Yes, it's FARROWING time again.
“Farrowing” should be a verb, like Tebowing. It should define self-righteous bleating and finger-pointing, and an overpowering grimace that THEIR point of view beats the law, “freedom of speech,” “innocent till proven guilty” and anything else sane.
If Woody Allen walks into the restaurant and you happen to think he’s guilty of something, or you just don’t like the man’s films, you can walk out. What you can’t do, and should not do, is to demand that the resteraunt throw HIM out instead and ban him. That’s FARROWING.
Where’s Woody Allen’s freedom of speech? He’s not ALLOWED to publish his memoirs? Americans are NOT ALLOWED to read his life story as he wants to tell it? As it is, he is not ALLOWED to make movies the way he used to, because of a witch-hunt climate of utter hypcrosity.
I say hypocrisy because of Lillian Hellman wrote a play about some nasty little girl making up a story just to make her father look bad….everyone would rush to see it and cluck their tongues about how awful the injustice is. If Shirley Jackson, Mary Shelley, or any other author wrote about gossip presented as fact, the readers would sigh and swoon and point out the lesson to be learned: INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY. Or, DON’T LISTEN TO HEARSAY. Or, A HE SAID SHE SAID is exactly that, so who are you to rush to judgment?
The Social Justice Puppies who took some time off because the weather was nice? And their boss actually tried to reach out to these sensitive souls and they wouldn't have it? In the words of the Twitterverse: FIRE THEM. How about that? How about THEY lose their jobs...the ones who are so dedicated to making sure Woody Allen is denied the chance to publish his memoir? The ones who are always so eager to see somebody lose a job that is better than theirs?
To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in "Mars Attacks," I say: "LITTLE PEOPLE...you LITTLE PEOPLE of LITTLE BROWN...why not take your self-righteous act to the right place? TWITTER? You can tweet all you want to from the unemployment line."
Dylan Farrow is indignant because HER side of the story isn’t being told in Woody’s book. Guess what. It’s not her book. Got that? It’s WOODY’S BOOK. It’s his memoir. He’s telling his side of the story and is under no obligation to add footnotes or an opposing view. Dylan can write her own book, and no doubt she’ll be paid a lot more for hers than Woody is for his.
Meanwhile the publisher who had the versatility to offer readers Ronan Farrow's books and Woody's memoir...saw some employees take a stroll in protest. Because today, March 5th, was a balmy day in Manhattan. If it was cold or rainy, these LITTLE people of Little-Brown would've braved the weather only for as long as it took to rush into a Starbucks.
Yeah, a bunch of pussies at Little-Brown who happened to notice that the weather was nice, decided to go stand outside for a while, and their employer, instead of firing the lot of them, mews and moans and wants to start a “dialogue” about why a publishing company would actually allow an Academy Award-winning director and a famous writer, and the Chaplin of our times to write his memoir. Chaplin, exiled from America thanks to a lot of hypocrisy, including moans and groans about his sex life and his underage or very-young wives, also managed to write a memoir.
In “My Autobiography” Chaplin chose not to address the Lita Grey scandal. He dismissed his underage wife with one line, saying that since he had two grown sons (by her) he wasn't going to make their lives more difficult by bringing up the past. (I don't know if Woody even mentions the Dylan Farrow controversy in his book, but if he does, you can bet it wouldn't be more than a terse denial of the charges, which is what he's pretty much done all along). Did Lita have the nerve to complain that her story should’ve been part of Chaplin’s memoir? No. She wrote her own warped version. Chaplin's book arrived in 1964, and Lita's version in 1966. That's what you do. You don't demand that a book NOT be published. And no, Charlie didn't somehow use his vast wealth and influence to stop Lita's purple prose.
VERY purple. Lita would later express regret that her creepy ghostwriter added so much lurid sensationalism. That's part of the book world, folks. Hedy Lamarr needed money, used a ghostwriter, and was shocked to discover the finished book offering first-person lesbian confessions and a whole lot of other crap that never happened. The ghostwriter for W.C. Fields' mistress Carlotta Monti added a bunch of absurd joke quotes Fields never said. Was it him or Carlotta who insisted that Carlotta was at his death bed? She wasn't. She'd been banned from seeing him because she'd become such a pain in the ass. But in the book, she quotes W.C. as saying, “Goddam the whole world and everyone in it but you, Carlotta.” Jeez.
So the little people of LITTLE-BROWN should've stayed at their jobs, and recognized that the dying publishing world isn't going to get a jolt from a Woody Allen memoir. The man barely breaks even on his films.
It’s not enough that Dylan Farrow can very easily got a million bucks for writing HER memoir on Woody Allen, and being able to put just about anything in it because it’s HER word against his? Isn’t that enough, without kicking “Freedom of Speech” into the dirt and stomping on it with squeals and shrieks?
How many people standing around enjoying a balmy near-Spring day and having cushy jobs, bothered to wonder about how PC Mia Farrow is? How perfect HER record is? Do they know the name of Dory Previn, who lost her husband Andre to Mia Farrow? Frankly nobody should care too much whether Mia was the nut who cut off her hair, married Sinatra, and had people wondering if Frankie Blue-Eyes had suddenly gone boy crazy. Nobody should care too much about Dory Previn’s fragility and the song she wrote about Mia and the agonies she suffered. Nobody should question why Mia adopted eleven children (making a total of 15, and that’s a lot to care for even if you’re not a busy actress with a huge social life). Nobody wonders about the stability of a woman who can be physically violent (The Meade bio of Allen notes that Mia "punched him in the face”) or her motives in turning his two biological children against him?
People are human. They do things they regret, or things they can’t even admit to having done. If it’s against the law, they usually have to pay for it, or, ala Polanski, go on the run and hope that someday they are forgiven (the girl in Polanski’s case has long advocated that people leave the man alone. Enough is ENOUGH.)
How far we do we go in this new era of “fire him” and “jail him” and “make sure he never works again” and the rest of the toxic pitchfork and torch waving? How about a simple “I don’t like your looks” being enough, too? If you look guilty, then you are, ok? Take a look at Dylan Farrow and Mia Farrow. They look crazy. Maybe they ARE crazy because they LOOK crazy?
Do we take into account that, unlike Weinstein or Cosby or Spacey for examples, there isn’t a “serial” history of Woody Allen molesting (touching) a young girl? It’s a bit different when the target of scorn has a long rap sheet, and in too many cases, is caught engaging in the same offensive behavior as rumored or reported decades earlier.
People want to stick up for not only Dylan, but for another hypocrite, Ronan Farrow? What’s with THIS guy? He made a career out of favoritism and nepotism: “It’s Mia’s boy, let’s give him his own cable TV show. He has such PRETTY and bow-shaped pink lips. He’s SO cute. Why, he looks like Frank Sinatra…” Then it’s “Let’s give him a staff and researchers and give him high-end magazines to write for, and let’s give him a book deal, and let’s see…”
Right, Ronan wants to expose the awful-awful world of heterosexual males in power. So he’s going to take down Harvey Weinstein and avoid Kevin Spacey. Nice. Real nice. Note how Pretty Boy Farrow always gets his coy photo in these articles. A picture of dullards outside a book company doesn't make it...gotta have the Pretty Boy pursing his lips coyly.
Are there publishing companies out there who won’t offer a Richard Wagner biography to people because he was an antiSemite? Is whoever publishes Roald Dahl donating their share of profits to the Weisenthal Center? Should the company that published Caryl Chessman NOT have published him, because he was a convict? It seems the publishing world has a reputation for being pretty liberal.
Up to the un-convicted Woody Allen, who hasn’t made a movie in years that Dylan Farrow hasn’t bleated about in high outrage, calling out any Oscar-nominated performer to withdraw into hiding rather than accept credit for an ACTING JOB in a movie some critics liked.
Is Hachette going to suffer #METOO and second guessing over every author they publish now, and turn things down because of something that MIGHT have happened, or something ALLEGED, or something not quite so PC that SOMEBODY might find OFFENSIVE? This is the way the liberal book world is today?
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