Russell Brand, Sexual Predation, And Coverup At The BBC

September 17, 2023 10:38 AM

In an expose by The Times, several women have come forth to accuse comedian, BBC presenter, and "wellness guru" Russell Brand of rape (both statutory and physical), sexual assault, and emotional abuse - and the BBC of covering it up. (SLThe Times, ungated, cw: rape, sexual assault, grooming, abuse)
posted by NoxAeternum (125 comments total)

fyi, archive.ph is broken for many users (infinite captcha)
posted by ryanrs at 11:00 AM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

12ft.io ungated link
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:04 AM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

So far I've only read the reports about this in other media, I have yet to find the strength to read the full expose, it's so sickening really, not just the allegations but reactions to it. If anyone needs yet another reason to despise Elon Musk...

Also, I feel really stupid because I confess that, way before he started pivoting towards the wellness-to-fascism via conspiracy theories pipeline, I used to like him especially as part of a duo with Noel Fielding and now I just feel kind of sick to even think about that. Yuck.
posted by bitteschoen at 11:07 AM on September 17, 2023 [22 favorites]

It's worth pointing out that Brand is also tied back to the last BBC sexual abuse coverup:

In May 2007, Brand called Jimmy Savile, who suggested the pair could meet if Brand brought along a sister. Brand doesn’t have a sister, so instead offered to bring a female employee — agreeing, on Savile’s request, that she should be naked.

“I’ve got a personal assistant,” he said. “And part of her job description is that anyone I demand she greet, meet, massages, she has to do it. She’s very attractive, Jimmy.” This was four years before Savile’s death and five years before details of the Jim’ll Fix It presenter’s crimes were exposed.

According to insiders who were working for BBC radio at the time, complaints were made about Brand’s behaviour in the studios to Lesley Douglas, then the BBC’s controller for Radio 2 and 6 Music, but nothing appeared to be done as a result.

posted by NoxAeternum at 11:19 AM on September 17, 2023 [16 favorites]

I feel like it's worth adding that at the time of the assaults he was also presenting shows for Channel 4, who have repeatedly booked him for gigs in the years since. This documentary feels like the channel in part getting ahead of any accusations of wrongdoing on their part (though they're also supposedly conducting an investigation, along with the BBC).

I used to like him especially as part of a duo with Noel Fielding and now I just feel kind of sick to even think about that.

Sadly Noel Fielding isn't coming out of this looking very good either, especially now people have started digging up the fact that he had a "relationship" with 16 year old Pixie Geldof when he was 33. (Can I just say how gross it was to see this treated like a salacious little story? No excuses for the time period, it was 2007 ffs.)
posted by fight or flight at 11:21 AM on September 17, 2023 [36 favorites]

well gee, if Andrew Taint is backing him up he must be innocent!
posted by supermedusa at 11:24 AM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I wish Musk godspeed to finish his spaceship so he can remove, with him, all the awful people from our society.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:26 AM on September 17, 2023 [15 favorites]

I love the way that corporations “conduct investigations” only after there is no chance of hiding what is going on. I pay a bit of attention to UK comedy people, and there are so many great talents who could fill the abusers’ shoes in moments, that I don’t know why the “top names” are so protected.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:43 AM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

After the Russell Brand wave here in the US during the early 00s, I honestly forgot about him. Then the Katy Perry thing. Forgot again. I had noticed a brief surge amongst friends of mine on IG, mostly praising him for being a man who was transparent about his own mental health journey as well as encouraging other men to follow suit. Then I promptly forgot again.

In any case, I'm not terribly surprised. His defence of owning his past behaviour doesn't absolve him from assaulting past partners. I hope these women get the justice they deserve and then we can all collectively memory-hole this bedheaded turnip.
posted by Kitteh at 11:55 AM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

Can I just say how gross it was to see this treated like a salacious little story?

The tone of the story about Pixie Geldof & Noel Fielding is so, so gross. "The pretty GCSE student was spotted at a private party at the Proud Gallery in Camden, North London, on Thursday night, canoodling with bad boy Mighty Boosh comedian Noel Fielding, 33." Dude, what the flark? You just reported a possible crime, not a juicy bit of gossip.

I was never much of a fan of Brand, although (many years ago) I did generally appreciate his left-leaning attitudes on crime, drug use, etc. etc. Last semester I was showing some clips from the (not very good) Tempest film starring Helen Mirren, with Brand as the fool Trinculo. One of my students said something like, "Oh, he's a totally insufferable right-wing asshole now." Not having paid any attention to him for the last decade plus, I was momentarily surprised, then I thought to myself, "Oh, I bet he went all anti-vax conspiracy theory."

But hey, at least he's in good company with Musk & Tate *barf*
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:58 AM on September 17, 2023 [10 favorites]

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH. I'm just so sickened by the fact that it might be "Not all men!"(TM) but it's a hell of a lot of men. Goddammit.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:59 AM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]

A tweet from 2021 is going around again that says, essentially, Brand is turning to the right-wing so he'll be able to say "I'm being cancelled for my politics!" when women start talking.
posted by Etrigan at 12:00 PM on September 17, 2023 [62 favorites]

Musk and Tate rushing to his defense is kinda chef's kiss, tho
posted by ryanrs at 12:01 PM on September 17, 2023 [19 favorites]

I have yet to find the strength to read the full expose

Do yourself a favor and don't. It's bad, and there is absolutely nothing in it that's remotely exculpatory. This can't be explained away with "Oh gosh, sorry, I didn't realize it was that uncomfortable for her, and I'm so sorry." It's straight-up criminal against more than one person.
posted by Etrigan at 12:02 PM on September 17, 2023 [18 favorites]

Well this is about the least surprising news ever, about one of the most obviously narcissistic people on earth. Apparently Tucker Carlson is also voicing support. In a just world, maybe he could spend the next three decades hanging out with That 70s rapist.
posted by snofoam at 12:05 PM on September 17, 2023 [13 favorites]

yes, its difficult to maintain faith in "not all men" when it seems that all men who gain a modicum of power/money/fame use it to rape women and fuck teenagers (more rapey goodness!) barf indeed :(
posted by supermedusa at 12:06 PM on September 17, 2023 [11 favorites]

His "statement in full" seems awfully Trumpy:

Hello there you awakening wonders. Now this isn’t the usual type of video we make on this channel where we critique, attack, and undermine the news in all its corruption, because in this story, I am the news. I’ve received two extremely disturbing letters, or a letter, and an email, one from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper, listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks, as well as some pretty stupid stuff like, my community festival should be stopped, that I shouldn’t be able to attack mainstream media narratives on this channel, but amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute. ... Now, I don’t want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I’m being attacked, and plainly they are working very closely together. We are obviously going to look into this matter, because it’s very very serious. In the meantime I want you to stay close, stay awake, but more important than any of that, if you can, please stay free.
posted by chavenet at 12:51 PM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was looking at tumblr when the expose was announced without naming Brand. The posts I saw were around the lines of “I wonder who is is! Not accepting Brand as a guess because it’s almost certainly him.”
posted by lepus at 12:53 PM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

oh my not russell brand what a surprise
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:03 PM on September 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

tbh I think people like Brand have a vested interest in making people believe that it is all men (or at least, all men with the opportunity), since it makes their behavior seem inevitable
posted by BungaDunga at 1:05 PM on September 17, 2023 [39 favorites]

Oh dear. Has Mr Winkie been up to no good?
posted by flabdablet at 1:17 PM on September 17, 2023 [6 favorites]

Now we’ll see how many bought Brand’s anti-‘mainstream media’ shtick

What’s different from previous cases is that the prominent man has already largely stopped working with the big media institutions. Instead, Brand largely exists in a parallel world where his income comes from podcasting, YouTube advertising revenue, and selling membership of his online community to become one of Russell Brand’s “awakened wonders”; fans gain access to interviews with the likes of the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and anti-vaccine US Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy.
posted by philip-random at 1:21 PM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don’t think this makes it ok, but because there is a substantive difference between creepers who respect age of consent laws and creepers who don’t, the age of consent in England and Wales is 16.
posted by vim876 at 1:30 PM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

become one of Russell Brand’s “awakened wonders”

Is being awakened the same as being woke?
posted by heatherlogan at 1:30 PM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don’t think this makes it ok, but

He literally said he doesn't respect the age of consent laws, and didn't care if she was 12.
posted by ryanrs at 1:32 PM on September 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

Is being awakened the same as being woke?

Brand has never been fond of using one syllable where four would do.
posted by flabdablet at 1:34 PM on September 17, 2023 [11 favorites]

My mistake.
posted by vim876 at 1:47 PM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

If it is any consolation for Mr B, everyone will be paying a lot of attention to him for awhile.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:07 PM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

If it is any consolation for Mr B

Probably a fair bit. One of the things I’ve always found really creepy about Brand is the very specific edge of desperation in his voice and in the look in his eyes, as if, thousands of years ago, he was cursed to spend every second that someone wasn’t looking at him in some sort of literal hell dimension.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:11 PM on September 17, 2023 [27 favorites]

become one of Russell Brand’s “awakened wonders”
Is being awakened the same as being woke?

I would assume it is the exact opposite.
posted by snofoam at 2:26 PM on September 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is why I don't like to leave my vampire castle.
posted by fleacircus at 2:40 PM on September 17, 2023 [17 favorites]

I was pretty sure Brand was already involved in a rape scandal back in the 2010s, after some googling I think it must have just been that he told so many jokes about raping women that I just assumed.
posted by muddgirl at 2:41 PM on September 17, 2023 [15 favorites]

Not only a rapist, but as pointed out above, a fascism-excusing "iconoclast", 'just asking questions" right-wing, conspiracy peddler.

I once admired Russell Brand. But his grim trajectory shows us where politics is heading
posted by lalochezia at 2:43 PM on September 17, 2023 [9 favorites]

My pop culture reference for when Brand was being cast in films in America and it not working out is Gretchen in Mean Girls and her trying to make "fetch" happen.

He kept trying but could not make fetch happen.
posted by Kitteh at 3:03 PM on September 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

I read his book several years ago and I was shocked to find that it wasn't a stupid celebrity memoir but rather thoughtful and thought-provoking. It also draws a picture of someone extremely wounded who was probably dangerous to the people around him.

I keep trying to articulate this but I'm not getting anywhere so let's just say that these accusations seem completely believable after reading that book.
posted by bq at 3:24 PM on September 17, 2023 [16 favorites]

I belonged to a Facebook group for people who have left AA. There is a huge problem in AA with predatory behaviour, a lot of newly sober people(mainly women) are vulnerable and predators seek them out. A lot of which gets sloughed off as 'the 13th step', etc, and I posted about Brand last night in the group because he is such a prominent AA and sobriety figure.
I ended up leaving the group today because of the sheer amount of vile comments defending Brand, essentially saying that there's no evidence and it's all hearsay and tabloid journalism and it just seemed like most male comments went that way.
I imagine he's done horrible things to sex workers as well, but generally they don't count in our staggeringly hypocritical society.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 3:27 PM on September 17, 2023 [34 favorites]

he had a "relationship" with 16 year old Pixie Geldof when he was 33. (Can I just say how gross it was to see this treated like a salacious little story? No excuses for the time period, it was 2007 ffs.)

Good lord. As a story from 1967, it would seem gross but typical. The salacious/approving tone is not what I would expect in this century.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:33 PM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Peter Sagal on Bluesky: "It's always the ones you most expect."
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:27 PM on September 17, 2023 [44 favorites]

My pop culture reference for whenever Brand opens his mouth is Armstrong & Miller's BBC Royal Correspondent, where lots of individual things are listed but no useful information is conveyed. That or a 12 year old that's just discovered the Thesaurus.

As for @GenjiandProust's comment about "there are so many great talents who could fill the abusers’ shoes in moments", I feel the need to quote myself from the heady days of three and a half weeks ago when we were talking about (*checks notes*) a predatory orchestra conductor.

Monsters like this, said to be excused for their skill, potentially displace more skillful non-monsters. They succeed because of their monstrosity, not despite it, because we live in a world of monsters that protect their own.

You can't help but wonder if Brand's "big break" (whenever or whatever that was) was indeed a monster recognizing another monster and adding him to the pack.
posted by krisjohn at 4:30 PM on September 17, 2023 [26 favorites]

I remember Katherine Ryan speaking to Louis Theroux last year about an unnamed British male comic that was a sexual predator and a “perpetrator of sexual assault”.

Ryan said she previously confronted the unnamed man in front of others but said his alleged unacceptable behavior remains an “open secret” in the industry.

“It’s very dangerous for us to have this conversation,”
“I’m happy to have it, but it’s a litigious minefield because lots of people have tried to nail this person down for their alleged crimes and this person has very good lawyers, so am I going to put my mortgage on the line by saying who this person is or entering into any conversations like that?”

She didn't name them, but a lot of online commentators (e.g.) were sure that it was Brand she was talking about as allegations had been swirling around him for years, and they were on Roast Battle together for one season before he was replaced. Fern Brady has also previously intimated that he was predator before deleting the tweet.

The most depressing thing of course is that any woman that did put their head above the parapet and name him would immediately take a ludicrous amount of abuse, not Brand. We've seen it repeatedly with MeToo where some predatory 'personality' is named, kicked off a show or two, then is back a year later trying to launder their reputation. Brand is already embedded in the right wing misogynist horror show, so has ready defenders like Tate and crowd. It's depressing that Daniel Sloss is taking a much smaller risk by speaking up about the 'open secret' in the industry than any woman or girl Brand (allegedly) assaulted would have. Several prep school pupils at my wife's school are open followers of Tate (complete with the clear contempt of women, the 'secret' hand gestures and weird trick questions) - they're freaking 11 and 12, and it's horrifying. It might not be 'all men' who are rapists and sexual predators, but we're doing a really piss-poor job of rooting out and locking up those who are, let alone tackling the growing male culture that's confident in aggressively celebrating and defending them, which is even worse than the past behaviour of just quietly supporting and believing their denials.

The BBC and Channel 4 also definitely have questions to answer about how they managed to remain so conveniently ignorant as to what their big name presenter was doing, especially when he was finally nailed for 'Sachsgate'. It's Jimmy Savile all over again.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:31 PM on September 17, 2023 [45 favorites]

It's depressing that Daniel Sloss is taking a much smaller risk by speaking up about the 'open secret' in the industry than any woman or girl Brand (allegedly) assaulted would have.

Agreed - like Hannibal Buress speaking out about Bill Cosby.
posted by ZaphodB at 6:02 PM on September 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

This seems like a good time to drop this comment I made about my then-girlfriend-now-wife's encounter with Brand from a fucking decade ago.

The dude has always been a creep and it is remarkable that anyone managed not to notice it.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 6:35 PM on September 17, 2023 [84 favorites]

Since The Times story dropped, I've spent some time reading the Twitter newsfeed for "Russell Brand" and blocking account after account -- most of which are men and/or have blue checks -- whose posts essentially claim high-handedly that if they don't personally believe that Brand is a predator, he can't be one.
posted by orange swan at 7:12 PM on September 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

I wish Musk godspeed to finish his spaceship so he can remove, with him, all the awful people from our society.

Christen it the 'Ark B'
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:38 PM on September 17, 2023 [11 favorites]

It was another* tick down for MSNBC when they invited Brand onto Morning Joe* a loooooonnnnngggg time ago. 'nuff said.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:53 PM on September 17, 2023

ChurchHatesTucker: Christen it the 'Ark B'

I was thinking 'Titan'
posted by tzikeh at 7:59 PM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm shocked -- shocked I tell you! -- that a sleezy misogynist who made jokes about rape turned out to be an actual rapist. What's next? The hipster racists turning out to be actual racists in real life? It's almost like all the 'edgy' humor of the 2000s and 2010s was actually just the same old oppression and exploitation. I mean damn, will we have to start thinking about why Cards Against Humanity was so popular in those decades now? Madness. Who could possibly have seen it coming.
posted by EllaEm at 8:01 PM on September 17, 2023 [21 favorites]

this guy always gave me the worst fucking vibes and i never understand how other people couldn't see the sickness at his core. i hope justice comes to him.
posted by dis_integration at 8:23 PM on September 17, 2023 [10 favorites]

A minor codicil to the state of British comedy telling on itself these days: Richard Ayoade wrote a glowing review of Graham Linehan's forthcoming book about being cancelled for his anti-trans trolling.

Fuck it. Airlift Daniel Sloss out of there and then sink the island.
posted by fatbird at 11:09 PM on September 17, 2023 [6 favorites]

Brand has never been left wing.

Like a lot of other people in the entertainment industry he affected anti-state positions, partially because states do things like put people in prison for rape I guess (although sadly not in this case), and that gets coded as "left" when it never was nor is. Also, if you want to work in the entertainment industry you have to at least pretend to believe in a particular package of beliefs or you don't really get to play. I'm sure that a large number of these creeps vote their own class interests for the Conservatives, Republicans, or whatever the local rich-guy party is but going around and advocating that isn't really going to fly.

Last time I heard about his politics (I wasn't aware but also not surprised by his turn to outright conspiracy theory nonsense) he was telling people not to vote because it doesn't matter and of course to a rich man like him, it basically doesn't.
posted by atrazine at 1:40 AM on September 18, 2023 [14 favorites]

"Don't vote because it doesn't matter" is actually a right-wing tactic.
posted by krisjohn at 1:43 AM on September 18, 2023 [11 favorites]

Mod note: One removed; don't attack other commenters (FAQ). Also, it's probably better to just concentrate on the specific subject here, rather than get into flamewars about what countries are better / worse. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:44 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

He literally said he doesn't respect the age of consent laws, and didn't care if she was 12.

He said that sure but he made sure to check, didn't he? He was also very insistent that she never send him any nudes.

This is a man who knew to the letter what was and wasn't illegal and was easy to get caught for - I bet he never laid a hand on a 16 year old in California - and stayed on the side where he could get away with it legally. Of course, it's clear from these horrifying stories that many of these encounters were not consensual so he has committed several serious crimes but I bet he knew exactly how hard those would have been to prosecute.
posted by atrazine at 2:00 AM on September 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

A tweet from 2021 is going around again that says, essentially, Brand is turning to the right-wing so he'll be able to say "I'm being cancelled for my politics!" when women start talking.

I saw a posted comment online that if Epstein had become a public right-wing pundit prior to his conviction and death, the social media machine of support that we're seeing here would be defending his name to this day. Musk & Co. are in the business of creating a safe(/profitable) space for abusers and Brand is savvy enough to utilize it.

There also needs to be a true reckoning at the BBC, this protection of abusers is now repeated behaviour and clearly systemic.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:14 AM on September 18, 2023 [14 favorites]

To be fair to the BBC, they did fire him. And that was before he went on to have a successful movie career, writing career, and apparently become some kind of inspirational guru? (This is all news to me btw. I have been actively avoiding anything to do with him since around the time he was on BBC Radio 2 because he gave me the creeps.) In other words, the protection of abusers is/was repeated and systemic across society, including by the people who enjoyed his content. Focusing just on one institution would be missing the point. He wasn't exactly hiding who he was.
posted by EllaEm at 4:42 AM on September 18, 2023 [11 favorites]

To that point, Dannii Minogue in a 2006 interview with The Mirror: “He is completely crazy and a bit of a vile predator. I certainly don’t think he has cured his sex addiction, that’s for sure. He wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she said. “Throughout the whole interview, he kept making shocking remarks that I can’t even repeat. Just uttering the words would make me blush.”
posted by happyfrog at 4:47 AM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

2006. That reminds me, as with Andrew Tate, his guiding light seemed to be a truly rotten father. At the time one way he said this so-called sex addiction manifested was in the fact that he'd slept with over 1000 women, a claim repeated in the press without much comment, question or critique. Except from, I think Germaine Greer, and my googling isn't up to finding a link from so many years ago, but her comment was that in interpreting such a statistic what one should ask oneself is why no one was coming back to have sex with him twice?
posted by glasseyes at 5:07 AM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

...Germaine Greer...

Here.
posted by biffa at 5:16 AM on September 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

Yay!
posted by glasseyes at 5:38 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Parasite Unseen: Thanks for the link back to that old thread. Before revisiting it, I would have said that a thread like that was MetaFilter in 2003, not 2013. Thank you for speaking up back then in the face of a whole lot of fanboys who did not want to hear criticism of their beloved charismatic guru man.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:15 AM on September 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

yes, its difficult to maintain faith in "not all men" when it seems that all men who gain a modicum of power/money/fame use it to rape women and fuck teenagers (more rapey goodness!) barf indeed :(

Sadly Noel Fielding isn't coming out of this looking very good either...

The Controversies section of the Wikipedia page for fellow Brit comedian, childrens book author and multi-channel UK TV 'celebrity' David Walliams.
posted by Wordshore at 6:38 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was just looking through that Brand thread from 2013 and this comment caught my eye:

Dismissing Russell Brand just because he makes a lot of money is not particularly different from someone saying that Donald Trump would make a good President because he's rich.
posted by Etrigan at 6:52 AM on October 24, 2013
posted by mcduff at 6:54 AM on September 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

Zero surprise about Brand. I am bummed out about Noel Fielding (and I just saw some news articles about him and Brand and some pretty inappropriate “jokes” on TV shows they did together years ago - not going to link them). I haven’t followed Noel’s career - I just liked his dark quirky style of comedy in the IT Crowd and a few other random shows like Big Fat Quiz often when he made a surreal pair with Richard Ayoade. (and I just Googled Richard Ayoade to get the spelling of his name right…and…well….fuck - never meet your heroes indeed)
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:55 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here's an ungated link to how they did the reporting, if you see anyone whining online about how "easy" it is to cancel someone. The investigation has been going on since 2019, you better believe they have receipts.

I enjoyed a few of the things Brand wrote way back in the day, but I can't say this is a huge surprise. I feel like with a lot of these dudes who make hypersexuality their whole persona and can't switch it off, you end up finding out... they don't switch it off even when other people are saying no. (This is so different from sex-positivity. Plenty of people are sex-positive and still capable of compartmentalizing and functioning in non-sexy spaces, like the Queer Eye guys.)

I remember when he was married to Katy Perry and he posted this groggy, unflattering just-woke-up picture of her without her consent, and it just squicked me out on such an epic level. I'd be pissed as a regular person if my partner did that, much less as a celebrity whose whole thing is a very curated, made-up presentation of self. And I feel like at the time he got praised for, like, exposing her shallowness or something? But no. You don't have to be a Katy Perry stan to see that a) he's messing with her job b) he's doing something he knows she will hate for fun. That is red flag behavior.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 7:08 AM on September 18, 2023 [13 favorites]

Russell Brand? That hairy bloke with the Charlie Manson eyes? This time I’m not surprised.

Here’s British comedian Simon Evans commenting on the Brand case, and I believe he’s right.

”Brand is not now and never was a comedian. He was never on the “comedy circuit”, which is now being traduced as an unreconstructed sewer of nodding, winking, pawing, leering predatory men, with a code of silence to match their coercive behaviour.

He’s a TV/Tabloid/PR construct and that is the sewer you need to navigate if you want to understand the culture that allowed him to thrive. Pretty much the exact same one that allowed his illustrious precursors in disgrace to thrive before him. ”
posted by Termite at 7:20 AM on September 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

This situation is making me sit with the uglier side of my time on Twitter. I've dropped it, but a part of me really wants to get on to gawk at what Jimmy Dore, Greenwald, the Grayzone shitheels, etc. are saying in Brand's defense. I hate this ugly impulse.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:26 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

He wasn't exactly hiding who he was.

Abusers usually aren't very good at hiding who they are. They may make an effort to keep themselves out of legal hot water by informing themselves what the law is, but because they don't have any real respect or concern for others they don't have a genuinely nuanced sense of what is right and wrong, and they always wind up stepping over boundaries because they think they can get away with it. Brand was especially brazen about it, but a close look at any abuser's work or real life behaviour almost always reveals telltale signs.

After Danny Masterson was convicted and there was an uproar over Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis having written letters attesting to his good character in an effort to help him get a reduced sentence, there was clip after clip and screencap after screencap released of truly disgusting things both Masterson and Kutcher had said in interviews, and of some appalling "jokes" made in That 70s Show.

When the news broke about Chris Noth being a rapist, I saw a screencap of a news article from the 1995 which said that Beverly Johnson, who had dated him for a time, had to file a restraining order against him and hire a bodyguard after she broke up with him and he stalked her and threatened to kill her and her dog. There were blind items released in the newspapers over the years about his behaviour towards young female NYU students. There was also an article posted written by Kristin Davis's stand-in from Sex and the City which described his on set behaviour as being very disrespectful, so much so that some of the crew began assuming they could act badly as well (i.e., it was her job to stand in one particular spot on the floor that was marked by masking tape, and Noth would come walking along and deliberately barge right into her).

When the news about Amber Heard's accusations towards Johnny Depp came out, Paul Bettany rushed to his defense, tweeting that Depp was the kindest, sweetest, gentlest man he knew. Then during the trial there were text messages between Bettany and Depp released in which Depp said, among a number of vile things, that he wanted to kill Amber and burn her body.

Back in the sixties Bill Cosby did stand-up about "Spanish Fly", a rape drug. There was some really problematic material on The Cosby Show. There was a security guard who has spoken out about how he quit working for Cosby because he'd been asked to bring teenaged models to Cosby's dressing room from one particular modelling agency.

The truth is always out there. The people who know and work with these celebrities have very often seen bad behaviour or at least red flags. Sometimes a lot of people know, and there's a whisper campaign at work as people try to keep others safe from the abuser. It's often possible for even someone who's just googling the celebrity to figure that they're bad news from the information available online. But there are a number of socioeconomic forces at work suppressing that truth. The victims, or others in the know, are afraid to go to the authorities or public with what they know or have experienced because they don't have concrete evidence and/or because of what the backlash would do to their lives. Some people who have seen red flags don't know enough about abuse to recognize the red flags for what they portend. Sometimes, because abusers groom character witnesses as well as victims, there are people who know the abuser well who genuinely care about them and are very resistant to believing ill of them. Sometimes the people who rush to the abuser's defense are vile people themselves. Many people -- often those with a lot of clout -- have a vested interest in protecting the abuser. And of course, the abuser, who is often wealthy and well-connected, will fight tooth and nail and exploit defamation laws and other facets of the justice system to keep the truth from coming out, as Bill Cosby did for decades.

If you want to support victims and make sure you're not enabling abusers, it's really important to educate yourself about abuse and about how abusers operate, and to be on your guard and keep an eye out for red flags, not only in your personal and work life, but also when supporting the arts and media, and in the political arena.
posted by orange swan at 7:40 AM on September 18, 2023 [57 favorites]

Russell Brand’s Live Tour Postponed Following Allegations
posted by Etrigan at 9:38 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

The idea that Russell Brand is or was not a comedian is absolutely ridiculous revisionist history 🤷
posted by muddgirl at 10:08 AM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

He literal won awards for his stand-up comedy.
posted by muddgirl at 10:13 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

He literal won awards for his stand-up comedy.

Which, in hindsight, seems to have been a horrible mistake. And it's worth pointing out that stand-up has a long, ignoble history of protecting and abetting abusers, as Bill Cosby and Louis CK have made abundantly clear.

So perhaps you're right, as Brand seems to fit in well amongst those sorts.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:21 AM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

Exactly, the idea that stand-up comedy hasn't been (in large part and with a lot of people working to change it) the kind of "boys club" that actively welcomes abusers is laughable.
posted by muddgirl at 11:43 AM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

It always felt like his character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall wasn't too far from real life.
posted by rhizome at 11:56 AM on September 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

the idea that stand-up comedy hasn't been (in large part and with a lot of people working to change it) the kind of "boys club" that actively welcomes abusers is laughable

Indeed. Noted groomer Chris D'Elia has never stopped touring, to use a very recent example.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:27 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Russel Brand's face is now the top spot on https://www.bbc.co.uk/ and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news and https://www.channel4.com/news/ and https://www.itv.com/news and https://www.theguardian.com/uk and probably a whole lot of other news sites.

He is now more famous than he has ever been.
posted by swr at 1:57 PM on September 18, 2023

Fuck it. Airlift Daniel Sloss out of there and then sink the island.

Some recent headlines which have caught my eye:
Sexual harassment complaints widespread in fire service, new data reveals
MPs to investigate sexual harassment of female surgeons
Westminster: House of Commons culture still 'predatory', say staff

And of course:
Met Police misconduct: 1000 sexual allegations to be investigated against officers

Is it this bad everywhere or just here?
posted by Kiwi at 2:54 PM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

You’re right to be angry about Russell Brand – and the establishments, old and new, that gave him his power
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

There is convincing speculation on some excellent British blogs
that the timing issue, as in "why now, given these alleged rapes/assaults are from the past?" (which, as Brand burbles, is Obviously Evidence of Deflection from Real News by the UK's version of the sinister Big State...) is entirely due to the expiry of a super-injunction, devised by Brand's lawyers.

This may well be gibberish.

But there are a number of facts that seem to support this - including the victim statements saying Brand has some excellent lawyers.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 4:09 PM on September 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

Is it this bad everywhere or just here?

Sexual harassment is as common as breathing air. It's just that periodically we have phases where people notice more.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:42 PM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

Once again, the Onion are on the case:

Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender

NEW YORK—Stressing that the memory seemed so fresh and vivid in their minds, the confused nation announced Monday that they could have sworn British entertainer Russell Brand was already a convicted sex offender. “Interesting...so Russell Brand definitely wasn’t already found guilty of sexual assault back in, like...2016, 2017?” said 39-year-old New York resident Scott Hasard, echoing the thoughts of 330 million Americans as he noted that when he saw allegations emerge about the actor, comedian, and podcast host, he had assumed it was simply repackaged content from nearly a decade ago.

posted by Nerd of the North at 5:48 PM on September 18, 2023 [39 favorites]

Is it this bad everywhere or just here?

Everywhere. For example, the Johnny's talent agency sex abuse scandal is ongoing in Japan, the French Catholic Church is facing a scandal related to overseas missions, as well as the Boy Scouts of America facing 'one of the largest sexual abuse scandals in US history'.

sink the island.

Presumably this island Earth.
posted by plep at 10:57 PM on September 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

There is so much that is depressing and outrageous about the actions of Russell Brand and his enablers. It's sickening. But one of the worst outcomes is the almost total focus on him, and his actions, and the attendant lack of attention on the female victims of his crimes. On one level that is understandable given the need for their anonymity, but the impact on them of what happened in the past and the ghastly reliving of it that the current publicity must bring to the fore, seems largely absent from the media coverage. I do wish their was more attention paid to them.
posted by vac2003 at 1:07 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

In the early 00s, I remember enjoying Brand's comedy on panel shows and the like but I wasn't overly familiar with his persona.

I watched Get Him to the Greek, which came out in 2010, and was horrified that the (comedy) film included a scene of rape, and when the character who was raped (ironically played by Jonah Hill) tells Brand's character (who was essentially Brand with a different name), he dismisses it entirely. The whole, "any man would love to be raped by an attractive woman" trope. Brand's character then gives the victim a join laced with LSD to "help" him calm down.

It turned me off then, even though I knew it was a movie and even though I knew they were characters, it said something about Brand to me that I never shook off. I wondered at the time why more people weren't talking about how that was handled; I remembered thinking that survivors should know that they were not only walking into a movie with a distressing scene but it's followed by dismissing the report of rape.

Brand is a perp, no doubt. And he's part of an industry that supports and celebrates perping.
posted by custardfairy at 7:10 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

"one of the worst outcomes is the almost total focus on him, and his actions, and the attendant lack of attention on the female victims of his crimes"

I'm not having a dig at you specifically, because lots of people say this. But what kind of attention should be paid to victims? They need to be anonymous for their own safety, and they don't owe anyone a story about their trauma. I just don't see how any attention from the media would help them at all, or us as an audience. Keeping their privacy is the least we can do to help them.
posted by harriet vane at 7:37 AM on September 19, 2023 [23 favorites]

Marina Hynde recalls “had no truck with any of this bollocks – but I don’t think it will quite do for me to spend even a nanosecond on self-congratulation, because I got other things wrong”.
posted by rongorongo at 7:57 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was about to post a comment similar to harriet vane's. I don't see what the media or the public can do to help Brand's victims, although I suppose we could lobby for better mental health counselling services, something that there's a huge need for universally.

YouTube has suspended monetization on Brand's account.

The BBC has removed programs featuring Russell Brand from its iPlayer and Sounds platforms.
posted by orange swan at 7:58 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm not having a dig at you specifically, because lots of people say this. But what kind of attention should be paid to victims? They need to be anonymous for their own safety, and they don't owe anyone a story about their trauma. I just don't see how any attention from the media would help them at all, or us as an audience. Keeping their privacy is the least we can do to help them

^This^

Already horrible things are being said about these women, so giving Those Kinds of People personal info about them? Oh lord. Their lives would come under such scrutiny and for what? Let them be safe and anonymous while they can.
posted by Kitteh at 8:00 AM on September 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

I just don't see how any attention from the media would help them at all, or us as an audience.

At least to me, the comment is less about pulling the victims into the spotlight, and more how we frame these discussions around the perpetrators and not around the victims and their impacts and harms. Too often, the reality of how these victims had their lives upended falls to the wayside in these discussions.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:00 AM on September 19, 2023 [9 favorites]

Yeah I also read that comment in the same spirit, at least I highly doubt that "lack of attention on the victims" meant that we should deprive them of anonymity, that seems to be a peculiar misreading.

I think focusing more on the victims would simply mean giving their perspective more consideration. It's something also Marina Hyde touches upon in her above mentioned column, especially when reflecting back on the infamous episode of the prank calls a decade ago.

And for instance, I think today more consideration for the women who spoke out would also mean sparing us the useless "opinion" of every right wing celebrity coming out to defend Russell Brand. The Daily Mail has at least two front page stories today about Brand's defenders. On the one hand, I know I know, what do you expect, it's the Daily Mail. But no, this needs to start with the tabloids too, all media need to do better.
posted by bitteschoen at 11:24 AM on September 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

With the Sachsgate calls back in the spotlight, let me just say - I’ve loathed his co-conspirator Jonathan Ross ever since I saw him interview a female actor on his chat show many years ago, and spend the entire interview doing a comedy bit about how he couldn’t stop staring at her breasts.

She looked so uncomfortable and literally every time she opened her mouth to try and talk about her project, he’d do this huge comedy leer again, as if he was being funny by playing an amusing character who couldn’t help himself. And she’d stumble to a humiliated stop all over again. He undermined the entire interview and the audience just laughed glibly and nothing was ever said about it. I wish I could remember who the interviewee was, because I’ve never been able to find it since.
posted by penguin pie at 3:16 PM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thank you NoxAeternum and bitteschoen for articulating so much more clearly than I was able to do as to what I meant by focusing more on the victims and less on Brand.
posted by vac2003 at 4:53 PM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

how we frame these discussions around the perpetrators

I don't know what can be done about that, and the victims certainly deserve anonymity. But this reminds me of the reason I stopped viewing CNN's website: For a long time, the headline would be something like "Donald Trump Did Another Terrible Thing" and on top of the page would be a large picture of a grinning Donald Trump. A non-English speaker looking at the site would get the impression that the most important person in America was Trump.

These people thrive on attention and at least not using their glamour-shot pictures in every article would be one way to take away some of that attention...
posted by mmoncur at 9:29 PM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Penguin pie: oh I thought I remembered that episode too and that it might be Selma Hayek or Penelope Cruz but after looking it up I can't find any video confirming that... I did find this article from the Telegraph with a list of the some of the most egregious instances of Jonathan Ross being "rude, lewd and crude" and yikes, he even let Russell Brand joke about having sex with his teenage daughters like oooh daring comedy there for sure... and the interesting thing is these bits were all prerecorded so someone at the BBC in this case decided they were ok to broadcast.
posted by bitteschoen at 10:38 PM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks, bitteschoen - it's actually reassuring to know I didn't totally imagine it - either the event, or Ross's general grossness. I guess the interview we're thinking of was early enough that there probably aren't clips of absolutely every episode from that era available online, and I don't imagine the BBC have gone out of their way to make it public since. But I'd weirdly love to see it again because I hated it so much at the time and it felt like nobody else was bothered by it. As well as wanting to confirm that I didn't imagine it, I'd quite like it to resurface in an era where it (and he) would be properly evaluated, with the disgust it deserved.

I feel like Sachsgate was slightly painted as Brand being the ringleader and Ross the easily-led lad who got towed along with it all, but in reality he's been as active a perpetrator of being publicly gross towards women for laughs, for a long time.
posted by penguin pie at 7:37 AM on September 20, 2023

I hate to play the devil’s advocate and no fan of Brand, but I’m also thinking “Why now…”

Did he indeed mess with people that didn’t like what he posted on his Youtube channel and those people went digging into his past… once again?

And also, if looking at it objectively: if x number of people claims that you are an asshole, does that make it the truth?
There’s not been any hard evidence so far, but the media has clearly made up its mind. I’m not sure I like this process anymore…
posted by beesbees at 8:56 AM on September 21, 2023

I hate to play the devil’s advocate and no fan of Brand, but I’m also thinking “Why now…”

Two things in conjunction, in my view. One is that a legal embargo his lawyers worked out finally expired, reducing the risk on that side. The other is that one of his American victims has receipts (specifically, she has records of actually having a rape kit done as well as texts backing up her side of the story), which would make it very difficult for Brand to go after her legally (especially since it happened in California, where the state's strong anti-SLAPP laws would make any litigation there especially fraught.)

So to answer the question, the reason "why now?" is because Brand's lawyers can't protect him anymore.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:07 AM on September 21, 2023 [13 favorites]

And also, if looking at it objectively: if x number of people claims that you are an asshole, does that make it the truth?
There’s not been any hard evidence so far, but the media has clearly made up its mind.

The claims aren't that Brand is an asshole - they're that he's a rapist. And as it turns out, all that takes is for one person to come forward and state that he did, in fact, rape them. And beyond the point of "believe women" and not treat them as inherently lying, the reality is (as mentioned above) that his victims have receipts for his sexual abuse.

Brand has lawyers for which he pays handsomely for - this particular devil's advocacy needs are quite well met. And to get on one of my own hobby horses, this shows why using euphemisms to dodge the reality of a situation only serves to produce weak arguments.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:24 AM on September 21, 2023 [12 favorites]

Did he indeed mess with people that didn’t like what he posted on his Youtube channel and those people went digging into his past… once again?

To believe that, you have to believe that Brand was somehow way more important and influential than he actually was, that multiple people from multiple media of different political leanings felt threatened by him, that these people got together to concoct a fake investigation to expose him based on complete fabrications, and last bit not least, that the women who spoke to this media (including on camera for TV) either don't exist or are paid actors or simply... liars.

You know it's one thing for him to vaguely hint at some conspiracy against him as an attempt to fool his gullible audience into continuing to support him, it's quite another thing to actually ask yourself how would such a conspiracy work in detail and how likely and realistic it would be for such a conspiracy to take place...
posted by bitteschoen at 9:42 AM on September 21, 2023 [10 favorites]

I’m also thinking “Why now…”

This has been a consistent theme with the...uh...what do you call the soi-disant anti-imperialists who also turned out to be anti-vax? Anyway, the whole Grayzone Cinematic Universe, you know. It's all raised eyebrows and "What could these accusations really be trying to accomplish?" Absolutely incapable of considering the victims, or the power that made this possible (and not just possible, but infinitely repeatable).
posted by mittens at 9:44 AM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

"I would like to rape women. Wouldn't it be funny if I raped some women?"

"Yes you did rape some women."

"Lies! Conspiracy!"

It's the Trump playbook. I'm shocked this works and continues to work.
posted by muddgirl at 9:45 AM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

I hate to play the devil’s advocate

Then don't.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:16 AM on September 21, 2023 [22 favorites]

I'm not questioning if the women are lying, I'm wondering - out loud - why it is that cases that are years old sometimes suddenly gets such an amount of attention in the press, and it's as if the press can't stop themselves... Right now Brand seems to be more interesting to the media than wars and the climate. Again.

To me, it just doesn't seem unlikely that you could plant a story like this in the press, be it true or not, that the press wouldn't gladly eat up. I've known too many journalists getting high on their own stories.

I'm not implying either that Brand didn't do what people say he did, I'm saying that I don't really trust the media's ability to distinguish between the truth and what is a good story for the media to run with. And run with it they do... but I'm also a bit sceptic about it changing much for the millions reading the news.

You know, not conspiratorial... critical. And I don't believe in Trump, Biden or UFO's :-/
posted by beesbees at 12:09 PM on September 21, 2023

Right now Brand seems to be more interesting to the media than wars and the climate.

The problem is that this sort of deflection is grimly predictable. When people don't want to talk about a powerful person doing a bad thing, there's nothing easier than to pivot to talking about the media. This will sound like an odd comparison, but the first thing that came to mind for me, was the way you see exactly the same technique from people minimizing the Tiananmen protest killings: "I'm not saying that some people weren't killed, but the mainstream media really blew it out of proportion with their talk of massacres."
posted by mittens at 12:29 PM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

Sorry, beesbees - are you saying that you think stories about sexual assault, especially sexual assault by powerful people, don't go through any sort of fact-checking or due-diligence process? That seems... at odds with how most of this reporting goes.
posted by sagc at 12:30 PM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

Like, what does it mean to "plant something in the press"? Do you think people saying they've been assaulted are plants? That there's some clearinghouse where all these sexual assault stories come from?

And you seem to be ignoring the *real* reasons why this hasn't come out before now, which is generally a) institutional power (to suppress/NDA reports) and b) institutional indifference (which stops this sort of investigation being done).
posted by sagc at 12:33 PM on September 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Look, I'm questioning what this story is about — for you — and what it's about for the media.

I'm in doubt as what the effect of this is, when even Metafilter is discussing it as a hot topic (105 comments right now). Why are we so interested in what celebrities are doing and not so much what institutions are not doing and actively ignoring?

Look at a headline like this:
"Evangelist, wife face multiple child rape, sexual abuse charges in Murfreesboro —
The charges stem from actions that were alleged to have occurred in February 2021."
https://www.wsmv.com/2023/09/20/evangelist-wife-face-multiple-child-rape-sexual-abuse-charges-murfreesboro/

Even though it's already been to court. Alleged...
With Brand it seems like he's already guilty.

I'm questioning who decides that and what power these idiot celebrities have over me and over you.
posted by beesbees at 12:43 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

You are coming across much closer to someone who is trying to minimize these acts by saying "but what if it was planted" and "how dare all these non-court bodies use the available evidence to describe what he's done".
posted by sagc at 12:48 PM on September 21, 2023 [9 favorites]

You know, not conspiratorial... critical.

No, it is conspiratorial given that a number of reasons for this story to come out have been given to you:

* A legal injunction devised by Brand's lawyers expired, making it easier legally for the story to come out,
* One of the victims has solid documentation as well as having been attacked in a locality where pursuing a defamation claim against her would be near impossible, curtailing Brand's ability to use the legal system as a cudgel,
* This is part of a wider look at sexual abuse in entertainment and other areas, which has had a lot come out in the past few years.

And yet you are continuing to argue that this story is somehow "planted", and not the outgrowth of several events.

Why are we so interested in what celebrities are doing and not so much what institutions are not doing and actively ignoring?

Did you read the story? Because this isn't just about Brand, but how institutions - most notably the BBC, which has been caught several times protecting sexual predators in their ranks - covered for him and enabled his abuses. That you see this purely as a celebrity issue is your misreading of the matter.

With Brand it seems like he's already guilty.

Here's the thing - innocent until proven guilty before the law applies to only the legal system. We are allowed to read the testimony of his victims, and in doing so come to our own conclusions.

Skepticism is healthy - as long as it remains skepticism. When it becomes contrarianism and conspiratorial thinking, it becomes toxic and blinds us.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:01 PM on September 21, 2023 [17 favorites]

it's as if the press can't stop themselves...

There's also the fact that this story has been worked on continuously for years by multiple people. It's not a sudden thing, it's been building steadily, and I'm sure within the journalistic circles once or twice removed, there was awareness that the story was building and probably some secondary work done so that when one outlet published, another was ready with something.
posted by fatbird at 1:06 PM on September 21, 2023 [7 favorites]

beesbees -- it's not just about the "celebrity" angle, in this case the celebrity in question at the time was also employed by Channel 4 and the BBC which is you know publicly funded so there's an extra incentive there to avoid making yet again the mistake of giving taxpayers money to men who turn out to be creeps and abusers and rapists. There's a whole environment and culture enabling men like that to get away with it for years. That's also why it can take years for allegations to surface. Also, the articles about this particular investigation explain very well why it took years in this particular case.

If you are not implying that the women in question are lying, then how else do you imagine a story like this can be planted? Do you think women just call up journalists and make shit up about sexual assault by a wealthy celebrity and the journalists go yeah let's print this without any substantiation and expose ourselves to a million lawsuits? Are you kidding? Did you even read the links about the background of this investigation?
posted by bitteschoen at 1:07 PM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

The claim that a story about how institutional power upholds systems and individuals that threaten the safety, bodily integrity, and civic and career participation of roughly half the population is a “distraction” certainly does say something about the values and priorities of one making such a claim. Or hypothesizing/“just asking questions” such a claim.
posted by eviemath at 2:35 PM on September 21, 2023 [10 favorites]

I’m also thinking “Why now…”

I mean… I’m not entirely sure I care. Why was Lucy Letby caught now and not after she’d killed one baby instead of seven? Why was Harold Shipman not caught after killing only one person instead of belatedly being caught after killing 215? Are we supposed to expect victims of crime to just STFU after a few years have passed? Brand has been sinking into conspiratorial nut jobbery for some time, let’s not pretend “they’re trying to sink him because he’s suddenly close to the truth, man.”

I’m not sure I like this process anymore…

Thing is, when a legal system consistently fails people to the phenomenal extent that happens with victims of rape, then yes, many people will try and compensate for that abject failure by asserting that they believe the victims, especially where there are multiple allegations, made over a period of time, against someone who has over many years been known among professional colleagues as a “missing stair” (See: Katherine Ryan) and who has also publicly and gleefully exhibited total disregard for the lives and feelings of women.

You’re right that the process is shitty, but the shitty part is that women who report sexual assault know so well that they almost certainly see zero justice, and be retraumatised in the process, that taking their allegations to the press feels like a more likely avenue to achieve justice than going directly to the institutions of actual justice.

You’re right that the process is rotten, but you’re wrongly placing the blame on the symptom, not the cause.

I don't really trust the media's ability to distinguish between the truth and what is a good story for the media to run with

If you think newspapers are publishing this stuff for shits and giggles, it’s clear you know nothing about UK libel law. I’m a former journalist and nothing like this would get anywhere near publication without being crawled over by a cadre of lawyers who would have to be convinced that there was a. Strong enough evidence and b. A strong enough public interest defence against Brand suing them for libel. For all the foibles of the British press, accusing people of serious crimes is never, ever, done flippantly, much less because they just somehow can’t help themselves. Every publication brings fresh risk, every single word will have been poured over by countless people. How much is true remains to be seen, but this is absolutely not done as a rush of blood to the head.

Why are we so interested in what celebrities are doing and not so much what institutions are not doing and actively ignoring?

That’s exactly what this is about - the institutions that protect predators and ignore the risk to less powerful individuals. The BBC, C4, and the entire entertainment industry put people like Brand on a pedestal, pay them £££, let them behave appallingly without challenge because they’re celebrities. The word celebrity isn’t just an indication of a facile entertainment figure that we wouldn’t bother ourselves with if we were serious people. In our world as it stands, it’s someone who is a person with power, supported and protected by institutions with power. It’s exactly what you say we should be caring about.

The very reason this is a story is because people are, as you say they should, questioning the power that we hand to some people and institutions at the expense of others, and questioning the nature of celebrity.
posted by penguin pie at 3:10 PM on September 21, 2023 [19 favorites]

why is it that whenever a story about a serial rapist/abuser of women comes out, there's always a "reluctant" devil's advocate who "doesn't care for" the rapist but questions why people are talking about the rapist and the institutions that protected that person when [insert other bad things] are happening?

it's almost as if commenters like this are planted to try and derail the discussion and sow doubt; flood the zone with shit, as steve bannon would have said. y'know, the same steve bannon who saw the metoo movement as an existential threat.

why should we trust that the ability of some random commenter to distinguish between useful discourse and garbage? why are we so interested in what some random devil's advocate is spewing and not so much why this behavior always crops up in the comments to this kind of story?
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:01 PM on September 21, 2023 [16 favorites]

‘There are dozens of Russell Brands’: female comedians say abuse is rife (Guardian UK)

In a video on YouTube titled Brand Awareness, the comedian Kate Smurthwaite said the allegations against Brand were “nowhere near scratching the surface” of the wider problems.

“I could probably, personally from my own experience, name 15 to 20 people who have behaved inappropriately with me. And if I then included other women in comedy and the stories that they’ve told me, we could easily get that to 100 to 150,” she said.

“There are so, so many others. And I know some people will say: ‘Well tell us the other names.’ But no, I’ve done it before, I’ve described these incidents and people don’t hear me, they don’t believe me. They say: ‘That’s a very serious allegation, I hope you’ve taken it to the police,’ and ultimately I lose work. And I can’t do that over and over again.”

posted by BungaDunga at 9:28 AM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

dozens of Russell Brands

skibidi dom dom dom yes yes
posted by flabdablet at 10:44 AM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sigh.

Imagine a bucket under a leaky faucet. Every drop that leaves the faucet brings the bucket a tiny bit closer to overflowing.

Every victim who talks to a journalist is one drop.

Every fact that is verified is a drop.

Every woman who has had a bad experience that stops short of assault and talks about it is a drop.

Every woman a journalist speaks to who refuses to speak but is obviously afraid is a drop.

Every blind item in the press that might be about this is a drop.

Every story that is published about a different powerful man harming people is a drop.

Every day that passes while this person is a public figure with access to vulnerable people is a drop. Every. Day.

Every editor and higher-up who promises to protect a journalist from backlash is a drop.

The rim of the bucket is 'how long can I ethically delay this story trying to make everything 100% bullet-proof while this person still has access to more victims'.

I'm not particularly interested in which drop made the water spill over the rim of the bucket. The bucket is full.
posted by bq at 11:44 AM on September 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

(Also thankyou to the folks who expanded on the "focus on the victims" comment for me. I didn't intend it to be any kind of negative thing, just wanted to understand. The analogy to the framing of Trump headlines was helpful.)
posted by harriet vane at 11:10 PM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I know people who were badly beaten up by cops, people that were raped, abused, mistreated etc. who never got the time of day, when going to the cops, institutions or the press.

I’m not trying to derail the conversation, but widen the scope. I think the news story drowns in being obsessed with the celebrity-asshole part instead of people being afraid to speak up - for years and years. Or people not wanting to listen for years and years.

The why now part: It’s been my experience that people who want power has dirt on everybody, it’s the silence part that keeps them in power.

And for the same reasons, being a devils advocate or whatever, I think it’s more healthy to keep questioning what kind of reality the media paints of the world… and also what story the paint of being a victim of something.
I think you can be a victim and empowered at the same time, but mostly that doesn’t fit that well in to the standard narrative of a news story.
posted by beesbees at 10:24 AM on September 23, 2023

I think the news story drowns in being obsessed with the celebrity-asshole part instead of people being afraid to speak up - for years and years. Or people not wanting to listen for years and years.

Then you haven't been paying attention, because a huge part of the story has been how various organizations covered for Brand, as well as how he used the law to threaten those who would speak up. That you're focusing only on the celebrity side is on you.

And for the same reasons, being a devils advocate or whatever, I think it’s more healthy to keep questioning what kind of reality the media paints of the world…

This is how you fall into conspiratorial thinking, because that's where "keep questioning" leads you.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:08 PM on September 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

Also, constantly asking questions even after getting answers comes across as "JAQing off" - a well known bad faith argument where "just asking questions" is used as a way to attack the story victims are presenting.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:11 PM on September 23, 2023 [9 favorites]

This is how you fall into conspiratorial thinking, because that's where "keep questioning" leads you.

And this is a shame, because the answer's right there! We all soak in this media environment, and have done so our entire lives, so it's not really hard to develop a solid theory of media then vs. media now: How many powerful men were brought down by media accusations of sexual assault in, say, 1980, vs in the 2020s? Even if you don't know the actual numbers, you have a sense of the difference.
posted by mittens at 1:20 PM on September 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it’s more healthy to keep questioning what kind of reality the media paints of the world…

And that’s exactly what’s being done. People are finally questioning the reality that the media painted in which Russell Brand was a lovable rogue who should be given a platform, and his behaviour allowed, enabled and ignored, or even celebrated.

I think the news story drowns in being obsessed with the celebrity-asshole part instead of people being afraid to speak up - for years and years. Or people not wanting to listen for years and years.

Like NoxAeternum, I don’t understand where/what you’ve been reading to develop this impression. A huge part of all the stories I’ve read has been about how people were afraid to speak up for years and years. Or, in fact, in many cases it seems, not so much afraid as knowing full well it was utterly pointless because the world and its institutions were so in love with Brand, and the legal system so stacked against them, that there was just no point pursuing it. That’s emphatically not being covered up or brushed aside, the way you seem to think it is. It’s in all the stories, front and centre.

I think you can be a victim and empowered at the same time, but mostly that doesn’t fit that well in to the standard narrative of a news story.

Again, I don’t understand what you’re reading to develop the impression you are. Many of the stories I’ve read of people who were on the wrong end of Brand’s misdemeanours do sound pretty empowered. The woman in the story that broke yesterday, who turned around to find his penis in her face, before he then went on air and laughed about it with his co-presenter, didn’t sound cowed or diminished. Just stunned, disgusted, and ultimately wearily resigned. It’s fitted fine into the narrative of several of the news stories I’ve read.

But also, many of his victims were disempowered, in the most literal sense of the word, for all the reasons above - Brand was a powerful man, protected by powerful institutions. Writing about that power imbalance isn’t trite reporting, or lazily falling back onto “the standard narrative of a news story” - it’s reporting and uncovering institutional inequality.
posted by penguin pie at 1:49 PM on September 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

An interesting read today in the Guardian on the legal aspects of the timing of publishing the journalistic investigation now:
Russell Brand and why the allegations took so long to surface
posted by bitteschoen at 5:58 AM on September 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Short version - British defamation law is rather fucked as it's designed to protect the reputations of the powerful, and as the article points out, Brand has used it to go after victims that spoke out. In fact, British defamation law is so fucked that the US passed a law (the SPEECH Act) that makes UK defamation decisions unenforcable in the US.

Which is why it's so important that one of the victims that came forward was a Los Angeleno with receipts, as unlike in the UK, US defamation law is much harder to use in the same manner:

* First, unlike in the UK, in the US truth is an absolute defense - it is a point of the law that you cannot be defamed by the truth, no matter how deleterious it is for your reputation. It is on the plaintiff to prove the defendant is lying, and if they can't, well...they just don't have a case.
* Second, Brand would likely be treated as a public figure, meaning he would be forced to have to meet the even stricter Sullivan standard - not only would he have to prove that the statement was false, but that the person making it knew it was false and that they did so with malice, either actual or reckless. (This standard is so exacting that the Dominion Voting Systems case surprised people because the company was actually able to surmount it.)
* Finally, Brand's assault taking place in Los Angeles means that he would have to pursue a lawsuit in the California courts, which happen to have some of the strongest anti-SLAPP laws around. While they're not perfect (as the Daily Mail successfully winning an anti-SLAPP countersuit against former Representative Katie Hill when she sued the tabloid over publishing intimate photos of her provided by a vengeful ex without permission illustrates), they do provide substantial protection against the law being used to silence in the manner Brand does, and as such it would be likely that Brand would find himself on the wrong side of such a countersuit if he tried.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:41 AM on September 24, 2023 [12 favorites]

BBC: Russell Brand: Police receive further allegations against comedian.
posted by Wordshore at 9:55 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]