I don’t want to nitpick on this excessively as it’s not even directly on topic, but at no point did I intentionally misrepresent anything you said. And I acknowledge that you did say, later on when directly confronted with it, that you don’t know what the Ghomeshi verdict should have been. But initially you had also said (emphasis mine):
Perhaps I misread your meaning, but if you think there is “plenty of reason to criticize … the findings of [the] judge”, then I took this to mean that you disagreed with his finding of “not guilty”.
And then there was this:
Not to belabor the point, but I gave you a link to the full text of the judgment, in which it was clear that all three complainants were engaged in systematic lying and withholding critically important evidence that seriously undermined their case, until, under cross-examination, they were confronted with irrefutable physical evidence. And even then you tried to excuse it by saying that it “easily could have been accidental omissions”, or that somehow it was society’s fault for “gaslighting” them and muddling up their thinking. No, what you talk about in pre-trial testimony and preliminary hearings and on the witness stand is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I reject any notion that this is complicated, and I would consider it insulting to women to suggest that they were unable to fully comprehend the concept. It was soon obvious that critical information was deliberately withheld, and continued to be withheld, until their deceptions were exposed. And that was only part of their lack of credibility.
I don’t want to argue about it any more, certainly not in this thread, but I did want to strongly make the point that I was not intentionally misrepresenting you or being dishonest, though I may somehow have misunderstood your meaning.
FWIW, I think Ghomeshi was guilty as sin, but there was no way under the rule of law, based on the evidence presented, that he could reasonably have been convicted in this trial.
Allen is not a perfect human being and many people don’t like him for a variety of reasons, one being the rather unusual circumstances of the marriage with Soon-Yi, although obviously they’ve had a long and happy relationship, so good for them. Other than the Dylan situation, I’m not aware of other allegations against Allen, although I must admit I follow his art much more than his personal life.
With regard to Dylan, I think the quote from Moses Farrow in post #95 is worth a read, whether you choose to fully believe it or not. This is a familial dispute in which very few people have access to all the truthful details, and fewer still to the actual truth of what really happened.
That no evidence was found to substantiate Dylan’s claims doesn’t mean that Dylan isn’t telling the truth. I have no idea what the truth is, but I do object to those who think they do. I don’t care if Allen is worth $80 million or just $1; “equal justice for all” has long been a fundamental American ideal (though far from true in reality) yet many of us are willing to cast Allen into the outer darkness like a suspected witch in 17th century Salem. To me that maxim implies social justice as well as legal justice; no one is obliged to watch his movies or read his books, but don’t gather in mobs to stand in the way of those who do.
The publisher didn’t “reject” his manuscript. They had every right to, but they did not. They enthusiastically accepted it. It was cancelled after an impromptu revolt and a walkout by rank-and-file employees. Stephen King was right. This is censorship. Hachette took on the book because they believed it would be very popular. If their judgment turned out to be wrong, they would have lost a ton of money. That’s the way things are supposed to work in the land of free speech and capitalism.
As for OJ, I have no hesitation in saying that OJ was a murderer who was acquitted through a combination of having at least seven (don’t remember the exact number) of literally the absolutely top criminal lawyers in the country and an ignorant jury that was more impressed by Johnny Cochrane’s rhyming couplets than by any actual evidence. These morons took something like fifteen minutes to reach the wrong verdict on a major case that had massive amounts of evidence and huge numbers of factors to consider. There is no comparison with anything we’re talking about here. It was a major failure of the US justice system, so major that President Clinton himself felt obliged to tell a very disturbed American public essentially that what’s done is done, now let’s move on. OJ did eventually prove himself a criminal, aside from losing the civil case over the murder, and was sentenced to 33 years for armed robbery, of which he served 9 before being paroled.