kevin spacey demands that we all like him now

are terrible men entitled to our money and attention?

A new collection of men are coming forward with unsettling Kevin Spacey allegations, and it’s prompted celebrities like Sharon Stone and Stephen Fry to demand that we all acquiesce to Kevin Spacey’s human right to be rich and famous.

In separate but seemingly orchestrated statements, Stone called Space a “genius” and Fry said he was "clumsy and inappropriate" but that his reputation shouldn’t have been "wrecked." Liam Neeson joined the circle-jerk by adding that "Kevin is a good man and a man of character. Personally speaking, our industry needs him and misses him greatly." While all eyes are on Rafah, I’m glad celebrities are funneling our attention towards the real victims of this conflict: Kevin Spacey’s mansions.

In addition to his friends publicly praising him, Spacey also appeared on television for the first time since all the allegations came out for an interview with Chris Cuomo, and yours truly was asked to debate whether he should be let back into Hollywood. You can watch me do it live (from the inside of a van outside my house!) by clicking here or by watching the highlight below.

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What’s happening is clear. Spacey is trying to stage a comeback and earn public sympathy so that his movies stop tanking at the box office. It’s been a rough couple of years for him. I’m sure anyone who’s ever lost their job for allegedly groping dozens of innocent people at work over the span of two decades can totally relate.

As for the new accusations, they’re coming from nine men, and are part of a new documentary released on HBO Max called Spacey Unmasked. One of them is his own brother who says that their father hosted nazi meetings at their house growing and raped him when he was a teenager. Then there’s Danny, who worked at the Old Vic Theatre when Spacey was the artistic director, and who says that Spacey sexually assaulted him. “This was someone I had tremendous respect for, and he was pushing his groin on my face during, whilst I was working, whilst the pantomime was going on with family and children. And I could smell him. I could feel him getting pleasured by it. I froze, in a way, I couldn’t move,” Danny says in Spacey Unmasked. “I started to get scared of coming to work.” Twenty other men who worked at the same theater made similar accusations against Spacey in 2017. Scott, another alleged victim says that Spacey offered to help him with headshots when he was a young and aspiring actor, but that he ended up masturbating when they were watching Saving Private Ryan (what?) and pressured him to do it too. “Like, there’s no way that this is happening. That this guy is rubbing one out during the invasion of Normandie,” Scott says in recounting the incident. “And finally, he reaches over and grabs my hand and tries to get me to help out. I was, like, ‘No, this is crazy.’”

But I guess we should take Sharon Stone’s word that he’s a nice guy or whatever!

Spacey is leaning on the fact that his trials didn’t find him guilty or liable to argue that he has a god-given right to our attention and money. “I have consistently denied — and now successfully defended — numerous allegations made both in the U.S. and the U.K., both criminal and civil, and each time have been able to source evidence undermining the allegations and have been believed by a jury of my peers,” Spacey said in a statement. It should be noted that three of his public accusers died and one of their cases never even went to trial because of it.

While it’s true that Spacey won his cases, anyone who knows a thing or two about our justice system (or who reads this newsletter) understands how unequipped it is to handle sexual misconduct cases. In a world where even the most obvious villains like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein BOTH had their convictions overturned despite being accused by 160 women combined, it’s hard to have faith in the courts. I also think the gender of Spacey’s accusers is worth paying attention to. If he had been accused of assaulting dozens of teenage girls and women, especially if they were white, celebrities might be less quick to jump to his defense. The sexual abuse of men and boys often receives less attention and public scrutiny.

No matter what happened during those trials, there remains incontrovertible evidence that Spacey has had a long career of being a creep, at best, and a sexual predator at worst. And the truth is that we live in a capitalist society, which means that we don’t make decisions based on Kevin Spacey’s feelings, we make them based on our own. We get to buy products that we like, and watch films with people that like in them, or choose not to! Spacey doesn’t have a god-given right to be liked be us. Just because he still wants to be an actor, it doesn’t mean he gets to be one. You can call that cancel culture, but another word for it is capitalism. The justice system might be a crappy adjudicator, but our consumer decisions aren’t. We don’t have to watch films with shitty people in them. No matter how nice they are to Liam Neeson.