Interesting take you have there. I do take exception to your verbiage, "I am not suggesting that we should automatically assume that Brand is innocent", and in fact, the truth is that the big wrong is in assuming that someone, most anyone, is judged guilty before any judicial due process.

Considering it acceptable to pass judgement before the facts are presented, vetted, tested, and a determination is made, is criminal - such is the case with the lady crying for help when there was a dispute over a rental bicycle, causing her to lose her job and named a racist pariah - only to be found out later that the gentleman she had the altercation with was also innocent of wrong doing, but nevertheless wrong - it was her credit card on the bike, not his.

With celebrities, it's a bit different. I suppose at first it was acceptable to cancel someone - that seems to be a major frustration now, because snot-nosed children can't do that - we don't care. You can only paint yourself into the corner of your bedroom by cancelling yourself until there's no way out even to go watch TV or cook your own ramen soup. We still don't care - so go cancel yourselves, and by you, I mean the media, mostly. Because we no longer care.

Joe Rogan is just one example of the I don't give a shit movement (we don't care) - call me names, but not to my face coz I'll just smack you down. Go cancel yourselves - we don't care.

As far as Russel Brand is concerned, well, he's a mixed bag alright. He's kinda funny, kinda not, especially after being amused by him for more than a few minutes. A drill down into his history has plenty to despise him for, and conversely, admire his intellect. One notable thing, he's jovial, and he's also a manic-depressive, but he's also got ADHD which is a hallmark of extremely bright people, which might explain why he can see three sentences ahead of his rapid-fire monologs - just enough time to swerve away from (usually) saying something so regrettable that he himself wishes he wouldn't have uttered it; and there's plenty of examples where he didn't swerve quick enough.

There's also many examples of when he was just to thick to realize, or perhaps care, that he did, like September 12th, when he dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and showed up for work at MTV. Back then however, he likely didn't have the wherewithal to understand how damaging such pranks could be to a career in media.

He's definitely got a loyal fan base, while others are just humored by him, but the most dangerous aspect of his career to date has been the gear shifting re-imagination of his presence as an online streamer. He's lauded as someone who engages in the promotion of conspiracy theories, but that's not actually true in the larger sense - he asks questions, and spreads his "love schtick" around, cogitating and pontificating over just what might be going on behind the big velvet curtains. People who do that are called heroes, they are literally laying themselves out prone to be disemboweled, drawn, and quartered, so it's no stretch of the imagination that when you can encourage a few folks to come out and publicly call the celebrity a scoundrel, the defamation process begins in the media - except.... We no longer care.

We Too was smashed by the Cavanaugh accusations which were largely disproved. You don't automatically believe all of any group when they levy claims of shame and criminality, but the good thing that came out of that movement was that we no longer shame and turn the accusers into the scoundrel either - that was just as wrong, and let's not forget, it brought down the predator Weinstein, so the net result was good, on both accounts, the conviction and effective life sentence of Weinstein and the discrediting of the Me Too movement all in one fell swoop. The net result is that now we take accusations seriously, but we do not simply pass judgement upon the accused either - we put the machine into operation and let due process take its course.

In Rogan's case, by the time the discredited cancel community had been eviscerated by folks saying, "I don't care", the unvetted accusations of shadowy people behind the velvet curtain found that the tide had already turned on them - We no longer cared how loudly, how vitriolically, the accusations were by the media, it just had no weight, partly because people already knew that what he took wasn't animal drugs in the first place, that they were prescribed by a medical professional, that we didn't have to listen to a discredited and globalized dystopian governmental engine, no matter what each of us as individuals actually believed when it came to the realities of the pandemic and related treatments.

Back to Russel brand though. Did he do what they say he did? Again, investigations are underway, so it's almost irrelevant to speculate with the limited evidence that the commons schmoes like us have at our disposal, so time will tell, and deplatforming only serves to further indict the accusatorial media, not Brand.

Is it likely that he engaged in such criminal activity? Well, given the circumstances of the "can do no wrong" mentality in the status quo of the entertainment industry at the time he is said to have committed such criminal acts, it is at least likely that several women woke up the following day seriously regretting being in his proximity - being a "bad boy" as he has characterized his previous incarnations is certainly something that borders on the teetering precipice of heinous behavior, but it certainly is already proving to not yield the kind of income that is the underlying basis for sensationalizing things like rape and coercion by the media.

Let's be the people that we're supposed to be, living in the societies that we claim are noble, and let due process take its course, and not convict in the public opinion. We already enjoy hanging 'em high, when it becomes a matter of being found guilty (or not guilty) in a court of law, and if he his guilty, then rest assured, we've all got a rope ready and waiting for him.

#tallship #media #sensationalism #innocent_until_proven_guilty #conspiracy_theories #slander #criminal_behavior #sexual_assault

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