"What Harvey Weinstein’s Overturned Conviction Means for Donald Trump’s Trial."

A good title. It's something I was trying to parse on my own yesterday.

The article is at The New Yorker, written by Ronan Farrow. Subheadline: "The legal issue behind Weinstein’s successful appeal is also at the heart of the former President’s hush-money case." The subheadline in my head was: Big man brought down by sex. Or should it be: Pile everything together and the monster will be visible?

Consider this: Farrow's book about Weinstein was called "Catch and Kill" (commission earned), and in Trump's trial, David Pecker has been testifying about the National Enquirer’s "catch and kill" scheme. 

From a CBS News story about Trump's lawyer's cross-examination of Pecker:

Pecker said he first gave Trump a heads up about a story in 1998.... [Trump's lawyer Emil] Bove had Pecker walk through negative stories that he had killed about other figures, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods.

"So much of our culture today, with young people, is centered around their feelings... Feelings are indicators, they’re not facts...."

"Parents teaching their kids about safe spaces, and 'I feel uncomfortable'... It’s, like, You know what? The world is not a safe space. You have to find the comfort. It’s mostly uncomfortable.... I don’t like kids."

Said RuPaul, quoted by Ronan Farrow, in "RuPaul Doesn’t See How That’s Any of Your Business/The drag star brought the form mainstream, and made an empire out of queer expression. Now he fears 'the absolute worst'" (The New Yorker).

Later, RuPaul seemed to want to revise that "I don't like kids" remark. He's quoted as saying that he'd "be a great parent" and that he "fucking love[s]" the "white noise of joy" of kids playing outside in the schoolyard near his cottage.

Farrow tells us RuPaul is "a proponent of psychedelics": 

"The surest proof the knives are out is a Ronan Farrow 'exposé' in The New Yorker: 'Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule: How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.'"

"Exactly what business it is of the United States government to 'rein in' a figure remains unclear, but the establishment doesn’t trust any power center it cannot control. This is the instinct of authoritarians everywhere and with good reason — Vaclav Havel’s Velvet Revolution arguably started with rock and roll. It’s why college administrators are hostile to fraternities and why communist regimes control the churches...."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, in The New York Post.

"Musk has become a hyper-exposed pop-culture figure, and his sharp turns from altruistic to vainglorious, strategic to impulsive, have been the subject of innumerable articles..."

"... and at least seven major books.... But the nature and the scope of his power are less widely understood. More than thirty of Musk’s current and former colleagues in various industries and a dozen individuals in his personal life spoke to me about their experiences with him. Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, with whom Musk has both worked and sparred, told me, 'Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.'"

Writes Ronan Farrow, in "Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule/How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in" (The New Yorker).

"Spears is still in a profoundly difficult position, despite, and perhaps because of, her new control of her life."

"If Spears acts in any way that could be construed as irresponsible, it could be taken, in legal battles to come, as proof that she can’t handle her own life. In August, police records show, she placed three calls to police that she subsequently cancelled, and police were also dispatched to her home after she was accused of damaging a housekeeper’s phone. (The matter was referred to the district attorney’s office, which did not pursue charges.) In mid-October, Spears wrote on Instagram, 'I’ll just be honest and say I’ve waited so long to be free from the situation I’m in . . . and now that it’s here I’m scared to do anything because I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake !!!' She had just regained the freedom to drive, for the first time in thirteen years, and the paparazzi were chasing her, 'like they want me to do something crazy.'"

"How Britney Spears Got Free, and What Comes Next/Spears fought for years to end the conservatorship she was under, and finally won. But the legal battles aren’t over" by Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino.

"Normally I buy the Audible package, sync up and try to quell waves of panic that I’m not better-read in key areas."

"The most recent went, like, 'Ahhh, I’ve barely read any Russian literature!' Though I was a Kafka nut as a teenager. So now I’m halfway through Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reading of 'Anna Karenina.' Which is long."

From "How Ronan Farrow Spends His Sundays/For one thing, the award-winning reporter eats sardines and cottage cheese while on deadline. He’s also into Mario Kart" (NYT). 

Here's that audiobook of "Anna Karenina." Listen to the sample before you spring for it. Famous actors are not necessarily the best book narrators. I was just saying I couldn't listen to Jennifer Jason Leigh narrating "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." American actresses tend to have casual, idiosyncratic speech patterns — good for dialogue but distracting or irritating for the long haul through descriptions and multiple characters.

Farrow is 33. Maybe that's the key age for worrying that you're not better read. "Waves of panic" sounds extreme, but maybe people — some people — are deeply distressed that they haven't read all the books it seems you're supposed to have read. If there's anyone I associate with that feeling, it's Woody Allen. Maybe fear of not having read the great Russian classics is a displaced communion with his estranged father. The How-I-Spend-My-Sundays piece of literary fluff does have a reference to Woody — a veiled reference:

"There’s this concept of the dignity of risk. Most of us have a very wide range of bad choices we can make that society is O.K. with, but, in a conservatorship..."

"... you’re subject to the decision-making rubric of best interest. And it’s possible we’d all be better off if someone was making decisions for us like that, but those are not the values of the society we live in."

Said  Zoë Brennan-Krohn, an ACLU lawyer, quoted in "Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare/How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years" by By Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker).

As conservatorship law is written, the court is required to determine that a conservatorship is—and remains—necessary. “In practice,” Zoë Brennan-Krohn, a disability-rights attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “this is absolutely not the case. What should be happening is that a judge at a reëvaluation hearing would ask, ‘What else have you tried? Why isn’t anything else working?’ And, if the conservator hasn’t shown that they’ve tried less restrictive options, the conservatorship should be suspended. But I’ve never heard of a judge asking that in any situation.”

As long as the NYT is attacking Ronan Farrow as "too good to be true," Matt Lauer would like to say...

"Why Ronan Farrow Is Indeed Too Good to Be True" (Mediaite). Excerpt:

On October 9, 2019, I was falsely accused of rape. The allegation came from Brooke Nevils, the same woman whose complaint resulted in my termination at NBC. It was made public as part of the promotional rollout for a new book by Ronan Farrow. This accusation was one of the worst and most consequential things to ever happen in my life, it was devastating for my family, and outrageously it was used to sell books. At no time did Brooke Nevils ever use the words “assault” or “rape” in regards to any accusation against me while filing her complaint with NBC in November of 2017.....

I am not suggesting that everything Ronan has written in his book is untrue or based on misinformation, but it is clear that over the course of nearly two years he became a magnet and a willing ear for anyone with negative stories about the network and people who worked for it. Consequently, he cultivated many sources who were also disgruntled or who had been fired by NBC, and therefore had an incentive to come up with explanations for why their careers there didn’t work out....

Much more at the link.

UPDATE: Farrow responds: "All I’ll say on this is that Matt Lauer is just wrong. Catch and Kill was thoroughly reported and fact-checked, including with Matt Lauer himself."

"Because if you scratch at Mr. Farrow’s reporting... you start to see some shakiness at its foundation. He delivers narratives that are irresistibly cinematic..."

"... with unmistakable heroes and villains — and often omits the complicating facts and inconvenient details that may make them less dramatic. At times, he does not always follow the typical journalistic imperatives of corroboration and rigorous disclosure, or he suggests conspiracies that are tantalizing but he cannot prove. Mr. Farrow, 32, is not a fabulist. His reporting can be misleading but he does not make things up. His work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.... It’s hard to feel much sympathy for a predator like [Harvey] Weinstein or to shed tears over [Matt] Lauer’s firing. And readers may brush aside these reporting issues as the understandable desire of a zealous young reporter to tell his stories as dramatically as he can...."

From "Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?/He has delivered revelatory reporting on some of the defining stories of our time. But a close examination reveals the weaknesses in what may be called an era of resistance journalism" by Ben Smith (NYT).

A long article. Much more to read. Check it out. But I will tell you that one thing that is not discussed is Ronan Farrow's treatment of his (presumed) father Woody Allen, notably his work suppressing Woody's autobiography. The censorship of a viewpoint in somebody else's book is worse than the omission of "complicating facts and inconvenient details" in your own reporting. Where is the true spirit of journalism?

IN THE COMMENTS: Dave Begley said: "Ronan must have something coming on Biden. That's why the NYT is attacking now."

"Woody Allen Memoir Dropped by Hachette After Staff Walkout."

The Hollywood Reporter reports.

A source tells THR that following the announcement, HBG staff were surprised yet also relieved, clapping and cheering over the news.

Thursday's walkout included employees from imprints Little, Brown and Company, which released Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill, and Grand Central Publishing, which announced Monday that it would be releasing Allen's memoir April 7. Following the announcement, Farrow stated he would be ending his relationship with Hachette. Farrow, Allen's son, has repeatedly stated he believes his sister Dylan Farrow's allegations that the filmmaker sexually abused her as a child.

Dylan tweeted about HBG's decision to no longer publish Allen's memoir, writing "I'm in awe and so very grateful." Ronan also shared on social media that he was "grateful to all the Hachette employees who spoke up and to the company for listening."...

By the way, here's a critical review of "Catch and Kill" by Anne Diebel (in The New York Review of Books). Unfortunately, you need a subscription, and I can't excerpt anything because I consumed it by ear via Audm.

"Hachette’s publishing of Woody Allen’s memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother..."

"... whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men... This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money and notoriety affords. Hachette's complicity in this should be called out for what it is and they should have to answer for it."

Said Dylan Farrow, quoted by AP.

Her brother, Ronan Farrow commented on Twitter. Hachette — his publisher too — was "wildly unprofessional," he says:



AND: "They’re all connected through the democratic party."

“They’re all connected through the democratic party.” @rosemcgowan on the long history of officials, including @ManhattanDA Cyrus Vance Jr, dropping efforts to charge Harvey Weinstein despite considerable evidence. Listen on the latest #CatchAndKill Pod: https://t.co/KhQ5XF3hb1 pic.twitter.com/kf8C4DayDH

— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) March 3, 2020

"Downside of rep for investigative stories: called prominent dem politician involved in impeachment, whom I used to interview routinely. Instead heard from panicked comms dir..."

"... who said staff worried/politician refusing comment/punting to lawyer. I hadn’t yet said what it was about," tweets Ronan Farrow.

"It’s remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you if you threaten the centers of power or sources of funding around them... They’re beholden to powerful interests, you become radioactive very quickly."

Said Ronan Farrow, quoted in "Ronan Farrow says relationship with Hillary Clinton cooled when he looked into Weinstein." That's Fox News, reporting on Financial Times interview and writing so badly that it took me a while to be sure it was talking about a new interview:

Farrow told the Financial Times in 2011 he was selected by Clinton, then the secretary of state, to work as a special adviser on global youth issues. He said they worked together for years but noticed a change in their relationship when word got out he was looking into Weinstein - one of her top fundraisers. 

As in a scifi monster movie, becoming "radioactive" energized Farrow and made him scary and dangerous.

"I’m into some cool sheet, some dark stuff."

Is anyone else listening to Ronan Farrow’s audiobook of “Catch and Kill” and baffled by his decision to do voices? Important reporting/audition for SNL showcase? This is his “Tough Ukrainian Guy.” pic.twitter.com/ULGGtNPAWe

— Craig Rowin (@CraigRowin) October 16, 2019

From "Ronan Farrow’s Deranged Impressions on the Catch and Kill Audiobook, Reviewed" (Slate).

I think it's great that he does the voices! Both his parents are actors. Well, I guess it does make it comical... and the topic is dead serious.

You can get the audiobook here, at Amazon.

"These are smears, pure and simple. And they debase our public discourse ... But they are also a threat to any man or woman who wishes to serve our country."

"Such grotesque and obvious character assassination — if allowed to succeed — will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from service. I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last-minute character assassination will not succeed."

Writes Brett Kavanaugh, quoted in the NYT. Also in the Times article is this undermining of the New Yorker's publication of a new allegation from a former Yale classmate named Deborah Ramirez:

The New York Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate Ms. Ramirez’s story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the episode and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself. The New Yorker strongly stood by its article.

The NYT also refers to Michael Avenatti's "additional salacious allegations on Twitter," and characterizes Republicans as "caught between the growing anger of many female voters over the Kavanaugh allegations and the demands of core conservative voters infuriated by what they see as a Democratic plot."

The new allegations — from Avenatti and The New Yorker — are, I think, helping Kavanaugh's case. The NYT seems to realize this.

I read between the lines that NYT would not itself have published the Ramirez allegations. It had the story and tried unsuccessfully to corroborate it. And it won't even repeat the "salacious" allegations Avenatti dumped on Twitter. After all the careful work creating credence and empathy for Christine Blasey Ford, we now have an onslaught, a piling on, and it's making Kavanaugh into a sort of hero, who must stand his ground. It's no longer just about the fulfillment of his own aspirations to power and prestige and his own good name. He's now the champion of everyone in the future who — if he fails — will reject the call to public service.

ADDED: A preview of Kavanaugh on FOX News at 7 Eastern:

"I'm not going to let false accusations drive us out of this process." —Brett Kavanaugh

Watch @MarthaMacCallum's full interview with Judge Kavanaugh and his wife Ashley tonight on Fox News Channel at 7p ET. https://t.co/QFmLfIwW4R pic.twitter.com/r8J2TUYQDj

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 24, 2018

"Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Brett Kavanaugh’s, has described a dormitory party gone awry and a drunken incident that she wants the F.B.I. to investigate."

A new article by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.

The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh.... The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh.... She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections....

“We were sitting in a circle,” she said. “People would pick who drank.” Ramirez was chosen repeatedly, she said, and quickly became inebriated. At one point, she said, a male student pointed a gag plastic penis in her direction. Later, she said, she was on the floor, foggy and slurring her words, as that male student and another stood nearby...

A third male student then exposed himself to her. “I remember a penis being in front of my face,” she said. “I knew that’s not what I wanted, even in that state of mind.” She recalled remarking, “That’s not a real penis,” and the other students laughing at her confusion and taunting her, one encouraging her to “kiss it.”... She remembers Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing, pulling up his pants. “Brett was laughing,” she said. “I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants.” She recalled another male student shouting about the incident. “Somebody yelled down the hall, ‘Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie’s face,’ ” she said. “It was his full name. I don’t think it was just ‘Brett.’ And I remember hearing and being mortified that this was out there.”...

[A]fter several days of considering the matter carefully, she said, “I’m confident about the pants coming up, and I’m confident about Brett being there.” Ramirez said that what has stayed with her most forcefully is the memory of laughter at her expense from Kavanaugh and the other students. “It was kind of a joke,” she recalled. “And now it’s clear to me it wasn’t a joke.”

"The departure of Mr. Moonves marks a stunning reversal for an executive who is credited with turning CBS into television’s most-watched network..."

"But he has been under intense pressure since July, when The New Yorker published an article by the investigative journalist Ronan Farrow in which six women accused Mr. Moonves of sexual harassment. On Sunday, the magazine published another article by Mr. Farrow in which six more women detailed claims against Mr. Moonves.... When the most recent television season ended in May, CBS was the nation’s most-watched network for the 10th consecutive year — an accomplishment that had made Mr. Moonves one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood... By the time Mr. Moonves left Warner Bros. to lead CBS Entertainment in 1995, he had a record-breaking 22 series on the air, including megahits like 'ER' and 'Friends.' At that time, CBS was last in the ratings and catered to an older audience that enjoyed series like 'Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman' and 'Touched by an Angel.' Mr. Moonves finally turned things around for good in 2000, when 'Survivor' and 'C.S.I.' debuted within a few months of each other.... Hit after hit started to appear on CBS, from 'NCIS' to 'The Big Bang Theory.'"

From "CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves Steps Down After Sexual Harassment Claims" (NYT). There have been 2 articles about him in The New Yorker, both by Ronan Farrow, one published just yesterday, the day his resignation was announced. There has been an investigation of him going on since the first article was published last March. Leading the investigation were Nancy Kestenbaum and Mary Jo White, both lawyers who are former federal prosecutors. White was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Obama administration.

Here's the new New Yorker article, which has an update stating the Moonves stepped down 3 hours after it was published. Excerpt:

One of the women with allegations against Moonves, a veteran television executive named Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb.... Moonves, she recalled, came into her office in the middle of a workday and suggested the two of them go out for lunch. Instead of taking her to a nearby restaurant, she said, Moonves drove her to a secluded area. When Golden-Gottlieb began to ask if he was having trouble finding a parking space, she said that Moonves “grabbed my head and he took it all the way down onto his penis, and pushed his penis into my mouth.” She said he held her head in place forcibly. “He came very quickly,” she recalled. “You sort of just go numb. You don’t know what to do.” Distraught, Golden-Gottlieb demanded that Moonves take her back to the office. When she got there, she said, she vomited. “It was just sick,” she told me. She didn’t report the incident at the time because she was a single mother supporting two children and feared for her career. “I realized he was the new golden boy,” she told me. “I just kept quiet.” But the incident, she said, “never left me.”

After she rebuffed Moonves, Golden-Gottlieb said that Moonves retaliated against her professionally, moving her into ever smaller offices. “Every two days, he’d find a darker space, or a place downstairs, or something,” she recalled. She told me that her career in the entertainment industry suffered, which she attributed to his influence at Lorimar and, later, CBS. “He absolutely ruined my career,” she said. “He was the head of CBS. No one was going to take me.”

"Behind the Scenes of Harvey Weinstein’s Arrest."

By Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker.

After a seven-month investigation, the producer Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to the New York Police Department's First Precinct on Friday morning to face sexual-assault charges. According to law-enforcement officials, the charges against Weinstein are based on the allegations of two women. One is Lucia Evans, a marketing consultant and former aspiring actress who told The New Yorker last October that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in his Manhattan office, in 2004. The day after the publication of that story, police detectives began trying to meet with Evans about filing a formal criminal complaint. One of the police sources called Evans “a highly credible witness with corroborating evidence.” In an interview on Thursday, Evans confirmed that she was pressing charges against Weinstein. “At a certain point, you have to think about the greater good of humanity, of womankind,” she told me....

The day after the New Yorker story was published online, two detectives drove to upstate New York to visit Evans’s parents at their home.... The officers had told her that they might not be able to bring charges without her coöperation. “They said that if I do nothing, Harvey would walk,” Evans said. “I think the significance hit all at once.” Evans said that she initially felt “proud to be a part of this movement, just knowing I could do this for everybody.”...

After months of what Evans described as sleepless nights, she decided to proceed with the complaint against Weinstein. “We gave her time,” a source involved in the investigation said. “We worked with her gradually to make sure she was comfortable. Even when she came in and told us the story in the D.A.’s office of what had happened, we still weren’t, like, ‘Boom, it’s going forward.’ ”

"One summer day, Mia accused me of leaving the curtains closed in the TV room."

"They had been drawn the day before when Dylan and Satchel were watching a movie. She insisted that I had closed them and left them that way. Her friend Casey had come over to visit and while they were in the kitchen, my mother insisted I had shut the curtains. At that point, I couldn’t take it anymore and I lost it, yelling, 'You’re lying!' She shot me a look and took me into the bathroom next to the TV room. She hit me uncontrollably all over my body. She slapped me, pushed me backwards and hit me on my chest, shouting, 'How dare you say I’m a liar in front of my friend. You’re the pathological liar.' I was defeated, deflated, beaten and beaten down. Mia had stripped me of my voice and my sense of self. It was clear that if I stepped even slightly outside her carefully crafted reality, she would not tolerate it. It was an upbringing that made me, paradoxically, both fiercely loyal and obedient to her, as well as deeply afraid...."

Moses Farrow tells his story in a blog post titled "A Son Speaks Out."

"Satchel" = Ronan Farrow.

"Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General of Physical Abuse/ Eric Schneiderman has raised his profile as a voice against sexual misconduct."

"Now, after suing Harvey Weinstein, he faces a #MeToo reckoning of his own," write Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker.

Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, has long been a liberal Democratic champion of women’s rights... Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women. They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent. Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inflicted on them as “assault.” They did not report their allegations to the police at the time, but both say that they eventually sought medical attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face, and also choked. Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman warned her he could have her followed and her phones tapped, and both say that he threatened to kill them if they broke up with him. (Schneiderman’s spokesperson said that he “never made any of these threats.”)...

In a statement, Schneiderman said, “In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”

Role-playing. Was the role-playing the part where you were the champion of women's rights?