Tomorrow in Liberal Sexual Harassment?

Oh no! Now it is reported that actor Jeffrey Tambor is being investigated for sexual harassment. Say it ain’t so! Tambor is one of my favorite comic actors. This comes on top of more news about a number of lesser Hollywood producers and directors, like Jimmy Toback (whom I’ve never heard of), who are suddenly under a cloud. Will there be anyone left to attend the Academy Awards next spring?

There is speculation that the Great Liberal Sexual Harassment Purge may be warming up to snare the Big Kahuna of Hollywood sexism—Warren Beatty! Taki magazine reports:

I can’t help but get my Alex Jones on and wonder if the entire fiasco surrounding Toback is a practice run (the chickens just came home to roost for Toback’s friend and publisher, Brett Ratner) for the agenda-driven new philistines in the elite media as they ramp up for what could be their biggest takedown yet: Warren Beatty.

If you accept the premise (as I do) that 2016 was a nationalist-populist redux of 1968, the recent Oscar snafu with Beatty (the Wilt Chamberlain of Hollywood, not to mention Toback’s best friend) and Faye Dunaway, stars of the “antiestablishment” classic Bonnie and Clyde, hardly seems like a coincidence.

Breaking news from 1975: Warren Beatty likes women! He might have even put the moves on one or two. Hundred. Thousand.

I have no idea whether this speculation has any, um, legs at all. (I wonder if we can still use that imagery in the post-Weinstein era?) But I do have a pretty good second-hand Beatty story. Way back in the 1980s, before Beatty married Annette Benning and presumably settled down at last, I was acquainted with a very attractive Republican-leaning woman political analyst who appeared from time to time on local TV in LA. Beatty, a well known political junkie, was a fan of the show she appeared on, and somehow contrived to get this lady’s home phone number.

Which he then proceeded to call a few times, usually quite late in the evening. The conversation, as related to me, would go something like, “Hey ——–, I’m having a party over at my place. Why don’t you come over? Love to meet you and talk politics.”

The lady told me at the time, “If he’d called me at 6 or 7 pm I might have been tempted, but he never called me before 10:30 or 11 pm, so I figured I was probably eighth or ninth on his call list.”

Who knows if the Beatty angle will go anywhere. But if Beatty isn’t safe, how long until we get to Jack Nicholson?

JOE adds: Her?

STEVE replies: Heh. At this point I give up. But it does suggest some interesting possibilities. In an age of “gender-fluidity,” it will become a Rubik’s Cube of harassment combinations.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses