The sinking Hollywood ship took on more water this week with just the latest in a long line of accusations of sexual deviancy leveled against the industry’s titans as Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey was called out for being an alleged sexual predator of teenage boys.
Anthony Rapp, who stars on this season’s Star Trek: Discovery reboot, kicked off the mega-controversy in a Buzzfeed interview published Sunday night with allegations of an alleged sexual assault at the hands of Spacey dating back to when he was just fourteen years old.
Rapp (pictured above) described being invited to party at Spacey’s apartment when they first met back in 1986. According to Rapp, he quickly realized that he was the only person his age at the party and eventually grew bored wandering around by himself. Rapp describes finding a bedroom with a TV in it and remaining there sitting on the edge of a bed watching television until Spacey eventually arrived in the doorway around midnight. The place had emptied out and they were alone.
Rapp alleges that Spacey picked him up “the way a groom picks up a bride” and put him down on the bed before climbing on top of him, squeezing him tightly, and “pressing into” him. The then-14-year old child actor describes being able to “squirm” away from his drunken assailant before making it out the front door while Spacey asked, “Are you sure you wanna go?” The details of the incident remained a secret for almost three decades.
Despite several mainstream media outlets attempting to spin the story in Spacey’s favor, the dam was eventually broken by a growing movement of Americans unwilling to let the Anthony Rapps of today go the way of the Corey Feldmans of the ’90s. The result has been an abrupt takedown of the Netflix hit series House of Cards and perhaps Spacey’s legacy as one of Hollywood’s greatest actors of his generation.
The fact is that the “good old boys” of our time are certainly alive and well in the mediasphere.
Spacey’s initial response to Rapp’s allegations on Twitter was neither a confirmation or a denial of the incident taking place. Unfortunately for Spacey and his public relations team, the wordy statement might as well have said, “Hey, can I get a mulligan on that one? I was drunk and I don’t remember…but guess what? I’m gay!”
— Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) October 30, 2017
I thought it comical for Spacey to pull the “gay card,” especially because there’s a running joke among officers at the Atlanta Police Department—and I’d imagine most liberal-run departments across the country these days—that you can survive any scandal so long as you come out of the closet before they get a chance to fire you. It goes something like this:
“Sure, I’ve had a dead body in my trunk for just about a week now. I just want to put it on the record that I don’t think it’s fair of you to be singling me out for being gay and all. How would you like to proceed?”
It might not be politically correct, but I can’t look into the sun and tell everyone that it’s dark out. The fact is that the “good old boys” of our time are certainly alive and well in the mediasphere. Just take a look how several old-guard liberal outlets and “reputable” sources within the mainstream media received Spacey’s spin signal and responded by circling the wagons to protect—and even exalt him.
Maybe it’s about time we all start paying attention to Seth MacFarlane’s cryptic messages, but why not just bluntly out predators instead?
First there was Reuters, who produced Chris Michaud’s headline Actor Kevin Spacey Declares He Lives Life As a Gay Man as if Spacey’s sexual preference was the real story here. How many buffoons—those special folks who can’t even name the vice president—might catch a glimpse of just the headline and take away that Spacey is somehow “brave” or deserving of congratulations for coming out of the closet?
The New York Daily News did exactly the same thing, posting this headline to Facebook and Twitter.
Kevin Spacey announced Sunday night that he will "live as a gay man" https://t.co/7G8C25sdSE
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) October 30, 2017
Of course, there was the Daily Beast, who emphasized the focus on “coming out” over the pedophilia allegations, but then published several updates after seeing which way the winds were blowing and that they were obviously on the wrong side. The headline on the bottom right was from Daily Beast’s Twitter feed and titled JUST IN: Kevin Spacey comes out as gay in apology statement to Anthony Rapp. Do you see the pattern here?
MEDIA: Why doesn’t the public trust us?
ME: Because this… pic.twitter.com/4A8zOEmcGB
— Alex VanNess (@thealexvanness) October 30, 2017
Rightful backlash from an army of people growing more media-savvy all the time forced the narrative of “Big News! Spacey is Gay!” to change—but what should it have changed to? In a perfect world, a call for more investigations leading to a purging of pedophilia in the entertainment industry would be the way to go, but the protection of those not yet outed will certainly continue despite evidence that Tinseltown has known about Spacey’s behavior for years just as they did Harvey Weinstein.
Maybe it’s about time we all start paying attention to Seth MacFarlane’s cryptic messages, but why not just bluntly out predators instead?
Of course, the industry will do neither. The Daily Beast has since come out with several articles taking the focus off of Rapp being just one of many child actors to make claims of a pedophile infestation in Hollywood. They’re now banging the drum for Spacey’s victimization of the gay community instead. How Kevin Spacey’s ‘Coming Out’ Grossly Conflates Pedophilia and Homosexuality and Kevin Spacey’s Pedophilia Erasure: Why Did His Apology Ignore Anthony Rapp’s Age? are just two examples of how the machine is more upset with Spacey for making the LGBTQ community look bad and less interested in discussing how far down the rabbit hole the problem of pedophilia in Hollywood actually goes.
The 2017 documentary An Open Secret by Amy J. Berg chronicles Hollywood pedophilia and outs several predators who are still working in the industry to this day. If Berg sounds familiar, it’s because she received critical acclaim for 2014’s Deliver Us From Evil, a documentary on pedophilia in the Catholic church. Secret, by contrast, has gained virtually no traction in LA, proving that Hollywood will praise outing pedophilia within the church but protects its own bad actors at all costs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89BzECQjf9Q
Many will point to greed, graft, and the evils of money as the reason for this shocking double standard, but I contend that it is more sinister than that.
In 2015, the issue of performance enhancing drugs and blood doping led to a defining moment for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Rather than sweep under the rug the problem of professional athletes jacked up on steroids and super-human levels of testosterone kicking each other in the head, the UFC took action. In an unprecedented move, the organization adopted United States Anti-Doping Agency testing, the strictest blood testing regimen that currently exists for any athletic body in the world to include the Olympics.
The move to switch to the ultra-thorough and invasive USADA testing of its athletes has largely hurt the bottom line for the UFC, as many of its biggest and brightest stars have failed drug tests over the past two years. Failed tests mean lengthy suspensions, watered down fight cards, and tarnished fighter brands that have taken years to craft. If you want to clean up the mess, you’ve got to take out the trash. The UFC gets an A+ for taking the initiative to clean up the sport of MMA.
My question to Hollywood is this. If Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, a couple of casino billionaires in Vegas, could sacrifice the bottom line of the world’s premier combat sports promotion—why can’t Hollywood get their act together on pedophilia?
