The Rose Army is coming for Alec Baldwin after he told PBS Newshour that, yes, men treat women as lesser people, but in cases of rape, it’s up to victims to bring down their molesters.
He started by saying that men have been conditioned to view men as leaders and women as underlings. True:
The person in charge was always a man; the president was a man, the head of the studio was a man, the director was a man...if a woman was contributing to the project or the process, we’d kinda go ‘okay, that’s great, now let’s have the guy do the talking, who’s in charge.’
But then he went on to add that everyone had heard that Weinstein raped Rose McGowan, but her taking the $100,000 settlement had allowed Weinstein to get away with the alleged rape:
Baldwin: You heard the rumor that he raped Rose McGowan. You heard that over and over, and nothing was done. We’ve heard that for decades and nothing was done–
PBS: Well nobody said anything–
Baldwin: Well but what happened was Rose McGowan took a payment of $100,000 and settled her case with him. It was for Rose McGowan to prosecute that case.
Baldwin also argued that no employee can possibly vet everybody in their company, so it’s up to the victims to come forward.
Baldwin mentioned a New York Times piece which also suggested that the settlements “set back the cause of change”–perhaps referring to this piece, “A Long-Delayed Reckoning of the Cost of Silence on Abuse,” in which Jim Rutenberg wrote:
The sums [Harvey Weinstein and Bill O’Reilly] paid their accusers bought them silence. A full, public airing did not come to be until those meddling reporters came along.
Rutenberg went on:
...it is a reckoning long delayed. And a big reason for the delay has to do with the out-of-court settlements and the nondisclosure agreements that go with them.
Emma Thompson has a pretty good response to that thinking. “There are so many blind eyes,” she said in an interview with the BBC in mid-October. “We can’t keep making the women to whom this happens responsible, they’re the ones who’ve got to speak, why?”
Baldwin has announced that he’s temporarily stepping away from his personal Twitter account “in the current climate.”