Thoughts on the harassment scandal

Kevin Spacey sacked from House of Cards.
Spacey movie will be re-shot with Christopher Plummer replacing Spacey.
Louis C. K. will not be voicing his animated character in Secret Life of Pets 2.
Louis C. K. movie binned.

Fall-out of the sexual harassment scandal. I'm glad women who have been serially harassed are finally being stood up for and their voices being heard (maybe for the first time) and this moral outrage is exposing all the bad men in the hallways of Hollywood, the corridors of power in Washington and other industries that have come under microscopic scrutiny.

But:

1. As Alec Baldwin rightly says, this is not limited to the arts and entertainment industry or politics; it is practically woven into the fabric of life.

2. Moral outrage is great, but, institutional measures must be adopted to ensure this current outcry doesn't end as just that and then after a few sobering months things go back to normal. Which brings me to my third point...

3. Where does it end? So we cancel movies or TV shows for one person's transgressions and stall/mute/trivialise the hardwork of all the others involved in the project. We stop re-runs of shows involving said transgressors as though they were the only ones on the screen in the movie. In a fit of passion and outrage, we seek to whitewash and simultaneously blacklist certain folks as though we were back in the heart of Stalinist communism where people are written out of history and adopt the McCarthy-ist listing of dissidents who must never be worked with again.

Does the bad action automatically vitiate everything they have done before then or the good work they once did, or the good work they are currently doing? Should we no longer admit that we enjoy watching House of Cards, The Usual Suspects, Se7en and The secret life of pets?

Is there room for redemption, restitution and restoration? Is it once bad, forever barred? Is there hope for these people to express genuine remorse, repent and be restored?

The statute of limitations may never run out on certain indiscretions but does an offence committed twenty years ago mean everything that individual has done since is worthless and pointless (so long as s/he has not been outed and punished? Is there a possibility (however slim and no matter how reprehensible their previous actions) that for some of the accused individuals, they have since learnt to tow a better line of behaviour and have adopted a more responsible code of personal conduct?

And while we want to rid society of harassers, I'm sometimes left wondering what the ultimate goal of all this is. Is the aim of the game merely to name and shame, or is it to send out a strong message that certain kinds of behaviour will no longer be tolerated as acceptable or par for the course?

And where do we draw the line with our righteous indignation? Will the campaign tomorrow turn to those who once bullied a kid in the seventh grade? Or to people who once nicked a pack of gum from the till at the candy store. Or you once said a bad word to somebody that deeply hurt them. Since we are now the newfound moral police, I'd like to understand what standards of behaviour are considered "OK" and what is taken as "totally unacceptable", and whether these are universal or they will switch depending on what time, season, location, fad or phase we find ourselves in.

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Personally, I have no interest in belittling the grievances of the women (and men) who have been hurt by these mindless actions, but I try to be careful in judging people merely because they sin different from me.

A few decades ago Republicans were up in arms about Bill Clinton's marital infidelity, expressing more outrage than the offended wife. And then it was discovered that key republican leaders who had actively taken a stance to denounce and deride the then President of the United States, including then Speaker, Newt Gingrich, were just as guilty of the same thing for which they sought to impeach the President.

The term for this kind of behaviour is hypocrisy, and it is distasteful, reprehensible, bitter and petty. I have been guilty and so I try to remain introspective when cases like this unfold. There are lessons to be learned. But remember, when the woman caught in adultery (in the very act) was brought before Jesus, the LORD's response was simply "he who hath no sin let him cast the first stone". Till date, we are still waiting for those stones to start flying. The only sound, over 2000 years later, is that of stones being dropped or falling to the floor.

My two cents, but what do my shallow thoughts matter anyway?

/IamMaverick