"This was a fecund period of first-person writing by women that had a transgressive and self-revealing quality, which also had the consequence of creating a kind of adrenalized form of commentary."

"Blogging was personal, but also a job, often a grind. It created cycles of argument that were rapid, intense and often punishing for the people at the center — both the subjects and the writers. As post quotas were filled, a slippage occurred between the artist and her public, the blogger and her commenters, the internet-famous and the real stars. 'Girls' permeated this media ecosystem...."

Writes Amanda Hess, in "We Need Lena Dunham Now More Than Ever/The era of 'Girls' is long gone. So why are we still so fascinated by its creator?" (NYT).

"An inveterate poster, [Lena] Dunham lived online and seemed determined to step on the rake of commentary as her influence scaled.... [Dunham said she] wished she could have had the experience of aborting a pregnancy.... She explained that her comment was made under the guise of 'a "delusional girl" persona I sometimes inhabit'.... Her name, and her auto-fictional project, had wandered beyond their creative boundaries, and the internecine debates of blogs had ballooned into a national concern. When Clinton lost the election, some blamed Dunham."

"Please don’t write about this immediately. I know how you work, and that you will. But please, just not right away."

Said the "Girls" showrunner, Jenni Konner, to Lena Dunham, quoted in "In 'Famesick,' Lena Dunham Diagnoses Celebrity, Illness and Herself/This unusually unfiltered memoir takes us to the hospital, to therapy and to the sometimes hostile set of 'Girls'" (NYT).

The book reviewer, Alexandra Jacobs, adds: "Maybe, contra Dunham’s mentor Nora Ephron, not everything is copy? Or at least … everything needs a copy editor? The Keebler elf makes a second, sexualized appearance; 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' is invoked twice; and Jack and Lena share soup from a 'terrine.'"

Points if you know the difference between a terrine and a tureen. 

I know "tureen" because I know "Alice in Wonderland" — "The Mock Turtle's Song":

"I made a necessary break with everything.... I broke up with my business partner. I broke up with my partner. I had a hysterectomy. I stepped back from work."

"It was it was, like, I went from full on to, like, sitting in a back room in my parents apartment in silence collaging letters together and... my mom coming in and being, like, 'That's really nice.'... It was not a time where I was capable of really keeping anything going and I'm not a big — so much has happened in my life that's wonderful and so much has something that's challenging — I'm not a big redux person. Like, I look back and I go — I remember once I said to my mom like, 'I'm so glad you're my mom.' And she was like, 'It could have been no other way.' And there's so much it could have been no other way in this story. And I like... I had to detach from this entity that I had created and everyone who was responsible for helping me keep that entity alive."

The entity is Lena Dunham:

"I was in my twenties then, and I’d grown up with a certain expectation, watching films, of what my sexual life was going to be like, and then it wasn’t that."

"The world had begun to be so saturated by sexual imagery in porn and the expectations were shifting. Not that there’s anything wrong with porn, but it does change the way people are expecting you to behave in a natural sexual situation. And so I was just confounded, and I think Girls expressed a lot of that confusion, anxiety, and frankly, pain."

Said Lena Dunham, quoted in "Lena Dunham on Too Much and her long-awaited return to TV: 'I stepped back from acting after my body was dissected'/Eight years on from ‘Girls’, the HBO comedy that made her name – and made her a lightning rod for criticism – Dunham is back with a 10-part romcom, ‘Too Much’. Ellie Harrison hears from the writer, along with her new lead stars Meg Stalter and Will Sharpe, about their London-set love story, which is well worth the wait" (Independent).

Did Lena Dunham have her body "dissected"? When I read that in the headline I thought it was a reference to her health problems (notably, endometriosis). But no: "When Girls was on television, discourse about Dunham’s appearance was rabid. Howard Stern called her 'a little fat girl' on national radio. One newspaper described her as a 'pathological exhibitionist.' 'Having my body dissected was a reason that I chose in general to step back from acting a little bit more and focus on my writing and my directing, and also just make different kinds of choices as an actor,' she says now."

"The TV show 'Girls' is a right-wing show.... [That's] some labeling we’re grafting onto this thing after the fact."

"But what these pieces of work are doing is telling the truth about the world in a way that is not compromised by artistic or ideological preferences.... about [what]... society wishes were true about these people. So my thing is that if you are telling the truth about the world, then you are going to make right wing art..."

I'm listening to Jonathan Keeperman on Ross Douthat's podcast in an episode called "The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Offensive":

 

The quote above is Keeperman's. Douthat responds: "Then you’re saying all great art is somehow right wing." He thinks there can be some great art that is "left coded," but he agrees about "Girls," because "it’s a scabrous satire of a particular kind of upper middle class lifestyle in a liberal city."

Keeperman denies that he's saying "if I like it, therefore it’s right wing art, or if it tells the truth [it's right wing art]." Click on the embedded video if you want to hear Keeperman clarify or hear Douthat wedge in the concept of "vitalism" ("a celebration of individuality, strength, excellence, and an anxiety about equality and democracy as... enemies of human greatness").

That reminds me of the time — back in 2005 — I incurred the wrath of lefties by saying "To be a great artist is inherently right wing."

But back to "Girls." Why talk about "Girls" now? The reason for me is that Lena Dunham has a new essay in The New Yorker: "Why I Broke Up with New York/Most people accept the city’s chaos as a toll for an expansive life. It took me several decades to realize that I could go my own way."

"A campaign has been constructed around a mood, rather than the other way around. The mood is Obamacore..."

"... the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption.... ... Obamacore positioned itself as sensitive, non-threatening, and relatable. It was Aziz Ansari writing a book on modern dating alongside a Berkeley-trained sociologist, porn star James Deen talking about bacon, Louis C.K. playing a cop on Parks and Recreation.... The fandom that had sprung up around Obama’s presidential campaign expanded to embrace New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and later, Hillary Clinton. For a moment, bodies as hidebound as the Supreme Court and the papacy looked as if they might be rehabbed into vehicles for social justice.... This summer’s sudden reappearance of hope and positivity has spurred split reactions. Do you embrace your inner cringe, or try to tamp it down?... The optimistic case is that, against all odds, we seem to have heeded the lessons of Obamacore. Generation Z is willingly climbing the coconut tree."

Writes Nate Jones, in "That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore. The 2008 election sparked a surge of positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight (and cringe) is setting in" (NY Magazine).

See also "100 Pieces of Pop Culture That Defined Obamacore/You know them when you see them — whether they were genius or, well, not," by Nate Jones (in NY Magazine). Just to select one:

"And is it wrong to say that I may not belong to one sect or the other but am, instead, whatever the nail equivalent of bi(coastal) is?"

"I love each expression precisely because of how different it can make me feel, taking me from a beacon of old-school femininity (with a twist) to something more practical but equally delicate. If the short nail is Audrey Hepburn, the long one is Sophia Loren. In modern terms, let’s say my Natalie Portman sun is facing off against my powerful Cardi B rising. And don’t we all contain multitudes?"

Writes Lena Dunham in Vogue in "The Long and the Short of It: Lena Dunham on Her Nail Journey."

Found because I was wondering what Lena Dunham was doing these days.

"Think of all the fat celebrities — predominantly Black women and women of color — who have paved a path in plus-size fashion, allowing so many of us fat folks to explore our personal style."

"The choice [by plus-size luxury retailer 11 Honoré] to collaborate for the first time with rich white Lena Duhnam, who flashes her privilege like it’s a joke... speaks volumes. It’s a reminder that plus-size fashion is still an exclusive club intent on keeping authority and power rotating in the same circles, desperate to do anything but give fat Black women their flowers."

From "The Problem With Lena Dunham’s Plus-Size Collection" by Kendra Austin (at The Cut).  Austin calls Dunham a grifter: "She grifts."

Here's what the page over there looks like (on my computer):

That Marc Jacobs ad is mindbending. Click to enlarge and clarify. Speaking of giving "women their flowers" — look at those big bulgy roses bursting forth from the model's breasts. And what is she so glum and leg-spread-y about — shopping?!

How emotional is shopping for clothes? Apparently, there's big racial turmoil, such that a white woman promoting plus-size clothing is heard to "speak volumes" about white supremacy. If I'm reading Austin correctly, she's observing that black women made clothing for fat women trendy, and Dunham is appropriating their creation. But I read Dunham to say — in so many words — that white women are fat in a different way, a way that is so uncool that they need special help from a white woman who openly admits she's fat like that:

[Dunham] describes the changes she has witnessed as “not the cool kind that make you muscular” but “just the kind that make your face fat.”...

Later, Dunham complains about the language around plus-size fashion, arguing that descriptors like “plus,” “curve,” and “body-positive” are used to describe a community of “curvy bodies that look like Kim Kardashian has been up-sized slightly,” who “want big beautiful butts and big beautiful breasts and no cellulite and faces that look like you could smack them onto thin women.”

ADDED: I think the model in the Marc Jacobs ad is Madonna's daughter Lourdes. I'm just noticing "Madonna's daughter Lourdes announced as the new face of Marc Jacobs" (CNN).

"Say f*** it, put on a your string bikini, and imagine that you're a golddigger who created your own happy ending and is now giving all the cash you scored to the resistance behind your conser[v]ative husband's back."

That's a photo caption by Lena Dunham that appears with a photo in "Lena Dunham's most body-positive photos on Instagram" (NY Post). 

It's an interesting collection of photos with captions straining at humorousness. Though the Post assumes it's all body positivity because Dunham is, we're told, a "vocal advocate of body positivity," the text and pictures don't show unalloyed positivity. Unalloyed positivity would be inane. And inconsistent with comedy.

If inane, uncomic expression of the experience of female embodiment is what you want, read this other NY Post article, "Khloé Kardashian breaks silence, talks body image struggles after unwanted photo saga." 

Kardashian has a problem with the publication of a photograph of her in a bikini looking like a reasonably nice, ordinary woman. It runs counter to her public image as a beautiful woman, part of a beautiful-women family. How can she fight that without expressing negativity about her body, making the ordinary women of the world feel bad about themselves, and looking like she's on the wrong side of the body-positivity movement? Here's the quote she (or her people) came up with:

"The photo that was posted this week is beautiful. But as someone who has struggled with body image her whole life, when someone takes a photo of you that isn’t flattering in bad lighting or doesn’t capture your body the way it is after working so hard to get it to this point — and then shares it to the world — you should have every right to ask for it to not be shared — regardless of who you are."

FROM THE EMAIL: A reader named Roz writes: 

"The thing that’s complicated about the body positive movement is it can be for the privileged few who have a body that looks the way people want to feel positive."

"We want curvy bodies that look like Kim Kardashian has been up-sized slightly. We want big beautiful butts and big beautiful breasts and no cellulite and faces that look like you could smack them on to thin women. I have a big stomach, I always have. That’s where I gain my weight — especially after early menopause, I have a straight-up gut, like an old man —and that’s not where anybody wants to see flesh. It’s not like if I posted a sensual nude of myself on Instagram, people would be marveling at my beautiful derrière.... There’s so much judgment around bigger bodies, and I think one of the judgments is that bigger women are stupider. They eat too much and don’t know how to stop. Thin women must be discerning and able to use their willpower. Bigger women must be limited in their understanding of the world, and they keep doing things that are bad for them. The amount of people who have written to me on my page: 'You’re promoting obesity. Don’t you understand you’re killing yourself. Are you stupid? Why are you doing that?'"

Said Lena Dunham, quoted in "Lena Dunham and the Spanx Liberation Movement/The actor-writer-director-controversy creator is back with a new project: a plus-size clothing line. The whole body positivity thing? She has thoughts" (NYT).

I was interested in this concept of negativity within positivity — that the much-vaunted "body positivity" isn't really generally accepting the full range of fatnesses, but only okays manifestations of fat that fit a feminine ideal of voluptuousness, curvaceousness. If the fat has overtaken you in the way it would beset a man — "a straight-up gut, like an old man" — the radiations of positivity do not reach you.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email. 

FROM THE EMAIL: A reader, Mary, writes:

Your blog post today "The thing that’s complicated about the body positive movement…” got me thinking about an Instagram post I saw a few days ago by Paulina Porizkova, because it’s not just shaming women for their body shape and size, there’s also the issue of shaming women for how they age. 

Here she says “As a woman, you are shamed if you look your age and you’re shamed if you do interventions to not look your age. Jane Fonda , who has been absolutely honest about her ways of coping, will go on a talk show to promote a new movie and all she’s asked is about her facelift.  Is it any wonder that many celebrities would prefer not to have to defend their choices every single day? What if you went to your office and was always introduced as “Jenny, who has Botox in her forehead and had a lower facelift” when you’re there to pitch a great new idea, or sell off on a deal, or just sign contracts? Would you be so keen on letting everyone know if it is then becomes what defines you as a person, rather that your abilities and talent and personality?” 

This is mostly celebrity looks issues, but I think we all feel it to some degree. I’m 55 years old and when I look in the mirror and see my neck, oh man, what the fuck happened! I’m seeing my age and it all seems to be happening so fast now. It’s like I’m pruning overnight! Should I wake up in the middle of the night and drink a gallon of water? I don’t know. 

But I do understand most women are going through some sort of…"do I look good?” shit. And really it’s more important that we feel good about ourselves. Regardless of age, belly fat, boobs, because none of that matters if you’re not happy with who you are on the inside. I guess that sounds corny and sort of Sesame Street, but it’s not. It actually matters. 

How long throughout history has there been such an emphasis on women’s looks? I don’t think this is ending any time soon.

I read that immediately after looking at pictures of myself... with a completely judgmental eye. And I'm 70!

MORE EMAIL:

I will be 60 this year. The thing that is most disturbing to me is the "old man pot belly" which I definitely have now. You can kind of hide it with loose tops (and of course something that shows more cleavage might distract from the belly). It is good to make sure your hair looks nice when you go out, do your nails, put on some makeup and jewelry, etc. But I am not competing with 20 year old's, that would be ridiculous. I just want to feel pretty even though that is kind of bending to the patriarchy. Also it's kind of funny, with the advent of mid-rise jeans, my pants size has not changed at all. I just have to wear a belt to keep my pants from falling down. By the way your hair looks great.

Thanks!

"I didn’t think that I was a drug addict…. I thought drug addicts were depraved lunatics who wandered the streets, demanding crack from innocent children…”

“... and flaunting their open wounds in public parks. And I was a successful, capable celebrity who wandered red carpets demanding attention and flaunting her open boobs on TV. It’s totally different. When I was dropped off at rehab, I thought it was the end of my life. Seemingly overnight, I had lost almost all of what I hold dear: My relationships, my body and my career were in relative shambles… Even as a chronic over-sharer I lived in fear of anyone finding out…. Being me has sometimes hurt so much that I couldn’t bear it. But being me is also a super-power, and it’s the same for all of you… [A] woman who has overcome an addiction can do fucking anything."

Said Lena Dunham, quoted at Variety. Her addiction was to prescription pills — she's had painful medical problems — and she was doing a fundraiser for Friendly Houses.

"My man was afraid of dust. So we bid on an apartment that hadn’t even been built yet, and I spent the year making obsessive scrapbooks..."

"... just like my mother before me. I planned for wallpaper (my friend Payton Cosell Turner’s Flat Vernacular does the best, and I’ve had the same pattern in three bedrooms in three apartments) and bought Josef Frank pillows and Nancy’s Blushes Farrow & Ball paint for the bedroom. I had art by Rob Pruitt and Ellen Berkenblit ready to go (queer and female painters are my thing). I even had all my mother’s Melmac dishes in queasy pastels. He was on tour, so she and I set the kitchen up, stuffed the closets, and placed the tchotchkes on the mantel for the great unveiling. And he hated it. He didn’t want to hate it. He tried not to hate it. But he didn’t like living among the insides of my mind. I thought I was giving him a gift, like the time I came home from summer camp and my mother had painted my walls four different chalky colors and installed a poster, a candle shaped like a slice of honeydew melon, and an inflatable chair (all this for under $100 at Woolworth’s—RIP Woolworth’s). I wanted to give him the magic that she’d always given me by dreaming her maddening dreams. But he wanted a Restoration Hardware couch and a giant watch to hang on the wall. I felt sick every time I made a design concession or covered up pink with dove gray. Love can only survive so much."

From "Lena Dunham Finds Her Happy Place/After years of chasing (and mentally decorating) her dream space—and with a bevy of projects in the works, including the upcoming HBO series Industry—actress, director, producer, and podcast host Lena Dunham discovers home is where you make it" (Domino).

If you're like me, your first question is: What the hell is a "bevy"? Can you really have "a bevy of projects"? According to the OED, a "bevy" is "The proper term for a company of maidens or ladies, of roes, of quails, or of larks." I think a "bevy" is composed of human or animal creatures. Interestingly and as you might suspect if you stopped and thought about it, the word "bevy" is (probably) related to "beverage" and "it has been conjectured that bevy may have passed from the sense of ‘drinking-bout’ to ‘drinking-party,’ and to ‘party’ or ‘company’ generally." But is it wrong to use "bevy" for a collection of inanimate objects or abstract things (like "projects")? No. It originally referred animate creatures, but there are examples of the inanimate use going back to the 17th century.

With that out of the way, let's proceed to the second thing that jumps off the page, which is something more deep and substantive: interior decoration and intimate relationships. Is the shared home the woman's space, to be decorated according to her taste, and it's the man's role to feel grateful he is accepted into the warmth of a home and to make a separate space for himself (a den or workshop or man-cave) if he wants? If yes, is it more yes when the woman has thrown off a traditional sex roles and styles herself a feminist?

Thirdly, Dunham's relationship with the man who was afraid of dust ended. We're told that as he left, he said — "through tears" — "You can finally eat in the bed without anyone getting mad at you." Let me suggest — for your comments pleasure — the topic of what interior decoration says about the relationship that exists and that is planned. If you make a space that very aggressively says "I exclude you," won't your companion eventually take a hint? Or is there a companion — a better companion? — who can live lightly and pleasurably within his loved one's distinctive space and goes out for a walk or retreat into his den when he needs restoration and Restoration Hardware?

Finally, when a relationship has ended, does a person find solace in thinking about inanimate things? He was afraid not of me, not of intimacy, but of dust. But what is the fear of dust? The fear of death? You can have a home, you can decorate it with the most aspirational taste and personality, it's so specifically yours, but there really is no one special place for you.... All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

"You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare" — slogan for the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour.

"I’m with the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour. We’re touring all across the country to organize thousands into the ranks of the revolution," said "a teenage-looking boy" in the "Free Speech Zone" near a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills.

Quoted in "'No Celebrities': Embarrassing Turnout at Trump’s Beverly Hills Fundraiser" in The Daily Beast.

I wonder, who was embarrassed? Was it the people at The Daily Beast imagining that Trump ought to be embarrassed? He doesn't seem like a guy who gets embarrassed. Especially about the lack of "celebrities." Isn't it embarrassing that Democratic Party candidates get all the celebrities?

Here's an article from late November 2016 in Vanity Fair, "Did Celebrity Endorsements Contribute to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Upset?/The divide in celebrity endorsements between candidates was as large as ever in the 2016 presidential election—and the candidate with the most lost":

The gulf between celebrity endorsements on the Democratic versus Republican side is stark during every election, but this year, the rift seemed infinite. Hillary Clinton had Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and even Lebron James. #ImWithHer hashtags decorated social output from Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashians, and Rihanna, as well as YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley. Clinton carried far and away the majority of celebrity seals of approval....

Many of the celebrity P.S.A.s this year leaned into the idea that no one wants to hear about politics from a Grammy/Oscar/Emmy winner. Lena Dunham’s parody of the earnest P.S.A., “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem,” tried to promote Hillary Clinton and voting through an attempted self-aware rap....

[Trump] removes middleman when it comes to endorsements. Instead of the transitive property of Katy Perry (“I’m a Katy Perry fan; Katy Perry is a Hillary Clinton fan; I’m a Hillary Clinton fan"), there’s the much simpler “I’m a Trump fan” equation, for better or worse.

Trump is his own celebrity. Is that better or worse than having other people to be your celebrities? Please, before answering, watch this video, which came out a few days before the 2016 election.



And come on, let's talk about what's embarrassing!

You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare...

ADDED: When the system tries to bring you down, listen to this, which was the actual soundtrack to this post, here at Meadhouse:

"When she woke up from her surgery, her first question was 'Did you find anything?' 'Cause I think what they’re gonna say is, like, 'No, you fucking hypochondriac psycho'..."

"'And so when my surgeon was like, You have the most misshapen and diseased uterus I’ve seen in my entire career, I was like, This is vindication.'... 'I texted Jack last week and said, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE DATED SOMONE EVERYBODY HATES? in all capitals. He wrote back, They only hate you because they love you so much, true story. Which is like, What a sweetie. What a liar and a sweetie.' Dunham lists the reasons for the hate — with her explanations for why she is the way she is — as if she were reciting a poem imprinted on her brain in grade school... She remembers, right after the hysterectomy, crying to Jemima Kirke, 'Who’s gonna want to date me? I have PTSD and no uterus.' Kirke’s answer: 'A soldier who hates condoms.'"

From "'Yeah, I’m Not for Everyone'/Lena Dunham comes to terms with herself" — a very long article in New York Magazine.

Note the chance reappearance of the word "sweetie," the topic of the previous post.

And don't forget to use condoms to avoid getting and giving STDs.

"Lenny Letter, the website and newsletter created by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, will be shutting down on Friday..."

Started in 2015 by the Girls co-creators, Lenny Letter first launched as a weekly email newsletter with advice, essays and product recommendations for millennial women, before expanding to a website. Its mission statement read at the time of its launch: 'Lenny is your over sharing Internet friend who will yell at you about your finances, help you choose a bathing suit, lamp, president … AND tell you what to do if you need an abortion.'... During its tenure, the newsletter grew to more than 500,000 subscribers...."

New York Magazine reports.

"Oh, I'm surprised at that," says George Stephanopoulos when Ronan Farrow tells him that Hillary Clinton cancelled an interview with him...

... after "her folks" heard he was "working on a big story" — "the Weinstein stuff."

Reported at Mediaite, with video that allowed me to transcribe the "Oh, I'm surprised at that," which I find funny, and Mediaite left out.

I find it funny — and I believe this is why Mediaite left it out — because I read Stephanopoulos to be lying. He knows why Hillary Clinton wouldn't want to be interviewed by someone who's digging into the Harvey Weinstein story.

1. Hillary was part of what the New York Times called Weinstein's "complicity machine":

In late September [2016], emails show, he was discussing a documentary television show he was working on with Hillary Clinton. He had long raised campaign cash for her, and her feminist credentials helped burnish his image — even though Tina Brown, the magazine editor, and Lena Dunham, the writer and actress, each say they had cautioned Mrs. Clinton’s aides about his treatment of women....

Over the years, Mr. Weinstein provided [theClintons] with campaign cash and Hollywood star power, inviting Mrs. Clinton to glittery premieres and offering to send her films. After Mr. Clinton faced impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he donated $10,000 to Mr. Clinton’s legal defense fund. Mr. Weinstein was a fund-raiser and informal adviser during Mrs. Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, a guest in her hotel suite when she won and a host of an A-list victory party. He was an early backer of both her presidential bids.

2. Hillary was vulnerable to questioning about her protection of Bill Clinton over the years, and Ronan Farrow was emerging as the one who was fighting to take sexual harassment and rape seriously. Hillary's people were right to worry that he would have the nerve to really push her on questions about her behavior toward the women whose voice Farrow was about to amplify.

Stephanopoulos obviously knows this. He looked ludicrous playing the naif.

"The ultrasound shows no cysts, no free fluid, and certainly no baby. But that doesn’t help the fact that it hurts so bad that the human voices around me have become a sort of nonsense Teletubbies singsong."

"With pain like this, I will never be able to be anyone’s mother. Even if I could get pregnant, there’s nothing I can offer.... From August to November I try desperately to manage this new level of pain. I try so hard it becomes a second job. I go to pelvic-floor therapy, massage therapy, pain therapy, color therapy, acupuncture, yoga, and a brief yet horrifying foray into vaginal massage from a stranger.... Finally I ask my doctor if my uterus needs to come out. She says, 'Let’s wait and see.' Two days later (which has always been my definition of 'wait and see'; I am not a patient girl) I check myself into the hospital and announce I am not leaving until they stop this pain or take my uterus. No, really, take her."

From "In Her Own Words: Lena Dunham on Her Decision to Have a Hysterectomy at 31" (Vogue).

"Harvey Weinstein built his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in between."

"He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his power to intimidate."

So begins "Weinstein’s Complicity Machine/The producer Harvey Weinstein relied on powerful relationships across industries to provide him with cover as accusations of sexual misconduct piled up for decades," by Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantnor, Susan Dominos, Jim Gutenberg, and Steve Eder (in the NYT).

I haven't read it yet, but I just want to say that, predisposed as I am to think of Weinstein as an evil power-abuser, I don't accept the portrayal of all of his facilitators as machine parts. He couldn't have built a machine out of people. They had to make themselves complicit. An individual can go wrong in many ways (including through mental illness or substance abuse as well as through evil), and those who form relationships and do business are morally responsible for noticing such a person in their midst and not becoming part of his "machine." I'm going to be tough on the unwitting as well as the witting. If this really is The Reckoning, let's look at the whole picture.

I'll just home in on the section about Hillary Clinton:

[Weinstein] acquired famous friends through his other activities, including in the Democratic politics that dominate Hollywood.

Chief among them were Bill and Hillary Clinton. Over the years, Mr. Weinstein provided them with campaign cash and Hollywood star power, inviting Mrs. Clinton to glittery premieres and offering to send her films. After Mr. Clinton faced impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he donated $10,000 to Mr. Clinton’s legal defense fund. Mr. Weinstein was a fund-raiser and informal adviser during Mrs. Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, a guest in her hotel suite when she won and a host of an A-list victory party. He was an early backer of both her presidential bids....

[T]wo prominent women said they warned Mrs. Clinton’s team. In 2016, Lena Dunham, the writer and actress, said [to Kristina Schake, the campaign’s deputy communications director,] “I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point.... I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”

Earlier, during the 2008 presidential race, Tina Brown, the magazine editor, said she cautioned a member of Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle about him. “I was hearing that Harvey’s sleaziness with women had escalated since I left Talk in 2002 and she was unwise to be so closely associated with him,” Ms. Brown said in an email....

Weeks before Election Day [in 2016, Weinstein] helped organize a star-packed fund-raiser: an evening on Broadway with Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway and others....

Nick Merrill, the communications director, said in a statement: “We were shocked when we learned what he’d done."... Mrs. Clinton herself said in a statement in October that she was “shocked and appalled by the revelations,”

The expression is, "shocked, shocked." You have to say it twice.

"A liberal-leaning industry, we have been quick to condemn Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes and, yes, the president."

"We do not accept sexual abuse as 'locker room talk.' So why the deafening silence, particularly from the industry’s men, when one of our own is outed as having a nasty taste for humiliating and traumatizing women?... In the fall of 2016, I performed at a benefit for Hillary Clinton organized by the Weinstein Company. I had heard the rumors. I felt that going onstage under his aegis was a betrayal of my own values. But I wanted so desperately to support my candidate that I made a calculation. We’ve all made calculations, and saying we’re sorry about those calculations is not an act of cowardice. It’s an essential change of position that could shift the way we do business and the way women regard their own position in the workplace. I’m sorry I shook the hand of someone I knew was not a friend to women in my industry...."

Writes Lena Dunham (NYT).

"If Lamby had a bad past or was abused, do you think BARC would have adopted him to Lena knowing she’s a new star and put her — or the dog — in that situation?"

"We would have told her if the dog had issues. We are a no-kill shelter. We don’t lie about the dogs’ histories because that gets them returned — and mentally it’s not good for dogs."

Dog shelter fights — in public — with Lena Dunham.

The BARC spokesman went on to write, “It’s just hard to believe the dog was nasty when she took Lamby to every green room with her when Girls was still a thing 4 years ago.” He also criticized Dunham for recently getting two new dogs, which she brought with her to The Tonight Show in February. “[She] didn’t admit she bought her two new dogs [despite writing in the] New Yorker that dogs shouldn’t be dumped or thrown away because they have feelings,” he said.

That's an awfully weird thing for a dog shelter to do. Completely inappropriate. She re-homed a dog, for whatever reasons, and she may have told some white lies about his behavior problems to protect her dignity. The shelter didn't have to go on a public rampage against her. It's one thing to encourage people in general to understand and respect the feelings of animals, quite another to single out an individual to be shamed for failing to meet your (high) standards.