The man is a scumbag. He’s always been a scumbag, and it was never a secret that he was a scumbag.
The reports over the years from women who claim to have been mistreated by him are what you expect to hear about a scumbag. Some of them are reports of criminal behaviour, and probably few if any of them are practically prosecutable.
The women in question should have known better and probably should have been better advised. That doesn’t begin to justify any of his behaviour, whether criminal or merely scummy.
Not actively celebrating his scumminess would be helpful to women in the position that they were in. Scumbags like him should not be paid to advertise products or participate in elite media. It is disgraceful that he was widely promoted in the past, and a further disgrace that promotion is being withdrawn directly he becomes inconvenient to the establishment through whatever it is he’s been pissing them off with lately. I’m not even sure if it’s stuff I agree with or disagree with — why would I care what an idiot scumbag like him thinks?
On a generally open forum like X or YouTube, people shouldn’t be excluded from participation, including payments, just because someone thinks (correctly) that they’re a scumbag. But choosing to promote scumbags is scummy behaviour.
I love Russell Brand: the hilarious thing about him is that he has the vocabulary of an over-pretentious Social Scientist but the accent of a moron. His voice is unfashionably high-pitched, something I have learned to associate with actual or recovering heroin addicts: his propensity for conspiracy theories seems to be also part of the package. I was very impressed by his website listing all the manifestations of his social media: Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and other media that I had never heard of. This is salesmanship. He was my introduction to the New Age of self-marketing.
The problem here, as I see it, is something called ‘scope-creep’. This is a phenomenon much complained of in the building trade, and involves a surreptitious increase in the onerous duties of a contract, to the benefit of the complainant. If I hire you to paint the exterior of my house, I then claim that you were paid to paint the interior as well, etc. The scope creep in this case is in the original contract governing the exchange of intimacies, and in the definition of rape.
Rape historically is a crime against the King and his peace. If a woman is raped on the King’s Highways, then this gives the impression that his rule is imperfect and negligent, so the rapist must be punished. This has been amended by the feminist contention that the act of rape should not be confined to cases of ‘virgins in dark alleys’ and serial rapists who prowl the streets looking for open windows during heat-waves. This has led to a whole category of disputed events which require endless processing. Rape is no longer restricted to events which involve force and threats of serious violence by a man in a situation where a woman is powerless and beyond the reach of help, but can cover almost any situation where the female party has come to regret the events. A quick google search comes up with “DIICOT accuses the Tates of having recruited women through the “loverboy” method—which consists of misrepresenting one’s intention to commit to a romantic relationship”. Rape, which once involved forcibly violating a woman, who does not consent to this action and is resisting, now covers any kind of misrepresentation.
The problem arises when there is disparity in career paths. Boy meets girl and they have sex: boy goes on to become an MP, media star, millionaire, where girl ends up a single parent on benefits, divorced, no longer attractive to the opposite sex. At this point she casts around for some way to recoup her fortunes. It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a paternity suit or sexual assault charge.
The first person to turn to in this case is the father of the offspring that you are raising. However, due to an over-full diary, an unfavourable cycle of ovulation and unhelpful incident of fertility, it frequently transpires that the man most able to pay for the needy child (and maintain its mother in the manner to which she would like to become accustomed) does not actually genetically match the needy offspring. The biological father turns out to be penniless or dead or in prison.
In the good old days, this was not a problem. A woman who had fallen pregnant who had once had an amorous encounter with Charlie Chaplin slapped a paternity suit on him, as he was the best able to provide the desired support. A blood test was performed that showed that he could not be the father, but the technology was new and Chaplin was being demonised by the Hearst Media, so the courts found against him anyway.
Nowadays of course, it is not so easy. The under-privileged female in pursuit of a better life-style by virtue of a previous sexual encounter with a now successful male lives in dread of hearing the fatal words:
“In the case of five month old LaJaybecca, Lover Boy MP, you are NOT THE FATHER!”
So there is always the back up assertion, especially useful for women who have never even given birth: “Maybe he is not the father, but HE RAPED ME!”
Now, the rape story does not always pan out, and it can lead to an unending amount of stress and expense. However, in the right circumstances, it is possible to by-pass the court process, where inconvenient letters or texts showing the female to be actively pursuing the relationship or testimony of her boasting to her female friends of the impressive status of her conquests may come to light, making a successful conviction unlikely.
Here, one should mention Virginia Giuffre, an American lady who claimed to have slept with a number of famous people, including Prince Andrew. He was born in 1960 and she in 1983: the encounter is alleged to have taken place in 2001. As this puts them above the age of consent in every jurisdiction they might have met in, there is no possibility of any crime of statutory rape having taken place. No-one would risk bringing the matter to a criminal court. Giuffre had already indicated her ability to tolerate older men by living with a 65 year old for six months, before she ever met Jeffrey Epstein or Prince Andrew. The age of consent is 16. Prosecution was not sought: instead she prepared a litany of complaint: I was vulnerable: I was groomed; I was trafficked.
Giuffre’s list of men she allegedly serviced is impressive, and even includes Alan Gershowitz. So why, out of all the men with whom she had liaisons, did she hone in on Prince Andrew as being the cause of all her misfortunes? Firstly, he had access to a lot of money, and secondly, he occupied a position in which he could be embarrassed into settling out of court. She would not then be dragged into court and submit to having the world’s most expensive lawyers tear her testimony to shreds. But it was the year of the Queen’s jubilee and the Establishment did not want this running as a sideshow, competing with the more festive event. Quite a number of the men on Giuffre’s list would have brazened it out, resorting to the Duke of Wellington’s famous riposte: “Publish and be damned.”
Russell’s case is of this ilk. A cursory search in Youtube reveals a younger Russell, dispensing sexually charged witticisms, surrounded by nubile women who are obviously lapping it up. There seems to be a claque of these girls, in competition with each other to be his girl of the moment. It’s a hobby I suppose: in a musical setting, we call such girls groupies. Here one wonders, given such a number of willing participants surrounding him, how did an unwilling participant become caught up in the melée? As I see it, this probably did not happen. Miss Complainant would have been among the willing crowd, but as she got older she would have perceived the fatuous and unprofitable nature of this activity. The problem is that 16 year old girls have one idea about sex, but add a few decades to their life, and they see the world differently. There she was giving it away for free, when more astute females were extracting fortunes on the basis of supplying the same service. In the words of the song:
“You’ve got to pay to play, just so shawty bang-bang looks your way.”
Scope creep allows her to ditch the “summer of love” ethos she originally operated in, and move into something more like a New Guinean bride-price arrangement.
I was going to lose sympathy for Russell as an anti-vaxxer, but a final google reveals that he is not the worst of them. “Brand, who married Perry without a prenuptial agreement, was eligible to claim half of the estimated $44 million she earned during their marriage, but declined. Another of the sins levelled against him makes him a pro-Russian conspiracy theorist. Your argument against him is to keep repeating the word ‘scumbag’: six times in fact. You’re once, twice, six times a scumbag. This is not a particularly impressive form of argumentation.