How Widely Will the Sex Abuse Scandals Spread Before They're "Contained"?

by Gaius Publius

Just a heads up. The liberal-side sexual abuse scandal that's spreading widely, catching both greater and lesser lights, is not likely to let up. Large fish (for example, Harvey Weinstein) and smaller (for example, the Washington Spectator's Hamilton Fish V) are getting entangled in the net of long-delayed, entirely appropriate outrage. The circle of scrutiny is wide, enough so that even apparently innocent people, like Matt Taibbi for instance, feel compelled to post preventive pieces like this.

Spreading Like a Fire

We're in the spreading phase of this wild fire. Soon the firefighters will come to tamp it down. Will they succeed? My guess is yes. After all, the practice is apparently so rampant that the sheer number of people taken out — on our side, good progressives, yes, but also guilty of what we most claim to disavow — may prove too large, with too many of the names too prominent.

Hollywood tried circling, to some degree, its wagons around Weinstein, and those who early on defended him are coming for their own share of shame. As many have noted, yours truly included, there are many ways the Weinstein world and culture touches the larger liberal world and culture.

My best guess is that the powers that be in the left-mainstream world will look for a time to shout "Enough already. We get the point. Let's not spill any more blood," surely a move to defend those many about to be touched. Watch for that.

As an example of what still hidden from most eyes, and what will most definitely, with backstage force, remain buried from wide public view for as long as possible, consider the following.

A World Hiding Serial Harassers Hides Serial Pedophiles As Well

A world like Hollywood or mainstream politics — on both sides of the aisle — hides not only many individuals who "get away with it" because, well, they can. It hides self-sustaining and reinforcing groups of those who "get away with it" as well.

Consider Fox News, for example, as not just a place where lots of sexual abusers work(ed), but as an organization that proactively attracts and enables those people. This is not passive allowance of a crime, but proactive creation of it. If the organizational heads at Fox News were engaged in procuring people to be put into lives of prostitution, for example, we'd call the organization by a gangland term, a "prostitution ring."

Which leads us to the other main point of this piece. It looks like there is or has been a pedophile ring operating in many of the Hollywood circles inhabited by good "liberal" people like Harvey Weinstein.

This comes from former child actor Corey Feldman via Zero Hedge:

For years, actor and former child star Corey Feldman has been warning anybody who would listen that Hollywood is a place where adults have more inappropriate contact with children than probably anywhere else in the world.

So it’s unsurprising given the renewed focus on sexual assault and harassment brought about by the Harvey Weinstein scandal that Feldman’s accusations would receive renewed attention, considering he made the media rounds as recently as 2016 to talk about how a pedophile ring in Hollywood abused him and his friend, fellow actor Corey Haim – actions Feldman blames for Haim’s eventual death from a drug overdose.

And yesterday, he returned to the “Today” show and, during an interview with Matt Lauer vowed to release the names of six men who he alleges participated in the abuse of himself, Haim and other young stars. The interview followed Feldman’s announcement in a YouTube video last week that he was launching an Indiegogo page to try and raise money for a feature film about pedophilia in Hollywood that he hopes to direct. However, as Lauer pointed out, Feldman’s target budget - $10 million – appears lofty. But the former child star appears determined to tell his story the way he wants it to be told.

See the video above for Feldman's interview with, to my ears, a defensive Matt Lauer asking the questions. A brief segment:

LAUER: “Why are you talking to me? Why aren’t you talking to the police right now?”

FELDMAN: “I told the police. In fact if anyone wants to go back to 1993, when I was interviewed by the Santa Barbara Police Department. I sat there and gave them the names. They are on record. They have all of this information, but they were scanning Michael Jackson. All they cared about was trying about to find something on Michael Jackson.”

LAUER: “Who you said, by the way, did not abuse you.”

FELDMAN: “Who Michael was innocent. And that was what the interview was about with the pollice in 1993. I told them, he is not that guy. And they said, maybe you don’t understand your friend. And I said, no, I know the difference between pedophiles and somebody that is not a pedophile because I have been molested. Here’s the names, go investigate. And let me push this forward, there are thousands of people in Hollywood that have the same information. Why is it all on me? Why is it, if I don’t release the names in the next two months, six months or a year, I’m the bad guy. I’m the victim here. I’m the one who has been abused. I’m the one who is trying to come forward and do something about it.”

LAUER: “But —“ [crosstalk]

FELDMAN: “Please, I’m sorry. There are thousands of people out there, Matt, who have this information. Any one of those child actors that went to the teenage soda pop clubs with me when I was a kid, know who those people are and the people who ran it. Anybody can go back through history and look at the Teen magazines and say what was the name of that venue they were promoting and who ran that venue own who endorsed it.”

If you noted the references to "soda pop clubs" in Feldman's comments, one name that keeps coming up is "Alphy's Soda Pop Club." We're in Rumorville here, so I'll just link to one piece discussing it. Names associated with Alphy's club, of which Feldman and Corey Haim appear to be founding members, include then-teens like "Alyssa Milano, Nicole Eggert, Ricky Schroeder, Drew Barrymore, Alfonso Ribero, Scott Grimes" and more. Many, few, or none of those people may have been victims, but still, that's a lot of name people.

Notice too that Feldman mentions "soda pop clubs," plural. Are there more?

In addition, Feldman has blamed a "Hollywood mogul" for his friend and fellow child actor Corey Haim's death, not as a direct cause, but an indirect one (Haim died after years of substance abuse):

In 2011, Feldman claimed that a "Hollywood mogul" who abused Haim was to blame for his death.[93] The 2013 memoir by Corey Feldman, Coreyography, details the sexual abuse he and Haim suffered as young actors in the film industry; during the filming of Lucas, Feldman stated that Haim "allowed himself to be sodomized",[94] and "had been tricked into engaging in a painful session of anal sex by a man on the movie set. The man told Haim that sex between men and boys was normal in Hollywood, saying that 'all the guys in the entertainment world do it.'

Note also the inability to people to criticize Kevin Spacey, as his name rises again into this discussion. Not part of any "ring" per se; there are no such allegations. But he has a past that includes admitting he "may have" handled a 14-year-old inappropriately. Will his current status as a darling of the left play mitigate the renewed criticism he may encounter?

Bottom Line

Again, just a heads up. Your takeaways for now:

• This scandal could grow very very big, implicating many.

• If a coverup comes, it will come in force. Watch for it.

• If a coverup comes, everyone involved in making it seem lighter that it should be, or making it go away, is complicit.

Just saying. This will absolutely be a test of mainstream liberal, and possibly progressive, adherence to a principle which that culture claims to honor deeply.

GP