(French Quarter Street Jazz)
Like a lot of actors, Matt Damon has a weakness for silly, fashionable politics,
but otherwise he seems like a decent enough guy;
certainly by the standards of the world he lives in.
In a business where stars often behave like
demanding children, a place where Harvey Weinstein
was long considered a moral leader, Matt Damon
stands out.
He's apparently well liked by just about everybody
he deals with.
He gives generously to charity, he's been
married to the same woman for a dozen years;
they're raising four daughters.
Nobody's ever even accused him of sexual misconduct
but suddenly that doesn't matter.
Matt Damon's career is now in jeopardy.
More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for producers to cut Damon from his latest film.
That movie's already been shot, but the petition demands that any evidence of his voice or image
be removed from the film in the editing booth.
Other people are saying that Damon should be denied future film roles, and he may well be denied those roles.
What exactly did Matt Damon do to so thoroughly
destroy his reputation in such short a time?
Well, last week he gave an interview to ABC
News about the wave of sex scandals in Hollywood.
No, he didn't defend sexual harassment in that interview. He didn't suggest the accusers are lying.
He didn't say anything remotely like that,
though you'd never know it from the coverage,
which in some cases omits any of Damon's direct quotes.
So, we'll let you decide for yourself, what
you think of Matt Damon's views.
Here's what he actually said to ABC News:
"I do believe that there's a spectrum of behavior,
and we're going to have to figure out what
. . .
There's a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?
Both of those behaviors need to be confronted
and irradiated without question,
but they shouldn't be conflated."
Damon went on to say this: "We live in this
culture of outrage and injury, and we're gonna
have to correct enough to go "Wait a minute,
none of us came here perfect.
We're in this moment and we're at the moment
and I hope it doesn't stay this way.
The clearest signal to men and to younger
people is "deny it, because if you take responsibility
for what you did, your life's gonna get ruined."
All of that behavior needs to be confronted,
but there is a continuum and on this end of
the continuum, where you have rape and child
molestation or whatever, you know.
That's prison; that's criminal behavior and
it need to be dealt with that way.
The other stuff is kind of shameful and gross. I don't know Louis CK; I've never met him.
I'm a fan of his, but I don't imagine he's going to do those things again.
I imagine the price he has paid at this point
is so beyond anything that he . . .
I just think we have to start delineating between what these behaviors are."
There it is.
Now, there are a couple of incomplete thoughts
in there.
There's a line or two your average publicist
would advise against expressing in public,
but ask yourself; and be honest: How much
of that do you actually disagree with?
How much is hateful or immoral or otherwise beyond the pale? None of it?
Exactly!
There's not a single sentiment in that entire
paragraph that's not defensible,
or that 90% of the population would find over the top
or outrageous.
It's all within bounds, or it would have been
last year.
But because a handful of Twitter users don't
like it, the rest f us have to pretend that
Matt Damon is guilty of something awful.
And if we don't pretend, we may ourselves
be seen as collaborators for whatever crimes
he supposedly committed, and forced to share
his punishment.
It's terrifying and it's corrupting.
This is how reason dies. We're watching it happen.
Most of us are too afraid to say anything
about it as it happens.
Meanwhile the least reasonable, most extreme
voices get louder by the hour.
Yesterday, actress Rose McGowen ordered the
media to stop using the word "alleged" when
discussing claims of sexual misconduct.
In other words, everybody accused is guilty.
If you deny that, you're guilty too.
Weirdly, almost nobody in the media pushed
back against Rose McGowen's demand.
Before long they may have to obey her. She has nearly a million Twitter followers.
SHE's calling the shots.
Let's just be honest about what's happening. Social media are driving this insanity.
Their making mob justice the rule and clear
thinking impossible.
Large portions of our population and ironically,
they tend to be the best educated portions
of the population are now addicted to outrage, virtue signaling, bandwagoning; social media did that.
Turns out, it's not that helpful to know what every famous person in America is thinking at all times.
It just makes us all crazy and less content.
A few weeks ago former Facebook president Shawn Parker admitted the website he helped found,
Facebook, "Literally changes your relationship
with society and with each other."
Parker was right; it is all shredding our
social fabric before our eyes.
Remember, you have an absolute right to say
what you think is true.
Other people might not agree with you, but
that's okay.
It doesn't make either of you evil, or mean
you ought to be fired from your job.
It just means you disagree.
That has always been true. It was true before smart phones,
and no matter what they say on Twitter, it's true now.
Joining us now, radio show host Tammy Bruce.
So Tammy, I never thought that I would defend
Matt Damon, and I'm not actually really defending
Matt Damon, I'm just defending the proposition
that you can say something that other people
disagree with without being fired for it,
and we seem to have lost that.
Yeah, indeed. Look, I also loathe him.
He said some things about the president and about others which I would politically disagree with.
I don't know him. But he seems, to me, the blind squirrel here.
Every now and then you find a nut, an he's
found one, because he's right.
You're absolutely right in your assessment
leading into this.
But as a feminist, here's also what I see
in this regard: I've been arguing from the
beginning here that we need to be careful,as
I saw the attempt to conflate guys being jerks
with guys that are actual predators.
Women involved in this and the people on the
left argue that we don't want him and others
to trivialize the serious allegations, but
what really trivializes them, Tucker,
is when you do compare a man, let's say, calling you
beautiful when you walk down the hallway,
or maybe rubbing your back with an act of rape.
That's trivializes those survivors, what they've
been through.
I think that most people understand that as
you read what Matt Damon said,
and this now our challenge, because this is what the left
always does.
They use a serious issue that we know has to be dealt with and then ride it, then abuse it; they go too far.
It's like the French Revolution. People begin to do things simply because they can,
and they use it for revenge, or because they can't stop their rage, and then everybody's going to have to pay.
Jody Foster, I think, I saw a headline the
other day,
that every man over the age of 30 is somewhat culpable for the sexual  harassment we now face.
I have found in my life, it's been men who've
been most helpful and the most decent to me.
With women, not necessarily being so.
So this is an issue of behavior, it's not
an issue about men or sex even, as we know.
It's about control, and I think that unless
we get a handle on this and have an honest
conversation, you're going to have the left,
once again, shredding an important issue like
sexual harassment and sexual assault because
they don't know, and they have no boundary
of what's important and conflating everything
and just simply vomiting their rage out on everyone.
Exactly, and it diminishes the experience
of people that really have suffered.
I mean, if you lost your legs in an IED and
closed my hand in a car door, and I say to you:
"We both kind of suffered in the same way." You would say: "No, actually; I have my legs blown off.
You broke a finger; they're not the same."
Look, there are different things in the workplace and the seriousness, workplaces are currently dealing with that.
But we do have to be careful with single voices,
who have perhaps originally some very important
things to say, and then something changes
in that framework.
Because they should not be conflated, these
things are different; there is a continuum
and certain voices, hopefully voices like
ours, will remind people of these things,
and make sure we don't have a wholesale . . . effectively,
a beheading of everyone who the left doesn't
like or that feminists don't like. Because then, we're all going to lose.
That's exactly right. Let reasonable people speak.
Tammy, you are a reasonable person; thank you.
Thank you sir.
(French Quarter Street Jazz)
