Don’t Let The Screen Door Hit You On The Way Out

”It’s never the crime,
it’s always the cover-up.”
Watergate Lesson #1

Y’know, some bastards need to be cancelled.

The liars, the hypocrites, the betrayers of trust public and private.

The “do as I say, not as I do” anusoids.

Dropkick those bozologists right outta here.

The problem is not people who screw up -- people screw up all the time.

It’s not ideas that later prove to be in error or just plain bad -- all of us at one time or another believed something we now know to be wrong.

No, the problem is those who set themselves us as moral exemplars and then betray the very moral example they proclaim.

Ska-rue those dips.

Cast them into the outer void.

Cast in point:
The drugging rapist comedian spent their entire professional career stressing high principles and values, openly saying “look at what I did and do likewise” while deriding members of their own community for not obtaining the heights they did.

A good hunk of that time they spent drugging and raping victims, paying them off to keep silent so they could drug and rape more victims.

Look, back in the day Bob Hope was a notorious philanderer but he and his wife had an understanding and Hope never promoted himself as a moral exemplar (quite the opposite!).

So to find out Hope engaged in consensual adultery with the tacit approval of his wife is neither a big shock not does it undermine any message he sought to convey.

On the other hand, the drugging rapist comedian did espouse a message that millions saw as valid, and they held themselves up as an example for their fans to aspire to.

If we learned said comedian was a garden variety philanderer like Bob Hope, their message and example would be somewhat tarnished but not destroyed; consensual sex gets a tsk-tsk and nothing more, especially if the spouse doesn’t object (and said comedian’s spouse damn well knew what was going on yet didn’t think raping victims drugged into unconsciousness was a deal breaker or a marriage ender).

Some people today hope to this disgraced comedian will die soon so their comedy can be enjoyed publicly again.

Why?

Any good from this rapist’s life has already been done in whatever charitable donations and scholarships they provided, whatever inspiration they gave audiences to help them better themselves before learning of their crimes, and stylistic / topical insights gleaned by other comedians.

The rapist’s comedy routines and TV shows -- all family friendly and morally high minded -- now ring hollow and taste sour.  Whatever comedic insights the rapist had to offer have long since been absorbed by those who followed.

Leni Riefenstahl created two monstrous documentaries -- Triumph Of The Will and Olympiad -- that glorified Nazism while at the same time inventing the cinematic language for depicting mass movements and covering sporting events.

Nobody today ever need watch her original films in order to learn those lessons; thousands of film makers and videographers have applied them elsewhere and the technical lessons remain valid even when divorced from their racist origins.

So be it with the rapist comedian.

Let those who learned from their routines reinterpret those lessons in a form that no longer contains a poison pill.

Case in point:
The comic-turned-film maker presented their work -- no matter how funny the material – as a serious examination of modern moral values.

And, dang, the c-t-f certainly fooled a lot of us.

In their defense, the c-t-f always claimed in public to be a really terrible person, but this was all just c-y-a.

Of course those public admissions were all self-depreciating self-mockery, look how thoughtful and complex the c-t-f films were, how they examined modern life, look how they laid bare the contradictions and conundrums of the human condition.

Then it turns out the c-t-f could not keep their own knickers up and wreaked havoc on a dozen or more lives, rendering all their opinions and observations as worth less that a wad of soiled toilet paper.

Yeah, the rapist comedian’s crime are worse by at least two orders of magnitude, but the c-t-f only misses a charge of incest by the barest of technicalities.

And it doesn’t matter that c-t-f’s spouse at the time is a batshit crazy homewrecker themselves -- c-t-f knew this then and chose them as a spouse and contributed to the chaos being wreaked in that family.

So, no, you can’t pose your films as Important Serious Examinations Of Modern Morals when you’re acting in a way that would get Dr. Freud to say, “That’s some seriously fucked up shit.” 

Open reprobates like John Waters and Russ Meyer never need worry about failing audience expectations; they’re upfront and honest about their perversions and peccadillos (and to be fair to them, they never screwed up the lives of others the way the c-t-f did).

I used to love the c-t-f’s work and eagerly looked forward to each new one.

Not any more.

You can never trust that viewpoint again, and even the earlier, funnier work is now called into question.

Case in point:
This one is smaller, more localized, but I have personal knowledge of it and it’s emblemic of a far larger, far more vast problem.

The retired pastor tried to stay busy, volunteering at their local church and nearby nursing homes, and proposing an outreach for runaway abused teen girls.

It came as quite a shock to learn the retired preacher had been caught in a classic honey trap sex sting:  They texted what they thought was a 16 year old girl but turned out to be an adult investigator trolling for sexual predators.

The retired pastor got probation and registered as a sex offender.  There was a big public confession and an apology to their church, a contrite promise of repentance, and a big heaping helping of forgiveness all around.

There but for
the grace of God,
right…?

The retired pastor wanted to resume the runaway abused teen girl project.

Oh, they would have nothing to do with it directly, of course.

Just be available to advise others as needed…

Well, that waved more red flags than a May Day celebration in Tiananmen Square.  Even assuming the retired pastor was incredibly naïve -- more naïve than any retired pastor has a right to be -- the sheer optics alone would be incredibly bad.

And the chance of somebody finding out and filing a complaint for reasons real or suspected would put the church sponsoring it at terrible risk.

Dude, you screwed up.  
That door is shut to you.

Organized religions are imploding right now, and no matter what faith or denomination, the reason is inevitably the same:  Predators of all stripes infiltrate the structure to find victims.

Sexual abuse ranks high, but there’s also financial abuse, emotional abuse, and just plain old abuse of power.  

It’s ultimately the exact same problem as that of the rapist comedian and the comic-turned-film maker:  Hypocrisy.

Religious leaders are as human as anyone else, few are the plaster saints we make them out to be.

And there are those who make mistakes, and those who hide their personal peccadillos from others (word among the BDSM community is that quite a few religious leaders enjoy those reindeer games), but those have the common fucking sense not to videotape themselves (remember, if you make a copy of anything you’re giving the universe tacit permission to share it and if the copy is digital, the sharing is compulsory).

The worst part is that the very victims of these predators are not only quick to forgive these abuses and let them continue, but viciously turn on other victims that dare speak out against their abuse!

This is the reason organized religion is collapsing:  It’s become a cesspool of sexual predators and con artists.

Church leaders who decry the declining numbers are eager to blame a lack of spiritual discipline, a loss of faith, cultural influence, and of course that ol’ standby, Satan hizzowndamsef.

But when you ask people who left why they left, the answer is almost always they grew tired of being taken advantage of.

Physician, heal thyself. 

The problem we face today is that too many people impose standards on others they are not merely incapable of following themselves (which would be a sad but typically human failure) but are utterly unwilling to even make the attempt.

We need so-called cancel culture.  We need to expose hypocrites, denounce their hypocrisy, and deny them access to new victims.

Don’t feel sorry for the bastards who get caught,
get angry over the harm they inflict.

© Buzz Dixon