The repercussions of America’s ongoing national sexual abuse and harassment scandal continue every day. Meanwhile, our artist for this week’s cartoon is left with more questions—lots of them!—than answers.
The following is an artist statement by Bob Aul:
Who’s gone back and found some “House of Cards” clips and marveled at the irony of the words coming out of Kevin Spacey’s mouth? Who hasn’t yet realized that if you act like a dick in the digital age, your dickness can and very probably will be displayed instantaneously for the world to see, your public status only being an accelerating factor in when the dirt drops?
Who thinks it’s a good idea to cancel an entire show starring a tainted actor and actually go so far as to replace him with another actor in an already-finished film in a scramble to eradicate any trace of his existence to keep the industry looking good? And by that token who would miss “The Nutcracker” every Christmas if they knew or even cared who Tchaikovsky was?
Who hasn’t wondered why it’s OK for Hollywood to sympathetically depict horrendous characters, just not employ them? And who believes that at any other point in our history the behavior of power in Hollywood or DC has been any different than today, and that it’s going to be any different after this current trend has blown over? Who wonders why Weinstein is so rightly out while Trump remains so wrongly in? And with the knowledge that Hollywood has always been the same, who hasn’t stifled a laugh wondering what Jimmy Stewart’s dark, twisted secrets might have been?
Who’s to say that, like with Alan Freed and Payola (or Nixon with Watergate), what we’re seeing isn’t actually the beginning of a normalization process in which a few unlucky public figures die spectacularly for the sins of future misdoers as America slides further into rank hedonism and corruption? Who can admit to themselves from the safety of their boats that it’s vastly entertaining to watch sharks rip one another apart while the news media hauls in netfuls of clicks the entire time and the whole rotten structure comes falling down?
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).