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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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A literally incredible turn of events in the Jonathan Majors case.

His accuser, no doubt taking note from her many predecessors, had attempted a tamed rewrite of her accusations, reducing battery and restraint to Majors having “pushed her into a taxi” and “pulled her middle finger.”

Predictably, the NYPD soon thereafter uncovered solid evidence that she was, in fact, not only the perpetrator of the abuse, but a kleptomaniac to boot, taking souvenirs from Majors’ apartment after he had enjoyed her services as a (ahem) “dancer”* movement coaching.

One wonders if, among the few patches of the populace where the light of this truth will break through, there might be a few unexpected corners noticing (weaponized term intentionally deployed) this cascade of catty copyists. But the chances of even a hundred more such cases causing so much as a hint of open skepticism in the Dominant Cultural Ideology? Methinks the lady doth be wonderful too much.

*@ecgtheow rightly points out that this is the rare tabloid case where The New York Times is obligated to use a favorite euphemism for its literal definition.

Majors has a longstanding reputation, it’s not like Ansel Elgort or something where it genuinely was just one person saying stupid shit about him. His college classmates said and say very similar things, for example.

Where people are cancelled and then not uncancelled for spurious allegations, it’s usually for this reason (Chris Avellone was in a similar place in the games business). Everybody in the business knows they’re a scumbag, regardless of the veracity of the one claim a would-be victim makes public.

No director or executive is going to hire somebody where three months into production on a $200m picture another set of similar allegations everybody thinks are waiting in the wings might come out.

People (especially women being egged on by their friends) have easily-altered memories when they are either 1) socially pressured or 2) socially incentivized to reinterpret events they barely recall and barely care about outside of group status. Majors’ accusers, like many cascades of catty copyists before them, all suddenly remembered him being a very bad boy the second they saw another woman gain social status and the potential for a financial windfall from doing so. Majors’ “long-standing reputation” did not exist at all until our “dancer”* movement coach decided to create it, after which many women who had most likely bragged to their friends about having once known him (probably some, to be fair, in the biblical sense) turned toward the other endzone and joined the dogpile.

*see top post

I heard stories about Majors 3+ years ago from people who had been at college with him. I think they had little reason to lie in the way you suggest since he was at the time a hot new star being praised by Obama and everyone else for The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I have to say it would be quite interesting if conservatives went all-in defending a black guy from sexual assault allegations by largely white women.

The twitterati are not representative and most conservatives are genuinely not very racist.