"Asia, I love you with all my heart. So glad we met again and I'm so glad your in my life. Jimmy."/"He wrote me this afterwards..."

"... and kept sending me unsolicited nudes all these years up until 2 weeks before the attorneys letter... it wasn't raped (sic) but I was frozen. He was on top of me. After, he told me I had been his sexual fantasy since was 12."

From "ASIA ARGENTO/IN BED WITH 17-YEAR-OLD BOY... In Sexual Encounter" — published in TMZ (with images of the letter and texts) after Argento made the statement "I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett."

AND: Also in the texts: "The horny kid jumped me."

"What is perhaps most egregious, is the timing, which suggests that at the very same time Argento was working on her own secret settlement for the alleged sexual abuse of a minor..."

"... she was positioning herself at the forefront of those condemning Mr. Weinstein, despite the fact that her sexual relationship with Mr. Weinstein was between two consenting adults which lasted for more than four years... The sheer duplicity of her conduct is quite extraordinary and should demonstrate to everyone how poorly the allegations against Mr. Weinstein were actually vetted and accordingly, cause all of us to pause and allow due process to prevail, not condemnation by fundamental dishonesty."

Said Harvey Weinstein's lawyer, quoted in "Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer slams Asia Argento’s ‘stunning level of hypocrisy’" (NY Post).

"Asia Argento, a #MeToo Leader, Made a Deal With Her Own Accuser"

The NYT reports.

The Italian actress and director Asia Argento was among the first women in the movie business to publicly accuse the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. She became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement. Her boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, eagerly joined the fight.

But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18....

The documents, which were sent to The New York Times through encrypted email by an unidentified party, include a selfie dated May 9, 2013, of the two lying in bed. As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett, who is now 22, gave the photograph and its copyright to Ms. Argento, now 42. Three people familiar with the case said the documents were authentic.

Bennett was a child actor, and he had played Argento's son in a movie.

Ms. Argento, who is divorced and has two children, was both a mentor and a mother figure to Mr. Bennett, the document says, and the two were intermittently in contact as he grew up. “Jimmy’s impression of this situation was that a mother-son relationship had blossomed from their experience on set together,” [Bennett's lawyer] wrote....

The script, based on a book by the pseudonymous writer JT LeRoy, depicts the grim relationship between a drug-addicted prostitute played by Ms. Argento and her son, played by Mr. Bennett and two other young actors. Ms. Argento’s character dresses her son as a girl to lure men, and the boy is ultimately raped.

In interviews and subsequent social media posts between the two over the years, they referred to each other as mother and son.

On May 9, 2013, the day they met for a reunion in her room at a Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, Calif., she posted on Instagram: “Waiting for my long lost son my love @jimmymbennett in trepidation #marinadelrey smoking cigarettes like there was no next week.”

What depths of evil. I think it was child abuse just to use the boy in a movie with that story.

"You were born rich and privileged and you were handsome. I was born poor, ugly, Jewish and had to fight all my life to get somewhere."

"You got lotsa girls, no girl looked at me until I made it big in Hollywood. Yes, I did offer them acting jobs in exchange for sex, but so did and still does everyone. But I never, ever forced myself on a single woman."

Said Harvey Weinstein to Taki Theodoracopulos, quoted in "Harvey Weinstein: ‘I offered acting jobs in exchange for sex, but so does everyone – they still do’/The disgraced movie producer reached out to Taki with a ‘world exclusive’ about Rose McGowan and Asia Argento" (Spectator USA).

Taki adds:

Call me naïve or stupid, but in a funny way I believe him. I’ve seen Harvey in action during my annual Christmas party, the one I throw every year in New York with Michael Mailer. He hits on every young woman but in a naïve way. “Will you give me your address and I’ll make you a star,” is the theme of the pickup. Some say yes, some say no. His reaction was always the same. Smile and laugh and hit on the next one.

This got me thinking about something the Superman actor Henry Cavill said — and got in trouble for saying — in his recent GQ interview. He was asked what he's learned from the #MeToo movement:

Have the revelations made you reflect on your own behaviour with women? “I like to think that I’ve never been like that. I think any human being alive today, if someone casts too harsh a light on anything, you could be like, ‘Well, OK, yeah, when you say it like that, maybe.’ But it’s such a delicate and careful thing to say because there’s flirting which, for example, in a social environment is in context – and is acceptable. And that has been done to me as well, in return. Stuff has to change, absolutely,” he adds, addressing men’s behaviour. “It’s important to also retain the good things, which were a quality of the past, and get rid of the bad things. There’s something wonderful about a man chasing a woman. There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that. It’s very difficult to do that if there are certain rules in place. Because then it’s like: ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something’. So you’re like, ‘Forget it, I’m going to call an ex-girlfriend instead, and then just go back to a relationship, which never really worked’. But it’s way safer than casting myself into the fires of hell, because I’m someone in the public eye, and if I go and flirt with someone, then who knows what’s going to happen? Now? Now you really can’t pursue someone further than, ‘No’. It’s like, ‘OK, cool’. But then there’s the, ‘Oh why’d you give up?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, because I didn’t want to go to jail?’"

By the way, Cavill is extremely good looking, and it's hard to understand what he's talking about, what elaborate conversational moves he's worried about figuring out. There's "hi." He wouldn't even have to dangle the "make you a star" prospect. Access to sex with Cavill is the end in itself.  What "chase" did he ever have to undertake? Now, Harvey Weinstein... he is and always was — as he knows and admits — ugly. Sex with Harvey would always only be a means to an end.

I like the name "Cavill." It's a verb — "cavil." It means "make petty or unnecessary objections."

"It is [with] some degree of sadness that I will suspend posting... in the current climate. It was never my intent to blame the victim."

Tweets Alec Baldwin — reported in HuffPo — after doing an interview in which he said that he'd been hearing "for decades" that Harvey Weinstein had raped actress Rose McGowan and, when asked why nothing happened, Baldwin said, "What happened was that Rose McGowan took a payment of $100,000 and settled her case with him, and it was for Rose McGowan to prosecute that case." He added that taking a settlement instead of seeking criminal prosecution may "set back the cause of change."

Criticizing Baldwin were Patricia Arquette...

8 women went to lawyers who basically told them they didn't have a hope in hell in court against a multi millionaire. That's why they settled

... and Asia Argento

Alec Baldwin mansplaining 'the cause' for women everywhere....

Baldwin meekly defended himself...

It was never my intention, in my public statements, to “blame the victim” in the many sexual assault cases that have emerged recently/I simply posited that the settlement of such cases certainly delayed justice, though I am fully aware that those settlements were entered into w the understanding that settlement is wise, intimidated into believing so.

... and signed of with a projection of empathy. ...

My heart goes out to all such victims. My goal is to do better in all things related to gender equality. Au revoir.

Argento kicked him on the way out — "We won’t miss you, bully boy." And Baldwin could not let her have the last word. He said she'd "run out of paint or men" if she painted all men the same way. Then Argento's boyfriend Anthony Bourdain defended her, and Baldwin — with a man to smack at last — tweeted: "You should stick to eating worms and keep your mouth shut."

Here, watch the original interview that set off this back-and-forth:

.@AlecBaldwin on a culture of complicity in Hollywood after allegations of sexual harassment and assault by fmr movie mogul #HarveyWeinstein pic.twitter.com/jHeWAhEuOg

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) November 3, 2017

I don't think Baldwin has anything to be ashamed of there, but I can see why the women are sensitive. He's gently (but clearly) accusing them of wanting to further their careers. I'll paraphrase and avoid the subtlety: These women put their career first, and accepting money and silence may have been  better for them, but it protected Harvey and meant that many other women would be victimized as they had been, that the system, within which they sought favor, would continue, and that they willingly became part of that system.

I'm sure it hurts to hear that. If you've had a painful experience, you may feel justified in doing what will work out best for you personally. But look at the evil that rolls on and on when each victim does that. It would take some unselfishness and courage to do otherwise, and Baldwin was gently and intelligently observing that the dismal story of Harvey Weinstein — like so many Hollywood scripts — lacked a strong heroine.

By the way, Alec Baldwin, despite his difficult morning, went on to perform in last night's "Saturday Night Live." He played Donald Trump in the cold open (which fell flat with the audience)...



... and then stooped to playing Tony Bennett singing about — I'm not kidding — diarrhea and constipation:

The New Yorker exposé of Harvey Weinstein hits.

"From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories/Multiple women share harrowing accounts of sexual assault and harassment by the film executive," by Ronan Farrow.

I haven't seen Drudge put up his siren in a long time. The headline there is: "MAG: THREE WOMEN ACCUSE WEINSTEIN OF RAPE."

First, Farrow excuses the failure of journalists to report the stories that have surrounded Weinstein for more than 20 years:

This has been an open secret to many in Hollywood and beyond, but previous attempts by many publications, including The New Yorker, to investigate and publish the story over the years fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence. Too few women were willing to speak, much less allow a reporter to use their names, and Weinstein and his associates used nondisclosure agreements, monetary payoffs, and legal threats to suppress these myriad stories. Asia Argento, an Italian film actress and director, told me that she did not speak out until now––Weinstein, she told me, forcibly performed oral sex on her—because she feared that Weinstein would “crush” her. “I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento said. “That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older—has never come out.”

The New Yorker story was scooped by the NYT, but Farrow says he's been working on it for 10 months. Presumably the NYT knew the New Yorker story was in the offing and got the jump on it, and Farrow stresses that he talked to 13 women, whose allegations "corroborate and overlap" with what was in the NYT and that he also has "far more serious claims."

Three women––among them Argento and a former aspiring actress named Lucia Evans—told me that Weinstein raped them, allegations that include Weinstein forcibly performing or receiving oral sex and forcing vaginal sex. Four women said that they experienced unwanted touching that could be classified as an assault. In an audio recording captured during a New York Police Department sting operation in 2015 and made public here for the first time, Weinstein admits to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, describing it as behavior he is “used to.” Four of the women I interviewed cited encounters in which Weinstein exposed himself or masturbated in front of them.

Farrow also talked to 4 actresses — including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette — who say that they rebuffed Weinstein and may have been retaliated against.
Farrow says he talked to 16 "former and current executives and assistants at Weinstein’s companies" who said they had seen or knew about sexual assaults by Weinstein. Farrow says there was "a culture of complicity" within these companies, and that employees participated in "subterfuge" to make a young woman feel safe in a meeting and then leave her alone with Weinstein.

There follow detailed descriptions of rape, showing the tactics Weinstein used. You can go to the link to read that. Excerpt: