Orhan Pamuk, Snow

A winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.

At Amazon, Orhan Pamuk, Snow.

An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness of American Literary Prose

It's B.R. Myers, at the Atlantic, from 2001, "A Reader's Manifesto."

I found it interesting in that he skewers Cormac McCarthy as one of his targets of bloated prose.

But frankly, I rather enjoyed Blood Meridian. It's a cool book, heh.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught

I'm surprised I'm just finding out about this book just now. It came out in February.

At Amazon, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.

Kate Upton Irresistibles (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.

Lisa Kennedy Montgomery: Gwyneth Paltrow Is a 'Complicit Fraud' in #HarveyWeinstein Allegations (VIDEO)

It's Kennedy, at Fox Business channel, via Instapundit, "MOST OF THEM ARE. IT’S A ROTTEN SYSTEM FULL OF ROTTEN PEOPLE: Gwyneth Paltrow is a ‘complicit fraud’ in Weinstein allegations: Kennedy. And deep down, they know it, which is why they try so hard to posture as morally superior."

The YouTube video is here. Maybe Weinstein will get some "jail-style justice," heh: "Harvey Weinstein will hopefully end up in jail: Kennedy."

.@KennedyNation How many victims were minted while actors and politicians all sat on their manicured hands with their mouths sewn shut? pic.twitter.com/E002wpAUFA

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) October 12, 2017

Heh: NBC/BuzzFeed-Style Journalism

From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, "JOURNALISM, NBC/BUZZFEED-STYLE: “Controversy Framing” and the “SQUIRREL! Distraction,” Explained."

Shop Today

Thanks for your support everybody!

It's a challenge to keep this blog humming during the teaching semester, but I appreciate the readership, and if you're shopping through my Amazon links, a big hearty thanks once again.

More here, at Amazon, Today's Deals.

And, Shop Home and Garden.

More, Coleman Brazos Cool Weather Sleeping Bag.

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Plus, Samsung Electronics UN65MU8000 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2017 Model).

BONUS: Billy Idol, Dancing with Myself.

Lissy Cunningham in White

Here she is from 2015, "Rule 5 Sunday."

And on Twitter in September:

Some a little more innocent but #peachy 🤣🍑💋#blonde #model pic.twitter.com/AjBWF1dBp4

— Lissy (@LissyC5) September 29, 2017

Democrats Dogged by #HarveyWeinstein Cash

A great piece, at Politico, "Democrats dogged by Weinstein cash: The party tries to move past the sordid story, but Republicans aren't letting it go just yet."

Democrats hope to wash their hands of their ties to Harvey Weinstein. But Republicans aren't letting go just yet https://t.co/EIOkZKIpLE pic.twitter.com/bzqHJiXIw4

— POLITICO (@politico) October 12, 2017

Alessandra Ambrosio Selfie

On Twitter:

Cat eyes.. @alebyalessandra: https://t.co/rlZF8lblNb pic.twitter.com/FdEGulWVWi

— Alessandra Ambrosio (@AngelAlessandra) October 11, 2017

Alizee Coucke for Lui Magazine

At Drunken Stepfather, "Alizee Coucke Nipples of the Day":

Alizee Coucke is some model from France and she’s topless for LUI, because LUI the porn mag turned trendy fashion mag is what all these motherfuckers trying to make it are eager to get naked in, and they don’t even get paid to be naked in it, which is beyond my capacity of understanding because nudity is a commodity to me and I’ve been raised to believe that women do not get naked for free, it’s 10 dollars a song at the very least…it’s never free…so this girls getting naked for free, for people like me to see, people who have no business seeing them naked…just doesn’t process in my half retard booze soaked head…BUT it is happening, because naked isn’t a big deal, naked is perfect...

Rose McGowan Photos

Following-up, "Rose McGowan."

At Heckler Spray, "Rose McGowan Nudes Leaked Again – Yes, They’re Right Here (57 PICS)":

What do you like about Rose McGowan? Her pale milky skin? Sexy full lips? Her raven bangs? Perfectly sized natural boobs? Yes, we thought so.

Shop Today's Deals

I'm out of here in a few minutes to work. More blogging tonight.

Meanwhile, Shop Amazon.

See especially, Philips Norelco Multigroom 5100 Grooming Kit - 18 Length Settings.

And, Real Good Coffee Co 2LB, Whole Bean Coffee, French Roast Dark, 2 Pound Bag.

More, AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable - 10 Feet (3 Meters) - White.

Also, Samsung Electronics UN65MU6300 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2017 Model).

BONUS: Peter Navarro, Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World.

Why Did it Take So Long to Stop the Las Vegas Gunman?

At LAT, "New disclosure shows a casino guard alerted hotel to gunman before Vegas massacre began. So why did it take so long to stop him?"

Before Vegas massacre, a hotel security guard called hotel officials to warn them about a gunman on the 32nd floor https://t.co/zp0tSpO8le

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 11, 2017

'SO JUST IN THE LAST FEW DAYS, two major centers of the anti-Trump resistance, Hollywood and the NFL, have collapsed...'

From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "Harvey Weinstein has destroyed Hollywood. Now what?"

BONUS: "TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF CONTEMPORARY INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE."

Why 'Indigenous Peoples' Day' is Far Worse Than Columbus Day.

At the Federalist, via Bird Dog, at Maggie's Farm, "The beautiful, peaceful indigenous peoples living in harmony with the land."

Rose McGowan

This lady is rad!

pic.twitter.com/WYW7r4d9ui

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 11, 2017

Ben Affleck fuck off

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 10, 2017

The hole that @rosemcgowan just punched into @BenAffleck’s statement can be seen from distant galaxies pic.twitter.com/RQepXBu5Z2

— Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) October 10, 2017

Actress Rose McGowan calls for entire Weinstein Company board to resign https://t.co/9221jycAG1 pic.twitter.com/GkpdB4TiZU

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) October 10, 2017

Rose McGowan tells Ben Affleck to 'f*** off' after the actor finally breaks his silence to condemn Weinstein https://t.co/cK6cYrg2rN pic.twitter.com/t8nc4PPddO

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) October 10, 2017

Stephen Colbert and Hollywood's Hypocrites Stay Silent on Harvey Weinstein

I don't watch late night shows. I've literally never watched Colbert. It came on by accident once and I flipped the channel before the introductory music could get rolling. I hate these people.

Maybe Jimmy Kimmel will bawl about sexual abuse in Hollywood tonight?

At City Journal, "The Weinstein Silence."

Liberal entertainers laud themselves for “speaking truth to power”—so long as the targets are safe. https://t.co/yz9ob1Qpa6 pic.twitter.com/JcDFIb2D2b

— City Journal (@CityJournal) October 11, 2017

Maile Meloy, Do Not Become Alarmed

At Amazon, Maile Meloy, Do Not Become Alarmed: A Novel.

Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette, and Asia Argento Share Their Accounts of Harvey Weinstein's Sexual Assault and Harassment

It's from Ronan Farrow, at the New Yorker. He's leftist. The New Yorker's leftist. I don't like them. But this story is irresistible, and it's leftist outlets leading the charge against Democrat/Hollywood hypocrisy. It's pretty amazing.

Safe link, "From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories":

! NYer Weinstein story just dropped, 3 women alleging rape + audio recording of Weinstein from NYPD sting operation https://t.co/EtDsJ1XWvj

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) October 10, 2017

Since the establishment of the first studios a century ago, there have been few movie executives as dominant, or as domineering, as Harvey Weinstein. As the co-founder of the production-and-distribution companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company, he helped to reinvent the model for independent films, with movies such as “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “The English Patient,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Crying Game,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “The King’s Speech.” Beyond Hollywood, he has exercised his influence as a prolific fund-raiser for Democratic Party candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Weinstein combined a keen eye for promising scripts, directors, and actors with a bullying, even threatening, style of doing business, inspiring both fear and gratitude. His movies have earned more than three hundred Oscar nominations, and, at the annual awards ceremonies, he has been thanked more than almost anyone else in movie history, just after Steven Spielberg and right before God.

For more than twenty years, Weinstein has also been trailed by rumors of sexual harassment and assault. 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 people 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.”

Last week, the New York Times, in a powerful report by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, revealed multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Weinstein, a story that led to the resignation of four members of his company’s all-male board, and to Weinstein’s firing from the company.

The story, however, is more complex, and there is more to know and to understand. In the course of a ten-month investigation, I was told by thirteen women that, between the nineteen-nineties and 2015, Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them, allegations that corroborate and overlap with the Times’ revelations, and also include 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.

Sixteen former and current executives and assistants at Weinstein’s companies told me that they witnessed or had knowledge of unwanted sexual advances and touching at events associated with Weinstein’s films and in the workplace. They and others describe a pattern of professional meetings that were little more than thin pretexts for sexual advances on young actresses and models. All sixteen said that the behavior was widely known within both Miramax and the Weinstein Company. Messages sent by Irwin Reiter, a senior company executive, to Emily Nestor, one of the women who alleged that she was harassed at the company, described the “mistreatment of women” as a serial problem that the Weinstein Company was struggling with in recent years. Other employees described what was, in essence, a culture of complicity at Weinstein’s places of business, with numerous people throughout the companies fully aware of his behavior but either abetting it or looking the other way. Some employees said that they were enlisted in subterfuge to make the victims feel safe. A female executive with the company described how Weinstein assistants and others served as a “honeypot”—they would initially join a meeting, but then Weinstein would dismiss them, leaving him alone with the woman.

Virtually all of the people I spoke with told me that they were frightened of retaliation. “If Harvey were to discover my identity, I’m worried that he could ruin my life,” one former employee told me. Many said that they had seen Weinstein’s associates confront and intimidate those who crossed him, and feared that they would be similarly targeted. Four actresses, including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette, told me they suspected that, after they rejected Weinstein’s advances or complained about them to company representatives, Weinstein had them removed from projects or dissuaded people from hiring them. Multiple sources said that Weinstein frequently bragged about planting items in media outlets about those who spoke against him; these sources feared that they might be similarly targeted. Several pointed to Gutierrez’s case, in 2015: after she went to the police, negative items discussing her sexual history and impugning her credibility began rapidly appearing in New York gossip pages. (In the taped conversation with Gutierrez, Weinstein asks her to join him for “five minutes,” and warns, “Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes.”)

Several former employees told me that they were speaking about Weinstein’s alleged behavior now because they hoped to protect women in the future. “This wasn’t a one-off. This wasn’t a period of time,” an executive who worked for Weinstein for many years told me. “This was ongoing predatory behavior towards women—whether they consented or not.”

It’s likely that women have recently felt increasingly emboldened to talk about their experiences because of the way the world has changed regarding issues of sex and power. These disclosures follow in the wake of stories alleging sexual misconduct by public figures, including Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, and Donald Trump. In October, 2016, a month before the election, a tape emerged of Trump telling a celebrity-news reporter, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” This past April, O’Reilly, a host at Fox News, was forced to resign after Fox was discovered to have paid five women millions of dollars in exchange for silence about their accusations of sexual harassment. Ailes, the former head of Fox News, resigned last July, after he was accused of sexual harassment. Cosby went on trial this summer, charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman. The trial ended with a hung jury.

On October 5th, in an initial effort at damage control, Weinstein responded to the Times piece by issuing a statement partly acknowledging what he had done, saying, “I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it.” In an interview with the New York Post, he said, “I’ve got to deal with my personality, I’ve got to work on my temper, I have got to dig deep. I know a lot of people would like me to go into a facility, and I may well just do that—I will go anywhere I can learn more about myself.” Weinstein went on, “In the past I used to compliment people, and some took it as me being sexual, I won’t do that again.” In his statement to the Times, Weinstein claimed that he would “channel that anger” into a fight against the leadership of the National Rifle Association. He also said that it was not “coincidental” that he was organizing a foundation for women directors at the University of Southern California. “It will be named after my mom and I won’t disappoint her.”
Sallie Hofmeister, a spokesperson for Weinstein, issued a statement in response to the allegations in this article. It reads in full: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. Mr. Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual. Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.”

While Weinstein and his representatives have said that the incidents were consensual, and were not widespread or severe, the women I spoke to tell a very different story.

Keep reading.