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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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I do think that Allen gets some extra flack compared to Tyson because Allen is white whereas Tyson is black.

An obvious possibility here (and IMO the biggest reason) is that people who care about cinema think sexual violence is a really big deal and people who care about boxing don't. Like, both will say rape is bad if you ask them "is rape bad?", but the former are much more likely believe an allegation even if the evidence is weak and act on that belief, whereas the latter are more likely to dismiss allegations (or just not care) even if the evidence is strong.

The difficulty with this question, taken more broadly, is that there's a very long list of celebrities with at least semi-credible accusations against them who beat the rap, and looking at their race is not likely to be very enlightening.

I think the most relevant factors here are a) do you give a shit b) does your audience give a shit? If the answer to both of those is no, you can get away with pretty much anything that doesn't actually land you in jail.

I think this is a big part of it. Unlike the allegations against Allen, Tyson's transgressions tend to help rather than hurt his "brand", and he knows this - as Freddie pointed out, he described beating up his ex-wife in these terms: "She really offended me and I went BAM. She flew backwards, hitting every wall in the apartment… That was the best punch I've ever thrown in my entire life."