It wasn't until this latest round of stories about Epstein that I found about his longtime association with Les Wexner.
I saw him once, walking through the City Centre Mall.
The whole thing is beyond creepy. The Christina Pelosi tweet makes me super curious.
A lot of these guys are open secrets. Cosby, obviously, and R. Kelly. But even Louis CK.
How old were Cosby's victims. 14 is really young. You'd Think that even powerful men would get in trouble for having sex with that many girls for that long.
Speaking of open secrets, I keep wondering whether Danny Elfman will be re-examined for "I Like Little Girls." I haven't heard any other rumors around him, not even on the gossip sites, but when you write and sing a song with those lyrics, perhaps we should wonder what else happened.
I have come to the conclusion that q/a/non was fomented as a cynical attempt to muddy these very waters.
Listen, I figured it out. It's a British West Eyeball Company false flag situation.
Check out this article about the decor in his house and note the casual description of a "row upon row of individually framed eyeballs . . . imported from England" as if importing eyeballs from England in particular was like, a known thing.
The English eyeball export industry has clearly set this up so that they can slip the fact that they exist in unnoticed amidst all the other insanely fucked up details. Now, next time the English eyeball export industry comes up no one will ask any questions, it's just the way the world is. And bam! Just like that a 300 million person market opens up!
From link in 8
The sidewalk outside the apartment is heated, which, after decades living in New York City, I did not even know was possible, although its sudden reality is very easy for me to accept.
I'm thinking he must have security that will make sure no homeless person takes advantage of this warmth.
It troubles me that we live on a landmass full of firearms and angry people, and the latter often use to former to vindicate some conspiracy theory or sociological fantasy or another, but apparently it has occurred to nobody to stop by East 71st Street and have words with Jeffrey Epstein.
Has anyone scrubbed the Hermione comments from the archives yet?
OT, but important legal news today. Can we talk about the 9th circuit judges lifting the injunction against the title X gag rule.
The three-judge panel (all of whom were appointed by Reagan or George W Bush came to this conclusion:
The 9th Circuit said in its ruling that it expects the Trump administration will prevail in the challenges.
"The Final Rule's prohibitions on advocating, encouraging, or promoting abortion, as well as on referring patients for abortions, are reasonable," the panel said.
I am not a lawyer, but I would not call this "reasonable" restrictions:
The prohibition on abortion referrals will take effect immediately. A requirement that providers keep their Title X-funded projects physically and financially separate from abortion services is slated to take effect in March 2020.
That latter would require providers to have separate offices and entrances for family planning and abortion services.
Recipients of the federal money also will be required to refer pregnant women to a non-abortion prenatal care provider. They may give women a list of providers that includes doctors who perform abortions but may not direct them to those doctors.
The rule requires providers to encourage patients to discuss their situation with their families and to tell single women about the benefits of abstinence.
They should let them talk up abstinence or lesbianism.
They should let them talk up abstinence or lesbianism.
You'd think somebody would have suggested that during the public comment period (was there a public comment period? I don't know).
"Vice President Pence would like us to remind you that butts can't get pregnant."
Clytie! That's the best conspiracy theory possible about this, and 18 suggests marketing opportunities even. (Seriously, it's been annoying how many doctors etc. don't have "not having sex with men" as a birth control option when they ask. They're often apologetic about it but I guess it didn't occur to them or something.)
It's also the case that this story has been around forever, and it was just the whims of MSM that kept this from ever really being front and center as a prominent story.
It's worth remembering that the Miami Herald's reporting re-started this. They have more tonight.
21 is correct. But it's not just "the whims of MSM". The threshold for action is higher if they are literally afraid, of being sued or worse.
"You guys, pizzagate was real. It was just Republicans in Florida and there was no pizza"
Not exactly. Pizzagate and Qanon believers are not envisioning high school girls being recruited for under-the-table jobs that then turn into prostitution. They are thinking about, like, 6-year-olds, and they think they are literally being killed for people's entertainment.
22: Right. That's the kind of thing that makes me, not exactly sympathize with the kind of jerk who gets huffy about "actually, it's not pedophilia, it's ephebophila", but think that it's a good distinction to draw and people shouldn't be calling Epstein a pedophile. The Pizzagate allegations are insane, because the number of people who want to sexually abuse, let alone ritually murder, prepubescent children, is really very small. Pedophiles are rare. (Not zero, there's lots of intrafamily abuse, and all that. But all of the Satanic panic daycare abuse rings were all fantasy.) Adults who want to sexually abuse teenagers, on the other hand, are pretty common -- it's still evil, and damaging, and is and should remain illegal, but it's not all that unusual. Calling the sort of thing Epstein was doing 'pedophilia' allows for a defense on Epstein's part (and anyone else who was involved) that of course he's not a pedophile, what are the odds of that, he's attracted to grown women, it just so happens that some of the 'grown women' involved were thirteen. To which the response should be no one gives a fuck who he's attracted to, the problem was that he was raping young teenagers.
Lumping this together with Pizzagate seems to me to be conflating wildly lunatic, implausible stories of a type that's been debunked over and over again with pretty conventional, ordinary evil. Epstein's story is freaky because of the scale and because he got away with it for so long, but that any given grown man wanted to rape young teenagers is much more about whether they're an ordinary rapist rather than a highly unusual pedophile.
23.2: Agree - but what about all the stories suggesting that Epstein's whole business is blackmail? Where does that fall in the lunatic, implausible scale?
I'd not be surprised if it was true.
To 24: "How such a scheme could hypothetically work has been laid out in detail in a thread on the anonymous Twitter feed of @quantian1. It's worth reading in its entirety, but in summary it is a rough blueprint for how a devious aspiring hedge-fund manager could blackmail rich people into investing with him without raising too many flags.
"Kass and former hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson both emailed the thread around in investing circles and both quickly discovered that their colleagues found it quite convincing. 'This actually sounds very plausible,' Tilson wrote in an email forwarding the thread to others."
24: Honestly, I don't know enough about investment management or rich people to have any kind of sense of what's plausible about the blackmail.
"Lesbians can make eye babies too."
And then sell their balls to Epstein to decorate his foyer.
23. Agreed.
IIRC the last time this shit was wheeled out they managed to involve the egregious Duke of York, but he weasled out of it on the grounds that:
1. He had imported the teenager in question to the UK, where the age of consent is 16, and
2. The teenager in question was 17 at the time.
So the law could not touch him.
23 is right, of course. I forgot how bonkers pizzagate was. I remembered it as just underage sex ring conspiracy.
Acosta resigned! Didn't think that was likely in the Trump era.
If I were at risk of facing a jury for allegedly engaging in a sex trafficking scheme, parts of which had been in the news a little bit for many years, what could I do to improve my odds? I would want to convince people that an alleged sex trafficking scheme that had been in the news a litle bit for many years,was totally incredible and had been thoroughly debunked by mainstream news sources.
Accordingly, I contend that Jeffrey Epstein, in conjunction with Dershowitz, Prince Edward, and oters who could plausibly become his co-defendants, were the funders of QAnon. R. Kelly might alwo be involved.
.
If I were an ambitious Manhattan lawyer (of which surely a few exist?) I would be organizing a campaign to get Cy Vance to resign, setting up a petition & rallies. It won't work, but you'd set up the base you need to defeat him in a primary.
https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1149725569786900480
Any takers?
I can't help thinking that so many of these men (Manafort, Acosta, Roger Stone) would have lived out their lives undisturbed if Trump hadn't run for President. They weren't on my radar, at least.
The part where they ascend to power under Trump is so horrifying and proves the worst of America. But then, time and again, proximity to Trump is taking down bad person after bad person, in a 'but for' kind of way.
I know the punishments aren't harsh enough. But without Trump's presidency, I doubt they'd have ever been punished for anything.
And yes, clearly, the better route would have been a good president, who was somehow motivated to root out rich corruption. But I hadn't seen signs of that coming before Trump brought it all into the spotlight, by flagrantly embodying it.
Longtime Unfogged punching bag Steven Pinker ["on the veldt..."] is as good as cancelled. I'm hoping that Dennett at least turns out to be good.
On the veldt, there were probably lots of pregnant girls.
Why didn't Epstein stay out of the country? On the one hand, he had the deal from Florida. On the other hand, probably somebody emailed him the Miami Herald articles so he should have been expecting something.
My wife randomly buys me books as presents (which is incredibly charming). She bought me one by Dennett. I tried to keep an open mind, but by page 20 I wanted to punch him in the face.
32. Prince Andrew is the corrupt piece of shit. The only rumour surrounding Prince Edward is that he may be gay but not out.
37: Short summary? At first I assumed he had made some creepy evopsych-ish remark about perving on 14 year olds back on the veldt, but it seems to be something more involved than that.
I can't bring myself to click on any of the relevant links because I hate clickbait web sites.
43: This tweet has the highlights. Not clickbait, unless you hate Twitter.
That tweet is really, really stretching. "Appears at Epstein-funded dinner". Really?
I like that they manage to deride TED talks also.
45: Right. On the one hand "friends with lots of douchey rich guys" seems to describe Pinker fairly well (Alan Dershowitz being exhibit A). On the other hand, twitter is certainly capable of launching itself into a 4 alarm temper tantrum over nothing. Also, there's a whole little subculture based on hating the guy, some of whose members aren't exactly attractive themselves. PZ M/y/ers of Steven Pinker, what a choice. I'll take a glass of hemlock instead.
Rather than research further, I'll just go with "everyone is even worse than you suspect". It's the safe choice.
More informed speculation along the lines of 24 here. Also, more on links to Barr.
6: also a number of Depeche Mode songs, if memory serves. I admit that I might not have heard about it if the members of Depeche Mode had all been arrested and served time years ago, though.
They found their own personal Jesus in prison.
I'm not going to remember most of this, but there was a song called "Little 15" and a different one where the lyrics were "You're only 15, but you look good..." and then creepier from there. "A Question of Time," maybe? It was like The Grooming Anthem.
There's that line in Cypress Avenue that really sounds different to me now, 50 years later. I'd still take AW to a desert island, but man, does that ring wrong.
Maybe Van agrees, because I think he skipped the line here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKuM5oKk0es
Do you folks know how many versions of Good Morning Little Schoolgirl there are on the internet? Obviously the original Sonny Boy Williamson is good, I think my favorite is Muddy Waters from 1963. Mississippi Fred Hampton version is great too. Listen to all three for the differences in regional styles. Taj Mahal too. And Junior Wells.
Obviously Huey Lewis, David Bowie, Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Grateful Dead, Ten Years After are in a different league.
I just looked up what a "carpet and tile extractor" actually is, and damn that's creepy.
53: Yep, A Question of Time. Christ, I kind of liked that song.
Stray Cat Blues 1969 -- "I know you're just 13 years old, but I don't want your ID:"
The taboo against early teenage girls crumbled really quickly, though, in rock music: some time after 1967. There's a recording of pigpen doing good morning little schoolgirl in which the super transgressive payoff line is "I don't care if youre just 17 years of age", and a few years later, people were happily singing along to John Perry Barlow's lyric - "Instead I've got a bottle and a girl that's just 14, and a dan good case of the Mexicali Blues".
Now I shall go and chase down Muddy Waters
I always interpreted that line in Mexicali Blues as being there to emphasise how much of a loser the guy was.
And Serge Gainsbourg was just a father more involved with his kids than was common at the time.
60: I think there's often self-awareness and maybe even a little self-contempt when artists talk about predation, but that's not a sign they aren't doing it or don't intend to keep doing it - look at Woody Allen. Or in A Question of Time, now that I put all the lyrics together properly, the overall theme is "I need to 'get to' this girl before other groomers/predators go after her", and it seems intentional that over the course of the song the distinction the speaker tries to draw between himself and the "others" collapses and he admits he's one of them. So a bit of a pattern, and not necessarily exculpatory.
It's don't find Mexicali Blues to be a celebration of predation. I believe I'm also on record saying that lyrics of Grateful Dead songs are sometimes just a device to occupy parts of the brain that seem to need that sort of thing, and often aren't to be taken either seriously or literally. Barlow and Hunter had the toughest jobs, trying to find the space where lyrics hang together enough to do that work, but aren't distracting from the ritual purpose of the song. This isn't uncommon -- what is Sweet Release "about," anyway? (To pick on one of the great songs of the era, by someone else.) Mexicali Blues strikes me as being like Jack Straw, where the contrast between the negative nature of the story and the positive nature of the music - Jack Straw is a much better bit of craft -- is much more important than the particulars of the story.
I don't know which song it would have been, but when I was a teenager, I interpreted this kind of song as being, "oh, the singer is singing from the POV of a 15 or 16 year old boy who is lusting after someone his own age." Sort of the narcissism of youth that I thought being 15 or 16 must be such an important time that someone would want to revisit it in themselves or something, but I didn't find the songs/trope predatory because the concept wasn't on my radar.
I wasn't really talking about baseball either.
I have achieved literally nothing I set out to do this weekend. Except drink whisky. Call it a draw?
Look, not only was I actually on his shoulder, pirate style, but I definitely told him that I understood him. And I did.
64: "She was too young to fall in love, and I was too young to know."
"She was too young to fall in love, and I was too young to know."
Three out of the four members of Dion and the Belmonts were (just) teenagers when they released T. Nager in Lurve. The guys who wrote it were anything but. Also Lou Christie was over 30 when he had a hit with a cover in the mid 60s.