You Don't Get a Vote

[CN: dismissal of survivors]

Joining the long list of people saying terrible things in response to Dylan Farrow's open letter, columnist Robin Abcarian of the L. A. Times definitely knows better than survivors. For one thing, it apparently doesn't matter whether one believes Dylan or not:

In the long run, it doesn’t matter whether you believe the tragic story of Dylan Farrow, who alleges that her father Woody Allen sexually assaulted her 20 years ago when she was 7 years old.

Nor does it matter whether you believe Woody Allen, who was never charged with a crime, and who has steadfastly maintained his innocence.

Now, I'm not a fancy columnist with the L.A. Times, but I do have an internet connection, and with very little effort I've encountered a whole bunch of people for whom it does matter. Survivors and their allies, many of whom have spent much of the last few days explaining the high cost of disbelief.

And when a survivor explains how something feels, you don't get a vote on that. You don't get to put a survivor's feelings through your Validity Prism and judge them "disingenuous":

But honoring Allen is certainly not the equivalent of accusing Dylan of lying or not mattering, and it is disingenuous to suggest so. In 1993, Dylan’s accusations were taken very seriously by her mother, by doctors, by prosecutors. Allen was investigated for months and prosecutors chose not to file charges.

Neat! Also, can't she just shut up already?

Also, Dylan Farrow has had her say, and she has had it very recently. Only four months ago, Vanity Fair published a long profile of Mia Farrow and her children by Maureen Orth. In that piece, Dylan recounted her allegations against Allen in detail, and her enduring trauma, including the death of her 19-year-old sister Tam in 2000.

I'm so sorry that you don't like Ms. Farrow telling her story more times than you would prefer. But again: you don't get a vote. And as for this final bit of finger-wagging:

I earnestly believe that the contours of Farrow’s life are not going to change one bit if Woody Allen wins another Oscar.

Well, I'm glad you believe that earnestly. But still: you don't get a vote.

Earnestness doesn't change the fact that it's pretty fucking awful to 'splain to Dylan Farrow how she will be affected if her abuser is honored, yet again. It's deeply, deeply shitty to claim that believing a survivor doesn't matter because she was "taken seriously" when she first came forward. (Hint: not seriously enough, it seems!) It's frankly obscene to police how often, and when, she tells her story. And since we're throwing the term around, it is definitely disingenuous to insist it doesn't matter whom we believe, despite the chorus of survivors explaining otherwise.

Telling us not to "take sides" is a cruel joke. You clearly have picked one, Ms. Abcarian. And it's not the one where the survivors are standing.

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Well Done, Scotland!

The Scottish Parliament has voted to legalize same-sex marriage:

SCOTLAND has become the 17th country in the world to legalise gay marriage after a historic vote at Holyrood.

MSPs passed landmark legislation that will allow same-sex couples to have a church wedding by 105 votes to 18.

And Health Secretary Alex Neil revealed the first marriages could take place this autumn - earlier than first thought. He added: "We're doing a remarkable thing today; we are saying on behalf of Scotland to the world, loud and clear, that we believe in recognising love between same sex couples as we do between [different] sex couples."

...Tom French, Policy Coordinator for the Equality Network, said: "This is a profoundly emotional moment for many people who grew up in a country where being gay was still a criminal offence until 1980. Scotland can be proud that we now have one of the most progressive equal marriage bills in the world, and that we've sent out a strong message about the kind of country we are."

...The Scottish government's marriage bill was brought forward after a government consultation, which produced a record 77,508 responses.

All the blubs forever.

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On Being Surprised by Rape Apologia

by Shakesville Moderator Hallelujah_Hippo

[Content Note: Sexual assault; rape apologia.]

It's not unusual when a famous or semi-famous person opens their mouth in support of rape culture that I hear expressions of surprise from friends and acquaintances. And I understand their shock and disappointment, and I support their needs to process this new bit of awful in their lives; but their surprise is not something I can help them work through.

Surprise is a luxury I don't have.

As a survivor who has spoken about my past experiences, I have had friends ask if 'maybe I misunderstood the situation,' had family members say 'you're making a big deal out of nothing,' heard otherwise progressive and feminist-identifying friends say 'well, can you blame him for feeling that way; those kind of clothes/behaviors/settings give men ideas.' I've had mutual friends remind me that it's just 'my word against his,' and 'he probably didn't mean it, anyway.' In my life it has been common to hear people propagate and uphold rape culture, in general and in response to me speaking about my own lived experience.

So when I hear a famous person whose books I have read or even liked, an actor or actress who I have admired for the characters they play, a celebrity personality who I generally thought was kind of cool say similar things; it's just one more day in my life, one more person in the 'not safe' box in my head. Some days I'm disappointed, and some days I'm angry, and some days I feel like I'm one of a very few people in the whole wide world actively trying to dismantle rape culture.

But I'm not surprised.

Survivors tend to be intimately familiar with displays of victim-blaming—from friends, from family members, from law enforcement officials, from strangers on the internet. Most of us have multiple stories of our own of friends and family who have silenced us, disbelieved us, and blamed us for our own assaults.

To hear one more person—possibly someone's whose books we've enjoyed, whose movies we liked, whose show we found value in—engage in victim-blaming and silencing narratives is just one more person behaving exactly like lots of other people have behaved towards us. A lot of us survivors don't have the luxury of surprise.

Certainly there are survivors whose experiences are not like mine, who are surprised by people upholding the rape culture in public. I am not here to negate their lived experiences or tell them they are wrong. I'm just speaking about my own feelings about 'being surprised' in response to famous people engaging in rape culture narratives, feelings that some other survivors share.

And while it is not wrong to feel surprised, it's important to recognize that surprise is often a reflection of privilege—and, like all reflections of privilege, expressing it may be upsetting to people who don't share that privilege.

Liss tweeted last night: (1) "To everyone who's shocked by this rank rape apologia, that's the shit I get in my inbox EVERY DAY for being an outspoken survivor." (2) "This isn't an anomaly. It's just public evidence of the harassment outspoken survivors get all the time."

Part of the work of dismantling the rape culture is recognizing that rape apologia isn't an aberration, but a central part of its maintenance. When we see it in public, emanating from someone with a big platform, it's a reminder of what is done to many survivors away from the spotlight all the time, by people who we know intimately and by people who purport to love us, no less by people whose public image we only know from afar.

Many of us never had a chance to be surprised by rape apologia. Some of us have never known anything else.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Boo Radleys: "Wake Up, Boo!"

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Daily Dose of Cute

"More winter you say? I see. Please wake me when the squirrels are out."

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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The Costs of Disbelief

[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia.]

I believe survivors, because I have listened to countless survivors' stories; because I am a survivor who was disbelieved; because I have spent incalculable amounts of time and energy studying and writing about the rape culture; because I know how there is usually precious little to gain and everything to lose even from making a truthful report; because of the facts about the rarity of false reporting.

I also believe survivors because there is a steep cost to disbelieving them.

I don't just mean the personal cost to individual survivors—although that, too. Being disbelieved is a secondary trauma, for many survivors a profound exacerbation of an already devastating act. To survive that sort of physical harm, only to be disbelieved by people who you trust(ed), by people who are tasked with protecting you, to have your lived experience be audited and denied, to be victim-blamed and suspected of lying, to have reporting the harm done to you grotesquely twisted into an accusation of attempting to hurt the person who abused you, can create lasting psychological turmoil from which it is harder to recover, sometimes, than the original act of violence.

The depth of that betrayal in such a vulnerable moment is difficult to convey, to someone who has never experienced it.

I also mean the costs beyond what is taken from individual survivors, when they are disbelieved.

I mean the cost of communicating to other survivors, when we publicly disbelieve one person, that they will be disbelieved. That there is no point to reporting the crimes done to them, because they will not find justice. And may instead find in its place an aggressive avalanche of hostility and suspicion and contempt.

I mean the cost of empowering predators, who are grateful indeed to everyone who participates in the systemic disbelief of survivors. Even if their victims report the abuse they perpetuate, their chances of being charged and convicted are vanishingly small, because of our cultural investment in disbelief.

I mean the cost of failing to stop predators, a majority of whom attack again and again. I mean the cost of creating more victims.

That is a real cost of disbelief. Disbelieving one survivor means almost certainly that hir attacker will create more. And then we'll disbelieve them, too.

And on and on we go.

After he raped me, my rapist started dating another girl, who was a year younger than I and was a friend of a friend. I called her to warn her, with our mutual friend on the phone. She didn't believe her new boyfriend would do anything like that to her, and she wasn't sure she believed he had done something like that to me. So she told me, in a voice that quivered with doubt, before she thanked me for warning her.

It was totally understandable that she didn't believe me. No one else had. Every level of disbelief—the police, the school administration, mutual friends and classmates—communicated to her that she had no reason to believe me.

The next time I spoke to her, she told me he had raped her, too.

All of the people who failed to believe me failed her. The cost of disbelieving me was another victim. And I hardly imagine he stopped there.

She didn't bother reporting him. After all, no one had believed me.

I believed her.

We are told that false reports are rampant, and that legions of men's lives are ruined by false allegations of sexual violence. Neither of these things are true.

I am aware that there have been cases in this vast world of ours in which a person's life has been upended by a legitimately false charge. That is terrible. Full-stop.

I am also aware that some of the people whose lives have been upended by a charge of sexual assault are free to claim that charge was false, simply by virtue of having not been convicted. It's something that rape apologists who constantly invoke the men whose lives have been ruined never concede: Some of those men actually did the things of which they weren't convicted.

And here is another thing that they aren't willing to speak about: There really are legions of men who have raped someone and been accused and not been charged or convicted, and their lives were not ruined, and those men are doing just fucking fine.

There are a lot of survivors, myself among them, who know our rapists are doing just fucking fine.

That is the gift, to rapists, of disbelief—bought with the cost to survivors.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today!

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new rule that "will allow patients to have direct access to their completed laboratory reports," instead of having to get results directly from their physicians.

[Content Note: Rape apologia] On yesterday's episode of The View, Barbara Walters got in on the Woody Allen defense, saying he's a loving father. "I have rarely seen a father as sensitive, as loving and as caring as Woody is and Soon-Yi to [their two daughters]." Thankfully, Sherri Shepherd talked some sense: "Barbara, when you say, 'I'm speaking from what I've seen,' there are so many things that go on behind closed doors." I despair for the world when a seasoned journalist like Barbara Walters doesn't even know, or care, that many parents who abuse their kids appear to be loving parents to outsiders.

The latest in the bridge closing scandal in New Jersey: "Feds seek files from Christie's office; ex-aide Bridget Anne Kelly won't turn over documents in response to subpoena and invokes Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination." Neat.

Minnesota state lawmakers have introduced "an expansive legislative package—dubbed the Women's Economic Security Act of 2014—to address a wide range of issues affecting women working outside of the home, including mandated paid sick leave, increased minimum wage and expanded access to childcare." Right on.

[CN: Gun violence; racism] Michael Dunn, the white man who shot and killed black teenager Jordan Davis following a dispute over loud music in a parking lot, goes to trial this week. Dunn claims he felt threatened by the car full of unarmed teenagers that he approached. While awaiting trial, he's been sending racist missives from prison.

[CN: Gun violence] In California, a man has been arrested after pointing a gun at a Girl Scout who came to his door selling cookies.

Relatedly: "The PTSD Crisis That's Being Ignored: Americans Wounded in Their Own Neighborhoods."

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The Rape Apologia Parade Marches On

[Content Note: Sexual assault; rape apologia.]

This morning, the Today show invited Woody Allen's attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, to be a guest, to respond to Dylan Farrow's allegations that Allen sexually abused her as a child. And then they tweeted the highlights:

Abramowitz reiterated the accusation that Mia Farrow "implanted" the memory in Dylan. In this version of events, Dylan isn't malicious; she's just a victim of her mother's abuse. And so is Woody Allen.

In this version, these allegations are evidence of Mia Farrow's diabolical strategy to destroy Woody Allen, and thus their emergence during a custody dispute is held up as PROOF! that they were invented to hurt him. Which is a logical and believable story for many people, because the rape culture exhorts us to empathize with perpetrators, to center concerns for all the totally innocent men who are wrongly accused by vindictive women. If instead we were exhorted to empathize with victims, perhaps instead we would see a mother whose former partner was already having a sexual relationship with one adult child and was advocating for the safety of her young daughter who had reported abuse to her.

Allen's defenders are so thoroughly reluctant to admit even the possibility that he did this thing, they cannot conceive of a version of events in which it happened, and it was profoundly relevant to a custody hearing, and Mia Farrow was not trying to hurt Woody Allen, but trying to protect her daughter.

Of course that very common story of familial abuse couldn't possibly be true. Allen's a stand-up guy—such a magnanimous guy, in fact, that he isn't even interested in suing anyone for defamation. Sure. Maybe that's because he's a great guy, or maybe it's because you can't sue someone for defamation when what they're saying is the truth.

* * *

Last night, the author Stephen King also waded into the public conversation with this tweet regarding Dylan Farrow's allegations:




He has since deleted the tweet. Instead his timeline now reads:


After literally saying a survivor's story has "an element of palpable bitchery," a man who has made a living being one of the most prolific published authors ever, who has literally written millions of carefully crafted words, says he "probably used the wrong word." As if conveying that Dylan Farrow was "bitchy" would have been better, if only he'd used a better word.

Then he blames tech noobery. Sorry, Stephen King: There is no magic button on Twitter that stops you from broadcasting rank victim-blaming.

And finally, he begs for "mercy." Because he got rightfully criticized for engaging in rape apologia. See how that goes? Now he's the one being attacked. He's the victim. And he needs "mercy." My god.

* * *

I'm getting a lot of "so your position is that you just automatically believe everyone who alleges sexual abuse" type stuff on Twitter, and in my inbox, and in some (deleted) comments here. It is an accusation, made with incredulity and contempt.

And the answer is yes. Yes, my position is that I believe people who allege sexual abuse. Because, as Imani Gandy details here, a comprehensive study in the UK found that only 0.6% of all allegations of rape and domestic violence combined are thought to be false.

0.6%.

And that was the finding of a study using only reported rapes. The majority of sexual assaults go unreported, so if we include all the rapes that are never even reported to police in the first place, that number gets even smaller.

A fraction of a percentage.

My position is based on having listened to countless survivors' stories; on being a survivor who was disbelieved; on spending the time and energy to understand the rape culture; on knowing how there is usually precious little to gain and everything to lose even from making a truthful report; on the above facts about the rarity of false reporting.

Every other position is based on ignorance at best, and every other position upholds the rape culture and empowers rapists, who, after all, benefit quite neatly from a culture which insistently disbelieves their victims.

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Open Thread

Hosted by an alto saxophone.

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Question of the Day

What is your favorite sport to play, and what is your favorite sport to watch? Naturally, "none" is a perfectly cromulent answer.

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Desperate and Indecent

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

Idaho Senate, we see you:

Frustrated after eight years of rejection, a group of Add the Words supporters blocked the entrance to the Idaho State Senate chamber at the Capitol in Boise Monday morning. The group members, standing in silence and wearing matching black T-shirts, said they were prepared to be arrested.

“We are here to insist the Idaho Legislature finally add four words, 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity,' to Idaho’s Human Rights Act to prevent the suicides, beatings, loss of jobs, evictions and the fear that too many gay and transgender Idahoans live with every day," the group said in a news release. "We do this for those who live in fear and those who may despair this year if no one speaks for them."

The last of the 43 protesters was arrested after 11 a.m., when former state Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, was taken into custody after the Senate voted to suspend its rule that allows former members to be on the Senate floor. The rules also prohibit former members from lobbying. Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, made the motion to suspend the rules; Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, seconded the motion. Both said they respected the protesters' right to speak out, but the Senate had to move ahead to conduct the people's business.

LeFavour stood in the doorway to the Senate, hands over her mouth, refusing to move or to talk. The Senate called the roll, had its opening prayer and pledge, then voted to suspend for the day the rule that allows former members floor access.

They can't win without breaking the rules. Assholes.

[H/T to Shaker Talonas.]

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Oh Right. Our Economy Was Built (in Part) on a Big Middle Class with Purchasing Power. Whoooooops.

[Content Note: Class warfare.]

Particularly juxtaposed with the unfathomable fact that raising the US minimum wage is still a controversial proposal, this article about the shrinking middle class, and how corporate retailers are dealing with it, is striking.

In Manhattan, the upscale clothing retailer Barneys will replace the bankrupt discounter Loehmann's, whose Chelsea store closes in a few weeks. Across the country, Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants are struggling, while fine-dining chains like Capital Grille are thriving. And at General Electric, the increase in demand for high-end dishwashers and refrigerators dwarfs sales growth of mass-market models.

As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away.

...In 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995, the researchers found.

Even more striking, the current recovery has been driven almost entirely by the upper crust, according to [economists Steven Fazzari, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Barry Cynamon, of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis]. Since 2009, the year the recession ended, inflation-adjusted spending by this top echelon has risen 17 percent, compared with just 1 percent among the bottom 95 percent.

More broadly, about 90 percent of the overall increase in inflation-adjusted consumption between 2009 and 2012 was generated by the top 20 percent of households in terms of income, according to the study, which was sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a research group in New York.

...While spending among the most affluent consumers has managed to propel the economy forward, the sharpening divide is worrying, Mr. Fazzari said.

"It's going to be hard to maintain strong economic growth with such a large proportion of the population falling behind," he said. "We might be able to muddle along — but can we really recover?"

Gee, it's almost like trickle-down economics doesn't fucking work or something.

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Nope

[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia.]

Fresh from publishing a piece in which the writer questions the ethics of a woman with cancer, the Guardian now publishes a piece by Michael Wolff questioning the motives of a survivor's family.

The headline is: "The Woody Allen-Dylan Farrow case: media spin for the Farrow family?" The sub-head is: "The debate over Allen's alleged abuse of Dylan played out in the media two decades ago. Very curious how it's back again."

I suppose it would be "curious" to someone who comprehensively ignores that Dylan is now an adult and is telling her own story from her own perspective for the first time. And to someone who dutifully ignores that Dylan, Ronan, and Mia Farrow have been publicly responding to Woody Allen being honored with another round of nominations and awards, without so much as the most cursory acknowledgement from the people celebrating him that he is more than his art, except when it's to say what a great guy he is.

(That is the piece the "separate the art from the artist" arguers always miss: Awards like the Cecil B. DeMille Award which Diane Keaton just accepted on Woody Allen's behalf at the Golden Globes are about more, they always are, than the art. They are about honoring the person who makes the art.)

Wolff is certain that the Farrows have an agenda, even beyond the typical Revenge Fantasy peddled by Allen defenders:

Indeed, the larger context for this rehashed scandal is not a pattern of abuse or the ongoing dysfunctions of a celebrated family but rather the demands of a publicity rollout. Twenty-one years after the event – all parties long quiet – a story is revived. It is an old scandal for a new generation.

The impetus seems to be to establish Mia Farrow as a celebrity activist worthy of the world stage, and, as well, to launch a public career for her son Ronan.

Note that Dylan Farrow is nowhere to be found in this conspiracy theory. You know—the young woman whose face and first-person account were published in the New York Times this weekend. The young woman who was seven years old at the time of the abuse she recounts.

Also note that Wolff fails to mention that Mia Farrow has been a celebrated activist for a very long time, and that Ronan Farrow has already established a pretty solid public career. Which has certainly been aided by his celebrity lineage, but has not been contingent on exploiting his sister's abuse—something he takes so seriously that he severed communication with his father as a result.

Wolff, who further refers to publicly telling one's story of surviving abuse as "a confection," seems very annoyed that Mia Farrow and Nicholas Kristof are friends, and that her daughter's story appeared under his byline. But what Wolff misses is that many survivors have to depend on friends, especially if you've got friends with a megaphone, because no one else believes us.

Even friends who might issue caveats that function to undermine our credibility.

Telling our stories publicly and loudly is crucial, even and especially when justice has been elusive. Convictions are not a reliable measure of the incidence of sexual assault, and thus are not a reliable indicator of the veracity of any allegation. That most sexual assaults never result in a conviction is such a basic fact of sexual violence that no one who does not understand this reality, and the attendant resulting need for survivors to tell their stories, should never write about the subject. And certainly never published by any media organization that cares, even a little bit, about sexual violence prevention.

Wolff ends his piece thus:

Here's a certainty: When you play out your personal dramas, hurt and self-interest in the media, it's a confection. You say what you have to say in the way you have to say it to give it media currency – and that's always far from the truth. Often, in fact, someone else says it for you. It's all planned. It's all rehearsed. This is craft. This is strategy. This is manipulation. This is spin.

That is, truly, one of the worst things I have ever read in response to the publication of a survivor's story.

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Quote of the Day

"Full time work should not be rewarded with full time poverty. Hardworking men and women who are busting their tails in full-time jobs should have a chance to support themselves and their families and build a little economic security. It is time for Congress to act and raise the minimum wage."—Senator Elizabeth Warren, being awesome. Again.

Also? That would entail raising the minimum wage to more than $10.10.

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Photo of the Day

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen (right) is sworn as Federal Reserve Chair[woman] by Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo at the Federal Reserve Building on February 3. [Mark Wilson/Getty Images.]

This morning, Janet Yellen was sworn in as the new chair of the Fed, officially making her "the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve in its 100-year history." Congratulations, Ms. Yellen!

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Daily Dose of Cute

"This snow is a drag. I mean, it was fun for awhile, but come on."
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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The Monday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by snow.

Recommended Reading:

Atrios: Yah They Screwed It All Up

Aaron: [Content Note: Rape apologia] Woody Allen's Good Name

Michelle: [CN: Discussion of eating] Cooking for Yourself: You Are Worth the Effort

Jess: [CN: Sexual assault] Iowa State Goes to Iowa Supreme Court to Keep Player off the Team

Andy: [CN: Homophobia; racism] Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) Slammed for Homophobic and Racist Remarks

Trudy: [video] 10-Year-Old Academy Award Nominee Quvenzhané Wallis Was Featured in a Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial for 2014 Maserati Ghibli

Jamilah: [video; references to slavery] SNL Kicks Off Black History Month: "28 Reasons to Hug a Black Guy"

Leave your links and recommendations in comments...

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Veruca Salt: "Seether"

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today!

Something about a ballsport game? I don't know.

California is still experiencing a drought so extreme that "17 rural communities providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out within 60 to 120 days." Meanwhile, three more winter storms are going to dump more snow on other parts of the country.

(We have more than a foot of snow sitting on the ground already, and, by next weekend, we could have as much as two feet more after being hit by a storm midweek and another one next weekend. Oy.)

[Content Note: Death penalty] Missouri executed Herbert Smulls while an appeal asking to halt his execution was still pending before the US Supreme Court. And it was probably legal.

A new analysis from the Guttmacher Institute has found that the US abortion rate is its lowest since 1973.

The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol is joining ABC News. I guess ABC figures there just isn't enough wrong in their political coverage these days. "How can we exponentially up our wrong quotient?" "How about we hire Bill Kristol, who is literally the wrongest person in the history of being wrong?" "Now there's an idea you can take to the bank!"

[Note: Video plays automatically at link] Here's a neat headline: "House Republicans pivot in search of a positive message." Maybe something like, "We are positive that people aren't entitled to food," perhaps?

[Note: Harry Potter spoilers] Do you think that Hermione should have ended up with Harry? Well, JK Rowling agrees with you! Personally, I like the idea of the smart, slightly overserious girl ending up with the smart, slightly goofy ginger guy FOR SOME REASON.

Jesse Eisenberg will play Lex Luthor. Okay.

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RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman

Yesterday, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead of an apparent drug overdose. He was 46.

His Times obituary is here.

Hoffman was a beautiful actor, who was once described by Meryl Streep as "just the most fun to work with and the most—he sets such a great example to all of us of how to live your work with integrity and imagination every time, every time out." He was in some of my most beloved films, including The Big Lebowski and Magnolia, in the latter of which he played a home hospice nurse named Phil Parma, who is one of my favorite film characters of all time. He played many vulnerable characters, and imbued them with such lovable humanity.

Hoffman always struck me as being, in real life, the sort of grumpy, mercurial fuck I tend to adore. He was someone I would not have been afraid to meet for fear of disappointment.

I am sorry he is gone.

My sincerest condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.

[Note: If there are less flattering things to be said about Hoffman, they have been excluded because I am unaware of them, not as the result of any deliberate intent to whitewash his life. Please feel welcome to comment on the entirety of his work and life in this thread, though please note, as always, that speculation and judgment about addiction are not welcome in this space.]

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