description of all this as misogyny of the beta male. He is skillful with his misdirection. On the one hand, he purports to apologize for one thing or the other, and on the other he rubs her nose publicly in the fact that they dated. While he asserts that he agrees with any regret she may now have about having dated him, his sole purpose is to publicly rub her nose in the fact that they dated.

The entire point of the exercise of talking about her and displaying the grotesque photo of them with his beta male nipples is to induce in us the image of those nipples pressed against her milk-fed nipples while having punk rocker sex.

As I said in an earlier thread, if feels a little rapey to me.

- Krumhorn

Laslo Spatula said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
robother said...

And we bid adieu to Natalie as she (involuntarily?) waves one last time from the back of the Great White Whale she is fouled up with, as Moby sinks beneath the waves of our collective consciousness, never to resurface.

Psota said...

The dork move was actually naming Portman. Was it not an option just to describe her and leave enough hints as to her identity but leave some plausible deniability?

the relationship was clearly more important to him than it was to her... And he portrays himself in a very negative way. For him, the learning point seems to have been the gaining Fame and Fortune did nothing to change him inside.it's one a lot of people in his position probably could relate to. Ultimately I think that's why people like Kurt Cobain don't survive their stardom.

But instead of examining his internal struggles, he's apologizing for this girl drama stuff.

Laslo Spatula said...

I suggest we look at the two current event points being discussed in Natalie Portman's life -- her experience at 18 backstage with Moby -- and her brittle response at Moby's memoir at 37.

Her career started with young-girl sexual frisson: sexualized in "Leon" at 13, desired by an older man at age 14 in "Beautiful Girls". For her admirers, her intellectual precocity made her seem mature enough to handle the gaze of older men, and for these men to believe that she could appreciate it.

As she aged into her late teens she was already old flesh for Hollywood, her frisson spent, and thus submitted to desexualization by George Lucas in the Star Wars prequels; her Princess action figure a plaything for pre-sexual young girls, and boys who hadn't quite got a hold of the wanting-to-see-chicks-naked thing.

Her non-Star Wars career sputtered along until 2004/2005, where she played a stripper in 'Closer' and an edgy heroine in 'V for Vendetta'. Now in her early twenties, she was attempting to take those years of gaze and turn them into fuel for hot-chick feminism.

However, 'V for Vendetta' brought mostly teen males to her audience -- males who probably could easily masturbate to 'Vendetta' OR 'Leon', didn't matter which.

I would suggest most young adult women didn't care much for her: her awareness of her Harvard intelligence and her Lolita past made her less than sympathetic to that potential audience.

As such, she played in capital-D dramas, looking for validation: 'The Other Woman', 'The Other Boleyn Girl', and lost ground to the younger actresses behind her that were not so complicated, and generally held off on being sexualized until they were old enough to drive.

Thus; 'Black Swan' -- where she is the older star ballerina, feeling the younger ballerina nipping at her heels (that younger ballerina being Mila Kunis, a Natalie Portman without the baggage and a sense of humor). She wins the Oscar -- young, but also old in Hollywood starlet years. Hollywood gives her the award so that they can say they always saw her talent, it just looked skeevy and awkward for them when she was 13 and 14.

She then makes a stoner movie in 2011, "Your Highness", where she tries to grab some of that younger audience by being hip, but she is never hip, so it doesn't work.

Then she stars as 'Jackie Kennedy', and plays her as a dazed 13-year-old-girl. Of course, Natalie no doubt understood Jackie's sense of the male gaze moving on to other women, so maybe she was a dazed 13-year-old girl who just happened to now be in her mid-thirties.

And now: she is the desexualized supporting actress in Marvel movies, and is fully aware of how Hollywood now sees her as such. Meanwhile, the similarly aged Scarlett Johannsen (and similarly lusted after in Hollywood at a young age -- see her Coen Bros movie when she was 16)is in Marvel movies, but Scarlett is the sexualized one, as the Russian spy superhero in the skintight suit.

And -- oh yeah: at 23 Scarlett sang with The Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella. The Jesus and Mary Chain were infinitely cooler than Moby could ever be. Moby, who now has Portman as part of his 'way back when' in his memoir. Like: back when she was hot and people cared.

Meanwhile, Scarlett is in the latest Marvel movie that has already passed $2 billion.

So: in many ways the two 'Moby moments' bookend the arc of her career. Maybe, when she was in that first picture, she expected to be in a different place by now. Or she actually is in that place, but expected it to be different.

Because the inference in Moby's memoir is obvious: I dated her. When she was hot.

I am Laslo.

Krumhorn said...

Damn straight! More Laslo.

- Krumhorn

Yancey Ward said...

Laslo at his very best.

wwww said...

"Did Moby and Natalie do it in the Harvard dorm rooms or not?"

Nope. He would have described it, in detail, for his book.

William said...

For the movie version, I recommend Lily James in the Portman role and Justin Timberlake for Moby. He can shave his head for the role. I see it as rom\com with dark undertones. Think Pillow Talk as written by Ibsen.

bgates said...

If Natalie Portman is rating the creepiness of men from her past, has she mentioned Chesa Boudin? He's the guy whose parents murdered two police officers and an armored truck driver while trying to steal money for The Revolution, so he was raised by Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn (who dodged the long prison sentences they deserved because Bill's dad could afford really good lawyers), after which he surprised no one by doing things like working for Hugo Chavez and dating Natalie Portman.

Fen said...

Laslo: Moby, who now has Portman as part of his 'way back when' in his memoir. Like: back when she was hot and people cared...in many ways the two 'Moby moments' bookend the arc of her career. ...the inference in Moby's memoir is obvious: I dated her. When she was hot.

Nicely done. I think you've sleuthed out why Portman has been making such a big deal about this. Portman has been defined by Moby, against her will. I don't think his intent was malicious, but she didn't want to be remembered as a supporting actress in Moby's biography.

I remember something similar in High School. Very social, very cut-throat. There were some not-popular but very nice and interesting girls to date, but they were 3rd Tier in the hierarchy. If you went out with them, you would never get a date with a 2nd and 1st Tier girl again. Because you were now deemed 3rd Tier.

Hollywood is just High School for the pretty people.

Fen said...

And we bid adieu to Natalie as she (involuntarily?) waves one last time from the back of the Great White Whale she is fouled up with, as Moby sinks beneath the waves of our collective consciousness, never to resurface.

No kidding. Talk about a Streisand Effect.

"Natalie Port?"

"Portman, I think. You know, the one who had a snit about Moby Something writing about about the time they had sex in college?"

"Oh yeah..."

Fen said...

Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago.

Hehe. Groveling Apology Tour for your WrongThink, you toxic male!

(and now a word from out sponsors)

Ladies, are you young and pretty but still searching for the perfect Christian Grey Fortune? Well look no further! The Althouse Amazon portal has millions of Skeevy Old SugarDaddies with millions of bucks just waiting to be plucked! Act now and enter for a chance to win life altering cosmetic surgery that's worth dying for!

Ceciliahere said...

Moby is a misguided man/boy. He wrote a memoir and name dropped as much as he could to try and make his book more interesting and salacious. He is a woke vegan who preaches against killing and eating innocent animals. Soooo cruel! Then he gets on the pro-abortion prog bandwagon and preaches that a woman has a right to do with her body what she wants. So aborting an innocent fetus at any time is perfectly okay with this mixed-up poseur who was semi-famous years ago and is now trying to revive his career. He is very creepy. Poor thing.

walter said...

We need Kim Gehrig to address this in a PSA.

WK said...

I always get her confused with Kiera Knightly. Did Moby date her as well? Maybe he has a type?

walter said...

Note he gets his book title in 3 times in his brief blurb.
I don't have an IG account. His Twitter feed is almost entirely Truuuuuuummmp!

ESM said...

According to Wikipedia, Portman was born in 1981, and Moby was born in 1965. Not sure how that qualifies as "our almost 14 year age difference ..." The same logic would make Joe Biden almost 75.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“The Jesus and Mary Chain were infinitely cooler than Moby could ever be.”

No jive. Laslo nicely explains why NP might care but why would Moby ever, ever, care about this shit. Surely everyone understands by now that it’s self-harming to pander to the hysterics.

Narr said...

I never dated in-school. Too many girls I'd spent most of 12 years with, including a sizable contingent from church; they already knew I was a dweeb. I could pretend not to be a complete loser with a friend's girlfriend's Catholic schoolmates, whose dweebscales were differently calibrated.

Narr
The hierarchy was simple--girls up there, me down here


Fen said...

they already knew I was a dweeb.

I was in the same boat. Only think that saved me was I played football. And in Texas football is king.

Zach said...

Minor celebrities dated briefly, it didn't work out -- film at 11!

Given the events in the previous two posts, doesn't it pretty much have to be Portman who initiated the relationship?

I mean, even if Moby were self confident enough to hit on an 18 year old actress -- he wasn't -- when would he get the opportunity? He wasn't hanging around Hollywood sets or lurking around Harvard dorms.

They met in his dressing room because she came to his dressing room. They hung out in her dorm room because she invited him to her dorm room. The point where he takes initiative is when he breaks it off because he isn't comfortable with the direction events are going.

18 years is young, but Portman was famous, financially independent, and living on her own. If she wants to hit on older men, who are we to stop her?

Ambrose said...

Moby and Naomi Wolf ought to have lunch. "How's your book tour going?" "No, you go first."

Yancey Ward said...

You don't write about people you dated and were possibly intimate with, unless they are ok with it. It is that simple. I mean, what ever happened to "Don't kiss and tell" as a rule of social etiquette?

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

That was a masterful mea culpa. His crime was to publicize their relationship that now makes her look bad for falling for him. They should both STFU.