Anatomy of the MeToo Hit Job: Johnny Depp, Andrew Cuomo, Marilyn Manson Cases & The Crucible

on monday may 28 2017 governor cuomo planned a visit to our neighborhood to survey damages and have a press conference i came home from work to see all the commotion going on i was asked by a staffer if i would allow governor to come into my home view our damages and i agree governor cuomo went into my house with my husband's son along with his staff and some town officials i came in shortly afterward and when i walked in i said to the governor do you think that we have to live like this that's when the governor looked at me approached me took my hand and pulled me to him he leaned down over me and kissed my cheek i was holding my small dog in my arms and i thought he was going to pet my dog but instead he wedged his face between the dog and mine and kissed me on the other cheek and what i felt was highly sexual manner i wasn't expecting that at all he said that's what italians do kiss both cheeks i felt shocked and didn't understand what had just happened but i knew i felt embarrassed and weird about his kissing me i am italian and in my family family members kiss strangers do not kiss especially upon meeting someone for the first time the governor's staff started to walk out of the house governor cuomo lagged behind them he stopped he turned to me and said you are beautiful that made me feel even more uncomfortable i felt as though he was coming on to me in my own home the governor and his staff proceeded to view the damages outside of the house i purposely did not follow because i felt uncomfortable given what had just happened in my living room after seeing the damages the governor then circled to the front of the house where i was standing he then approached me he took my hand and said is there anything else you want i didn't know how to respond he then leaned down on top of me and while still holding one of my hands he forcibly grabbed my face with his other big hand and kissed my cheek again in a very aggressive manner i felt like i was being manhandled especially because he was holding my face and he was kissing my cheek again the way he looked at me in his body language made me very uncomfortable i felt he was acting in a highly pretentious and inappropriate manner especially in front of my family and neighbors he is almost six feet tall i'm approximately five feet tall he towered over me there was nothing i could do when the governor left i thought the craziness was over however to my surprise within days i received a call on my voicemail from the governor's staff the woman on the other end said governor cuomo was having an event in town named in the place and the time and asked if i'd like to attend notably she did not say my husband and i or my family and i only specifically me i purposely did not respond to the invitation i felt very uneasy about the call i was the one only one that received the call in the personal invite from the governor then to top it off the governor sent me a letter and pictures the pictures were featured the governor and me and the letter was addressed only to me more alarms going off the whole thing was so strange and inappropriate and still makes me nervous and afraid because of his power and position this is a photograph of governor cuomo inside of sherry's home holding her hand so this is the photo of the governor kissing sherry outside of her house all right well that's certainly very entertaining i don't know why anyone thought that that would in any way be helpful to the case against cuomo because that was just really one of those ridiculous things that i have heard at least lately that was as you may or may not know that was cuomo's latest accuser represented of course by the not so lovely gloria allred uh there's like it's like there's this like small uh you know cadre of different metoo lawyers that just kind of like swoop in you know you look at like bobby kaplan with amber heard of course i know that she dropped her eventually you know like you know that your situation like amber heard you know your situation is really bad when the me too lawyers the showboaters are are dropping you right maybe amber should call up glory allred i don't know is there a connection there um so anyway i i wanted to talk i wanted to basically address some different objections that have come my way a lot of them through youtube comments or some twitter comments about the videos that i've made about marilyn manson and about andrew cuomo and also from some critics of the depp videos now you don't get critics of the depth videos very often because so many people have come on board with the idea that amber heard is has run a hoax on johnny depp and that she's horrible but there are some still some amber defenders out there anyway i don't get i don't get too many comments defending her but i what i do get are a number of comments of people asking you know is it is it necessary it's great that you want to defend johnny depp is it necessary that you defend uh marilyn manson or that you defend andrew cuomo can't you just stick to the guy that everybody you know really really likes you know i agree that for like a general like swath of the population johnny depp is certainly and has made himself certainly a more attractive figure in a lot of ways and so i don't deny that marilyn manson has cultivated a certain image that maybe now when there's false charges against him is not working for him as well as it once did but i know that you know the idea of tying johnny depp to marilyn manson or to a politician you know that's not some of you don't like that but my point really what i'm really ultimately interested in just getting to the truth of things and i really i'm it's just amazing when you do look into i think carefully and skeptically and when you do look at the cuomo accusations and you do look at the manson accusations that they they're just they're just utterly baseless you know we just this idea that we have that where there is smoke there's got to be some fire i think that that typical i think that traditionally that idea served us well but i think that in this new media age uh that i've talked about elsewhere in my videos i don't i don't think that that holds true anymore there is just too much of an incentive especially in these modern metoo cases for uh not only for people to come out with false stories or exaggerated stories or whatever but you know also there's these me too sort of media machines here of like you know lawyers and publicists and all of this um not to bring woody allen into it because that brings in a whole other bag of controversy and um anyway that's a that's a whole other thing to tackle and there's lots of people doing that online i don't know if i'll ever get to it but one of the things that woody allen said was that uh you know there's a whole there was a whole industry he said that seemed to have developed around churning out a bad press and around him and churning out bad stories and marketing this idea that he was a child molester and molested his daughter and all of that and uh you know we can talk about the merits of the case against him or lack thereof and and the problem with the pharaohs and all of that but the point is i do think that when you look when you look at these cases you can look at it in amber heard the case with johnny depp and you can look at it certainly with the marilyn manson situation in the andrew cuomo situation and you see that there really does that that these me too hit jobs as i as i view them they really are very like systematic and they really are a kind of an industry where you have these lawyers like deborah katz um the the lawyer for one of the cuomo accusers for charlotte bennett uh lika bobby kaplan who you know used to represent amber heard and still and still inexplicably is attacking johnny depp uh supporters online uh you have people like that uh you have people like gloria allred right i mean these are like these are the usual suspects and it seems like what happens is you'll have you'll have these lawyers and these publicists and all of these different people and these activists and it's just this like unlike ungodly soup of stuff that when it gets trained when that when when it gets someone in their sights when they get someone in their sights and they they train their uh their sights on that person uh then they're gonna they're gonna take them down right i mean metaphorically speaking and financially and everything else and reputationally and so uh yeah it's it's it's interesting and it's it's worrisome i mean gloria all read she's not she she's not doing this out of altruism right we all get that she's doing this because she's getting something out of it and so you know that's i think it's it's good to be skeptical now one of the objections that i said earlier that i get is that you know in in the manson and cuomo cases you have a number of these different accusers and i really hate this idea now that that quantity equals equality because it really seems like what is happening and what we saw and heard with that ridiculous uh gloria allred um uh press conference with that that with the latest cuomo accuser is that there seems to be in these modern metoo cases especially lately there seems to be this effort to sort of cloud the the far-fetched nature at times or the problematic nature of these stories to sort of cloud over that and to cloud over at times the the fact that the a number of these allegations are not even a big deal in the cuomo case uh but to cloud over these problems and the stories and the accusers history and all of these inconsistencies and the accusers backgrounds that i've talked about in other videos to cloud over that with just the number just get just just keep just get as many out there as you can and keep them coming and it's interesting that with the the manson and the cuomo cases they seem to almost they seem to follow just basically the same sort of playbook where you have one maybe two uh marquee accusers you know what i mean by marquee okay if you think about like movies and whose name was on the the marquee uh these sort of you'll have like in you know one or two marquee accusers so in the marilyn manson case it was uh evan rachel wood and then esme bianco you know evan rachel wood really famous and as maybe anko will sort of but anyway uh and so you'll have these these two big accusers and then they will be uh followed by uh a roll out of a lesser-known accusers and or accusations that aren't as big of a deal so you know you saw in the manson case that you had esme bianco and evan rachel wood testifying uh months ago at the california state assembly and then evan rachel but they but they didn't say who the guy was right because evan said she was never going to name her accuser i guess i guess the right time ended up coming months later uh but anyway and so but but just a couple of months ago then evan rachel wood came out and she she named her accusers marilyn manson brian warner and then what was it like a week later esme did the same and uh and you know and then you had and you had throughout that starting with evan rachel wood and then throughout that uh with uh into when esme came forward were these um the all these different lesser you know figures posting about their stories and some of them with more serious than others with manson but the thing is and i did this in my other in my videos okay go and look at those i'm not going to retread it here but when you look at the individual stories when you look at the testimony of evan rachel wood some of the things that she asserts in her testimony when you look at the interviews that esme bianco did when she came forward uh what a couple months ago when you look at the instagram statements of these various other women they just they just all fall apart in significant ways they've just got big problems and so you know these these roll outs now i'm very very skeptical of these like highly it seems highly uh strategized and choreographed me too robots that we see where you're just supposed to sort of be like dazzled by the number of accusations and like well it must be true or maybe it's just a lot of [ __ ] no have you have you thought of that does it have to be true because there's a lot of it or maybe just a lot of [ __ ] that's being shoveled at you and then if we look at the cuomo cases as i've talked about in my other video uh i mean a number of the most of these accusations are just ridiculous and quite on the level of what we just heard in in this the gloria allred uh client and testimony i mean it's just ridiculous he kissed her basically what happened and we have pictures of this that's the audacity of these people too is to show us these these dumb ridiculous pictures where it's so obvious to us that nothing is happening i'm talking about in the cuomo case and and this latest testimony he was it was a flood victim he was touring the flooded areas he was trying to show warmth and compassion and so in full view of cameras taking a picture of it he leans over and he gives her a kiss on the cheek and then you know and it's just it and it's all the stuff that she describes it's just so it's so nothing it's just politeness and she's just intentionally twisting it you can tell to try to just amplify and maximize uh press coverage it's just deranged it is like deranged um but we get we get the release of of of these stories uh is and like in the cuomo case where most almost all of them aren't even anything and then you'll have a couple of marquee you know accusers and so with with cuomo it was uh lindsey boylan the new york politician lindsey boylan and she accused him of kissing her unwanted kiss uh and then you have charlotte bennett who you know the who did these dif used to work for him and did all these uh and did an interview with norah o'donnell and i talked about that in a previous video now i taught i talked about the charlotte bennett case already so go look at my other video where i analyze her um her interview but i did get some criticism that in the uh cuomo video that i did i didn't address uh lindsey boylan's um accusation and that was the main accusation well in fact i did okay i talked about it a bit at the end of my video but okay yes fair enough i did not address it simply because i wanted to address a number of the others that and i felt like hers was honestly was if you read that medium post i think it's pretty obvious there are problems with her story but let's read it okay so this is entitled my story of working with governor cuomo by lindsay boylan i'm going to read through it all right my story of working with governor cuomo uh quote let's play strip poker she's quoting the governor supposedly i should have been shocked by the governor's crude comment but i wasn't we were flying home from an october 2017 event in western new york on his taxpayer-funded jet he was seated of course she has to get that little dig in there right his taxpayer-funded jet okay well if you have an issue with that i'm sure that you can take it up with uh you know with someone other than us in this me too article all right we can debate whether or not governors should have i guess the level of travel that they have or the be able to to uh go around in taxpayer funded jets but that is not the point of this so let's not get that snide little remark in there you know making it sound like cuomo is just out there on his own you know sucking up taxpayer money with these these extravagant uh government-funded trips come on he was seated facing me so close our knees almost touched his press aid was to my right and a state trooper behind us now notice how the fact that their knees almost touching that that's given some kind of significance here okay doesn't mean anything she she puts it here to make it sound very you know like very concerning or ominous or or sleazy oh my god well you know they're in a jet she has she's she is she's working with him it's it's cramped and their knees aren't even touching they almost touched so all that she's basically saying here this is her big this is her big opening salvo are you kidding me is that oh my god i had to sit in this cramped taxpayer-funded jet and his knees almost touched my knees i mean this is the kind of like puritanical seriously puritanical yes ringing any bells [ __ ] okay so he said let's play strip poker according to her you know people make harmless jokes even jokes with somewhat of a sexual overtone it's not a big deal if that's what he says and i don't trust anything that she says in here because they're preposterous things too so how do we know what's real what's not if some of it's preposterous i would say the whole thing might not be reliable that's exactly what i was thinking i responded sarcastically and awkwardly i tried to play it cool but in that moment i realized just how acquiescent i had become oh she'd become acquiescent governor andrew cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected his inappropriate behavior toward women was an affirmation that he liked you that you must be doing something right he used intimidation to silence his critics and if you dared to speak up you would face consequences now she said all of these things but she's not given us any specific examples and this is one of the things that i wanted to talk about with these metoo hit jobs is that you tend to get one of two things either you will get obvious distortions such or even lies such as when evan rachel wood said testified that she had no idea that marilyn manson had a drug problem everybody knew that everybody knew that such as when she tries to present herself as being this really naive girl who was just very like inexperienced and everything when she was doing at the time when she started dating him she was doing all these interviews and talking about you know how much she loved like rolling around in the blood with him and whatever in music video i mean come on but anyway all right let's keep going oh and so i know what it's going to say so i was going to say you know you either get get those kinds of distortions right or you get a situation where as in as in this case the person is using all of these broad general terms describing oh he he created a a culture within his administration with bullying harassment inappropriate but but when we actually get to the details what are the details well my you know he made a quip about strip poker and my knees almost almost touched his on the taxpayer-funded jet come on that's why i panicked on the morning of december 13th while enjoying a weekend with my husband and six-year-old daughter i spontaneously decided to share a small part of the truth i had hidden for so long in shame and never planned to disclose the night before a former cuomo staffer confided to me that she too had been the subject of the governor's workplace harassment i'm trying to imagine like like lindsay boylan and charlotte bennett you know conferring about their non-harassment harassment her story mirrored my own okay so she continues on and then she says she says that she decides to tweet because he's uh she his name has been floated cuomo's name has had been floated as a potential candidate for u.s attorney general she was hearing about this the highest law enforcement official in the land and that set her off so that's what she's saying okay and she says in a few tweets i told the world what a few close friends family members and my therapist had known for years andrew cuomo abused his power as governor to sexually harass me just as he had done with so many other women all right now i'm going to get skip down to a bit here to the actual allegation and i just want to take her um her strongest allegation here okay because i don't want to read the whole thing you know she complains for instance that he he compared her to his girlfriend uh said that she she could be sisters or whatever but this is hearsay this is like other people saying he said stuff right so he actually never said this like to her but anyway all right she she's saying i complained to friends that the governor would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back arms and legs again i don't know you know it's hard for me to to trust everything i'm being told here all right so here we go here's her big accusation she says the governor's behavior made me nervous but i didn't truly fear him until december 2016. senior state employees gathered at the empire state plaza convention center in albany to celebrate the holidays in our year's work after his remarks the governor spotted me in a room filled with hundreds of people waiting to shake my hand as he began to approach me i excused myself from the co-workers and moved upstairs to a more distant area of the party so basically she sees him he's coming toward her as if to greet her she excuses herself minutes later i received a call from an unlisted number it was the governor's body person his assistant he told me to come to the capitol because the governor wanted to see me i made my way through the underground connection that linked the plaza to the capitol as the black wrought iron elevator took me to the second floor i called my husband i told him i was afraid of what might happen that was unlike me i was never afraid sorry there's a bug in here i was never afraid so okay so basically what's going on is that she she has never had an experience so far with with the governor that should in any way make her afraid it's just not established it's just not established in this but she claims that she's afraid and she's called to to a meeting uh with him at the capitol and she's so upset and worried that she calls her husband even though like there's no history of her having anything to worry about with the governor and no one else having accused the governor of anything she says i exited the elevator to see the assistant the body person waiting for me he walked me down the hall of governors i asked are there cameras here i remembered my mother's text warning the month before i worried that i would be left alone with the governor i didn't know i was there or how it would end i was escorted into the governor's office past the desks of administrative assistants and into a room with a large table and historical artifacts the door closed behind me it was my first time in his albany office the governor entered the room from another door we were alone and she says that we were alone with emphasis as you know it's a separate sentence oh my god but you know the way that this is described it's described as being so ominous but all that's happened is that she's she's come into the building uh his assistant has escorted her to his office she's asked him you know this bizarre question about cameras the assistant's probably like what but anyway and so they go into the governor's office and then the governor comes in and they're alone as he showed me around i tried to maintain my distance he paused at one point and smirked as he showed off a cigar box he told me that president clinton had given it to him while he served as the secretary of housing and urban development the two-decade-old reference to president clinton's affair with monica lewinsky was not lost on me now understand all he's doing here is he's taking out a cigar box okay that clinton has given him you know clinton is a big you know a big important figure in the democratic party like him or not like him or whatever we're not going to get into that but he's he's like making small talk and he's showing her the cigar box and yes i understand there's the whole thing with like the monica lewinsky and the cigar and all that and i don't know who knows maybe it was some kind of like really sort of like oblique uh sexual reference or whatever but like if you can't take that you can't you're this like hardened politician lady you want to be in politics and you cannot take a man making references to cigars and bill clinton like that just you know a polite reference to bill clinton giving him these cigars and that just sends you over a wall like you are not competent then for whatever office you're trying to seek that's insane all right then she says this i mean she's just she's just paralyzed with fear because of an oblique you know monica lewinsky reference come on that i don't even think he really made so the governor must have sensed my fear because he finally let me out of the office i try to rationalize this incident and wait wait what that's it that is it come on come on all right let's go let's go to the big one though let's go to the unwanted kiss okay all right says i tried to excuse his behavior his pervasive harassment i told myself it's only words but that changed after a one-on-one briefing with the governor to update him on economic and infrastructure projects we were in his new york city office on third avenue as i got up to leave and walk toward an open door he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips i was in shock but i kept walking i left past the desk of stephanie benton i was scared someone who works for him i was scared she had seen the kiss the idea that someone might think i held my high ranking position because of the governor's crush on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself now this is her big allegation she claims that she she's working with the governor and he gets up she gets up to leave uh and and walk toward toward the door and he steps in front of her and kisses her on the lips now look if this occurred exactly as she's presenting that he's just it's just basically like a random sort of drive-by kiss on the lips right of course it's weird of course it's inappropriate of course he shouldn't be doing that you know if if if i really thought that the governor was just like randomly like kissing or uh accosting these women randomly kissing them even if it was just just a little kiss on the lips yeah i would say that that's inappropriate behavior but the problem is is that the rest of this article and i've only read some of it to you but the rest of this article is filled with such obvious [ __ ] in the way of of of things that don't make sense inconsistencies things that she's obviously blowing out of proportion i mean just like the scenario what i've just read for you you can see that it's suspect you can see that it is being set up for you in just a certain way to always give you the worst impression and there's just some things that don't add up for me and so yes we get to this one thing he kisses her inappropriately but again i don't trust this author this is not a reliable author uh from what we've seen that came before it in the rest of the article and you know you go ahead you look at it yourself you read it you tell me if it rings true for you i don't know what the context was with the kissing i i don't know if there was any kind of if she's being above board with us about the dynamics of their relationship you know politicians there's a lot of like hormones going around i'm sorry i'm not supposed to say that or whatever that that's like somehow sexist for me to suggest that but there's a lot of i'm really getting the feeling that there are have been a lot of women circulating around andrew cuomo's office who have had the hots for him and it's almost to me it reads like a kind of a freudian projection these women like charlotte bennett assuming in these in a number of these i think fairly innocent interactions that he's trying to like communicate some deeper attraction that he feels for them i don't know it seems pa it seems pathological to me uh and and again i know i'm not supposed to say that but like with the crucible some of us have got to start speaking up even if we ourselves are imperfect vessels for truth um still even so um you know and the other issue that i have with with her uh with lindsay boylan is that you know there was an article that came out several weeks ago it was like a kind of it was this like kind of fluff piece expose it made her look really good and her mother was interviewed in it too and and the mother talks about how the lindsay boylan's mother said that when she the mother uh was a career woman and when lindsay was growing up when she was raising lindsay that she the mother experienced all of this supposed sexual harassment and that she was constantly in her words basically she more or less saying that she was constantly talking to her daughters about sexual harassment constantly talking to lindsay about sexual harassment and what she would one day face in the workplace so what you're telling me is that you from a young age you indoctrinated your daughter in the belief that she was going to face sexual harassment everywhere and that she needed to look out for it that is kind of strange to me and i think that you know i'm not sure how much of what lindsay is saying is is politically motivated because she is getting trying to get political mileage out of this and she certainly is if you haven't looked into it and how much of it might be a kind of a pathological way of viewing her interactions with the governor but if you have if you go up with a mother who is constantly talking to you about sexual harassment and how you're going to have to face this difficult workplace environment i think that it probably does something questionable to you all right now i wanted to explain briefly before i get more into this this is my temporary uh background this is actually from my favorite movie of all time apocalypse now you can see the uh the helicopters if you've ever seen this movie you know that there's a scene where these helicopters come in and like massacre a village it's really entertaining so um i'm kidding no it is actually entertaining and meant to be entertaining but it's also you know grotesque and horrible and that's the whole point with uh war movies and horror movies is that you're feeling repulsed at the same time as you're feeling like sort of strangely fascinated too but that's a whole other subject i'll talk about that one i'm trying to get something different set up and thank you thank you susan and susan's husband for your donation your support i hope you're okay with me announcing you like this no seriously though amazing and i i am in the process uh it's kind of a slow process but i am in the process of working on upping my production values and so part of the reason why i've got this temporary thing here is i'm doing something else long story now the title of this video is the anatomy of a metoo hit job and i think that it's partly misleading in that actually what i want to do in this video is i want to go back and look at a work of literature that some of us have been talking about on twitter the crucible and don't worry i'm not going to give you a long drawn out boring tale or anything i want to actually just talk about some of the points of the play that are i think are really interesting and that i think really resonate with what's going on now in in some of these metoo cases these metoo hit jobs and you know i guess the reason why i want to talk about this play is because i think it's important to understand that nothing as the bible says nothing is new under the sun and that you know there are these these iterations repeated iterations of uh things from the past and so yeah it's me too maybe a little bit different form in some ways but the this idea of like these hysterias that get whipped up um and well we'll talk about it so the basic thing with the crucible it's a play that was written mid 20th century by arthur miller uh he was married to marilyn monroe for a while kind of an interesting odd couple but uh it was and it was inspired by the red scare joe mccarthy senator joe mccarthy's uh hearings to try to snuff out communists and i'm not going to get into that whole thing because that's not it's not what we're talking about but that's sort of the loosely that's that's the context now the play itself is about the salem witch trials and so it takes place you know hundreds of years ago colonial america you know that's before uh the united states was even the united states and still just these early very primitive puritan colonies and what happened is is that um according to the historical record okay so this is this is the fact that we're talking about before i get into the play just what happened in the salem witch trials basically what happened is um there were some teenage girls and some younger girls but a range of ages okay of of girls and young women who basically got whipped up into a frenzy and uh had and and perpetuated this kind of charade that they were they were possessed by witches or that there were witches in the town that we're trying to possess them and apparently what happened is that there was one um there was one child in particular that basically stopped speaking and kind of went catatonic and you know who knows what was really going on in the play the crucible uh she's just basically she's faking it for attention uh but anyway and and then this idea caught on that she was possessed by a witch and that there were demons you know is loose in in salem in this this puritan village of salem and so uh there a number of the the townspeople started turning on other towns people and you had a kind of a you know a court that was set up uh and and would adjudicate whether or not certain people in the town were witches and then these in these kind of ridiculous sham trials and uh and so a number of people were executed i can't remember the exact number i think it was like in the high teens but you can look it up and see and uh everything from like really really old lady who was just believed to be this very saintly woman until people got really mixed up to people to younger people but anyway uh john the name of one of those who's executed uh in the historical record his name is john proctor and so this play the crucible arthur miller took this story this basic story of the salem witch trials and this character of john proctor and then he constructed this fictionalized narrative around it and this is the crux of the narrative okay john proctor is in a marriage with a woman who is very good she is very saint-like elizabeth is her name and and she's depicted as being this very sort of proper and saint-like woman a good woman a good wife he has no reason per se to dislike her necessarily but his attention is caught by this girl named abigail and she's this younger girl who's who's in the town and uh she's you know like younger is in like late teens right um but she's as she catches his eye and her personality abigail's personality she's extremely uh seductive and she's extremely as she's depicted in the crucible she's extremely kind of bored with puritan society she thinks that it's she talks about this at one point in the play and also in the in the movie that miller wrote that was based on the play with daniel day lewis so some of this i might be grabbing from the movie too okay uh but she's extremely bored with puritan society and she sees john proctor as one of the few people in this puritan society that has not just been like sort of brainwashed uh he seems to like he seems to think for himself uh he has a kind of a an individualistic strength where he kind of he's he doesn't go to church uh because he doesn't like the pastor and he doesn't think that he should have to go to a church where he doesn't like where he thinks the pastor is you know a ridiculous man and so he doesn't go to church and so on he's a christian he clayton and and so forth but he just he's different his own person he's a sort of you know like nietzschean nietzschean ubermensch all right and so here's the deal so she seduces him and i'm not like placing the blame all of the blame on her except that she is depicted in the play and in the film as being like a seductress and he's depicted as like not not wanting to have an affair with her and she's like she's so like seductive and at one in like one point you know you actually see in the film she's like grabbing him and like trying to like pull him so it's almost like she's kind of the one who's assaulting him um anyway so i i don't want to go too far afield with my own interpretation or sub-positions but that's what's going on so you have this guy who's who's older uh this guy who is you know very sort of individualistic and and goes his own way and stuff and she's attracted to that and she and she seduces him and this is all backstory in the play this is like already happened okay but i'm giving you the back story here and so they have this affair and you know you have to understand too that like his wife is depicted as being a very good woman but kind of a cold woman and so you do get this sense that like he loves his wife but he she's not a very passionate person and and you know so it's like you know it's an age-old story he's like stuck in this marriage that's a little that's that's a good marriage in a lot of ways but kind of frigid or whatever and then there's this this younger woman who's like all hot to you know get it on with this slightly older guy or somewhat older guy i mean he is older yeah in the in the play and in the and also in the movie it's winona ryder paired up with daniel day lewis in the movie um yeah so anyway um they have an affair and then his wife finds out elizabeth finds out and so she makes him you know understandably she's like you've gotta you've gotta dump your you know your mistress or whatever and so um and here's the thing is that um abby actually had been working for them for a while she was working for them in this capacity i can't remember how but she was uh she was staying with them and she was working for them so abby was kind of like a servant too and so you had that whole like layer of things so she's uh she is dismissed in terms of like she's fired as a servant but also um she's like proctor breaks up with her whatever this is again all this is back story all right well so this is what happens uh in the play one of the little girls in the town and there's a whole backstory to this but she falls silent she goes catatonic and basically is like playing this game or running this hoax and on on her parents or whatever you know these games that kids sometimes play and so she goes silent and then the other and then the and then she starts getting attention for it and someone speculates because you know they were really interested back then and like much more so than today but like in like the devil and the dark side and all of that right like if you're focused a lot on being a saint then you're also implicitly focused a lot on like sin and darkness and all of that so you had this puritanical society uh and yet at the same time they were very like sort of obsessed with you know the devil and things like that and like so they they thought that when this girl felt catatonic that uh that it must be the devil must be the devil was loose in salem and so what what basically gets whipped up is more of these girls kind of join in as as they get more attention and things are ramped up and so what starts off as you know one single girl a little girl who's faking this situation uh who's faking being you know possessed or whatever by town witches then it becomes this thing where more and more of the girls are getting are involved and for attention for various reasons okay uh and so because more and more of these girls are falling possessed or whatever are claiming that these witches are loose in town and that these witches have possessed people in town or and the people in town are witches uh these these girls start accusing all these different people and so what happens is uh abigail because abigail wants to get back with john proctor because she still has the hots for him right so abigail accuses proctor's wife elizabeth of being a witch so abigail goes to the court and she says oh you know i was i can't remember what it was but something like i was sleeping one night and then you know elizabeth you know she came to me in a dream and she heard me or she was stabbing i can't remember right but but elizabeth's a witch and because there's this idea in town in this town that you have to believe all the accusers so if you don't believe the accusers in this story right and this is how it is in this story in this town it's felt that if you don't believe the accusers then you must be part of the problem right because only someone who's working with the devil would have a problem with what this court is doing and so if you have a problem with what this court is doing uh then then you must be in league with the devil and so there was this pressure then because nobody wanted to be seen as being in league with the devil and there's this crazy like frenzy going on there was this pressure to just believe every story because if you didn't believe it then you were suspicious okay and you were standing in the way of the court and all of that doing the will of god so abby accuses elizabeth of being a witch and the court and the they go and arrest elizabeth and they throw her in this like horrible you know puritan jail which is like almost like a dungeon like it was not a good place to be i like the way they depict it in the movie too like you stay in there for six months or something you're gonna come out with like you know bad teeth and like not looking good they throw her in there and now and and and so and abby you know who thought that she and john would get together once she got the wife out of the way because she's that like crazy and delusional and obsessed with him well guess what no he he he he wants to save his wife and the mother of his children and not be with this crazy girl so john is in a pickle now because john uh knows that the only way that he can save his wife is to come clean about abigail right in other words like if he goes to the court and if he says abigail is lying about my wife she's trying to destroy my wife then the court is going to say well why would you uh uh why would she have reason to do that and then he's gonna have to say oh we out because we had an affair or whatever and that's that was like a really big deal in puritan society especially back then and you know one of the things that's interesting is that in the in in this play is that even before john's wife elizabeth gets arrested gets accused and gets arrested uh john has been feeling like he needed to go to the court and tell them that these girls were faking it because he had actually heard word through abby early on that that they were just they were just playing around and so john actually knows early on i mean from the beginning that this is just a hoax this is just a scam and he holds off going to the court and telling them because he doesn't want to ruin his own bad his own good name because he knows that if he comes forward and says this they're going to ask well who told you and he's going to say well abby and they'll say why are you talking to this girl or what what's going on and so because here's the thing because john proctor knows that he himself is a flawed man in other words he cheated on his wife and you know lied to her and whatever and committed this sin because he knows that he doesn't feel like he has the authority to stand up and say well this is wrong and he doesn't want to bring attention onto himself and his flaws or his failings you know i think that there's another good lesson from the crucible for us you know when we think about about the pressures that are applied to people to um to not speak the truth or to not stand up against these some of these metoo narratives you know one of those one of those pressures is that the person is made to feel like they themselves you know have flaws and therefore because they themselves have flaws they wouldn't want the microscope on them would they and there's almost this sort of like i don't know what i'm saying is like think about the johnny depp trial for example uh the uk trial uh in which he sued um the son for libel right and i always get liable and liable confused but it was it was libel slander right anyway point is uh you know one of the things that we talked about we've talked about before is how in the uk trial johnny depp just was repeatedly slammed by the opposing attorneys for his drug use and his admitted extensive history of drug use you know he said i've done every drug known to man i've been addicted to things whatever and there seemed to be in the in the judge's ruling uh justice nickel there seemed there seemed to be a real and and also the way this was really just promoted so much in the media uh is like oh you know every detail of his drug use was just people fixated on it and not only that but uh you know on the stand uh the the attorneys for the son the attorney just basically put johnny depp through the ringer in terms of pointing out his past you know mistakes that he had made and digging up text messages where johnny depp had been blowing off some steam to a friend and had said something kind of you know unkind a bit about his ex-wife uh and stuff like that and and it's like um i'm talking about vanessa i said something he called her what the friend that french albatross which is a very sort of uh very literary uh insults i'll give him that but anyway my point is that it was like basically in order in order for him to get his his side out there he had to be willing to put up with this character assassination and um and you know this question of you know oh well you're a drug user and you have this shady past with drugs uh like that like that should matter as to whether or not he's telling the truth about being abused by amber heard and being the victim of this hoax and so it's very much reminds me of what's what was going on in the crucible where you have someone john john proctor main character who knows the truth and he wants to stand up for the truth and who is actually a very strong person in a lot of ways and yet because he has the skeleton in his closet because he has this sin that he lusted after this woman and had an affair with her and she turned out to be crazy she turned out to be glenn close and fatal attraction um i love that movie it's such a great movie even now it still holds up go watch it and michael douglas is just will always be hot anyway or is it going with all that distracted uh and so and so the point is is like he doesn't john proctor does not come does not come forward because he is imperfect he has this skeleton in his closet he had this affair and it reminds me very much of this idea of today where you know all this stuff all this mud thrown at johnny depp you know by amber heard and by amber's team and so much of it is just harping on on the drug use right and and the text that he sent right as opposed to what amber was doing was like actually you know cutting off his finger and stuff i want to do a video actually and i will soon where i analyze that audio the australia audio right after she had cut his finger off and you know talking to the security and all of that i know that i know that we've talked about it a lot before like online on twitter and stuff and and and you know videos and things but i just think there's more to be discussed there it's very interesting and it's a very similar situation also when we think about marilyn manson and the way that marilyn manson's reputation his artistic uh his his artistic personality uh the the dark stuff that he projects as an artist the way that that has been used against him as ammunition by so many who say well of course he he must have assaulted these women he must have done what they're saying he did because look at his persona look at what he projects and again it's just very similar to like in in the crucible where because john proctor the main character because he uh doesn't go along with society because he's not like the other puritans he doesn't go to church he he walks to a different beat then that is now ammunition against him really and in his and he feels like he cannot come forward he can't tell the truth he can't fight what's happening because of his reputation and so the story is very much uh yes it's about mass hysteria and it's about you know hoaxes and it's about the young turning on the the olds right and the young women turning on you know older older men or older people but it's also about the kind of moral courage that it takes to stand up against a kind of mass hysteria and a lot of people just like john proctor a lot of us feel like like hesitant to do it or feel like we can't we can't do it because then it'll draw you know unwelcome attention on us or people will say well huh why are you why are you okay with uh you know sexual assault or whatever i can't tell you you know how many times and it's fine it's what i signed up for to doing these youtube videos but i can't tell you how many times i've been called a misogynist oh what is it internalized misogynist yes internalized misogynist because it couldn't be that i just have different legitimate conclusions right and so you know so what happens is he finally john proctor he he doesn't come forward until his own wife is falsely accused and endangered and thrown in in prison and could be killed he comes forward and um basically what happens is he's not believed uh it's a longer scenario than that it's interesting how it develops in the play and it's more intricate but he comes forward and he tells the truth uh he's like basically he's forced to tell the truth and say yes i had an affair with this girl and i cheated on my wife and now she's she's pissed and she's coming after my wife for vengeance and whatever uh he says she means to dance with me on my wife's grave which i think is kind of an interesting thing this thing to say she means to dance with me on my wife's grave and so uh so he comes forward but he's not believed because people in the town they're just so wedded to the idea of this of their own propaganda they're so wedded to this narrative now that they have been supporting for weeks that has taken hold and no one wants to stop the momentum of that no one wants to say oh my god we believe this lie and we've already executed a number of people you know for this lie uh and so and plus there are a number of people in the play who have gained a great deal of esteem in the town from being a part of this uh in fact there's one of the the female accusers the false accusers and this another teenage girl i think late teens or maybe early 20s but anyway her name is mary warren and she ends up uh she resists for a while but she ends up turning in with the others and and joining these these ridiculous accusations and one of the reasons why she says that she's doing this is because she has newfound respect and esteem in the town people look at her and now she's somebody she's not just some servant girl but she is one of the accusers she's one of the the you know one of the the troubled or the afflicted who's being you know being abused by these witches in the town and so you know one of the things that the play examines is the different motivations that people have for false accusations in in these situations where they get a lot of attention that they wouldn't otherwise have gotten and we see that you know this is one of the things that people bring ask me is you know well what do you think these uh manson accusers are in it for what do you think these cuomo accusers are in it for you know what do you think amber heard is in it for well we know one of the things that they're in it for we know that it's attention and look you know you can say well i just don't believe that somebody would be capable of lying about sexual assaults or lying about uh you know domestic violence or whatever for attention you don't really because i know a lot of people who do a lot of things for attention i feel like and i think we see that demonstrated in our world all the time you know it's interesting how in the marilyn manson situation for example it's interesting how many of the accusers had careers that were definitely uh on the wane uh that you know in the case of people like one of the main accusers esme bianco and you see the way that she is i mean her career is basically was basically over she um as some people on on the internet found you know she's basically now doing just really kind of lame appearances very insignificant stuff she doesn't really have a career in the movies to speak of or in film and certainly nothing like when her career was at apex with game of thrones someone online even found where she was basically just sort of dancing on you know on tables at a restaurant so to speak so anyway i'm not trying to i'm not trying to insult her uh i'm just i hope you can see that i'm just saying that her career needs a boost and a number of these accusers especially and and also the ones who are very sort of tangential uh like wolf alice uh the wolf alice singer for instance who claimed that marilyn manson was filmed up her skirt at a festival well and then you know internet sleuths have found that she never played or appeared anywhere with marilyn manson that there's really nowhere where their paths would have crossed and and then you have someone like phoebe bridgers who has this really ridiculous story about how she ridiculous and that it's so insignificant and such an obvious grab for attention on her part her attempt to get her name in there with a story and look edgy and down with me too and everything um and so anyway she tells this story or post on instagram about how when she was a teenager she went to marilyn manson's house uh and he made some joke a quip about a rape room and anyway the point you know and again if you look at their careers and the trajectories and stuff it's really not actually a credible story this is something else that internet sleuths have found and um again the point of this video is not to debunk these stories although that would be an interesting thing to look at to do and i've done some of that in other videos but just to point out that there are a lot of there are a lot of these this kind of bandwagon effect that does occur and we see this you know like in the story of the crucible where you know if people just more and more people pile on because it's advantageous to them into their careers in this situation in this present-day situation it was advantageous to them to do so and so if you look for instance at esme bianco's a twitter page and when you look at her instagram after after her after she comes out with this interview in the new york magazine and after she does this abc interview then she's got posted on her instagram and her twitter she has posted all of these links to her interviews and she's posted posting all of this stuff about domestic violence and sexual assault and all of that and she's treating it like almost she's treating this issue of supposed victimization by a sexual assault domestic violence she's treating it like just you know another credit on her imdb page i mean really her biggest credit actually as of late and that's the thing all right again i'm not trying to be mean i know some people will say that i am but i'm just trying to point out some cold hard facts here and i think this is this is one of those situations where it's like we're supposed to we're expected to forget things that we actually know uh there's i'm quoting i'm quoting this guy um murray uh douglas murray and and he's an interesting writer check him out i like him a lot in some ways he's actually like an intellectual hero of mine but douglas murray you know he says this that increasingly in this crazy media age we are on various issues we are being asked to just it's demanded of us that we forget things that we really know and we really know when we look at the situation with when we look at these allegations with marilyn manson or or andrew cuomo if we look at it with a criminal a critical eye and certainly you know very obviously with the amber heard johnny depp situation you know if you look at it if you look then you see you see what the truth is you see what doesn't hold up you see the holes in the accuser's stories and yet we're just expected we're expected not to and the media is still you know see no evil hear no evil sort of thing so and you know of course you might say but you know these allegations they're credible or they're not credible so go look at my i've done videos on this and you know if i get irritated by anything in the comments it's really only when i feel like people are being deliberately obtuse and and they haven't watched my videos or they haven't seen that you know i really am considering a lot of stuff but uh you know but anyway my point is that we you know we see we see in this play and we see in these different examples the forces at work to get people to come forward with false accusations and and there is a sense of purpose and meaning and act that one gets in activism and that's another thing that you see in the play is people want to be a part of this spiritual movement we are cleansing our town of witches and satanists we are purifying it we are purifying the town of these evil influences and there is this you know this is this emphasis on purifying and cleansing a kind of a purging and i feel like there's this attitude now with me too that we don't even have to look critically at allegations we don't even we're not supposed to even investigate them or question them because if so we're putting we are impeding this movement and this is a purification movement we are cleansing our institutions um of the of this kind of thing and of course yeah if we're talking about harvey weinstein or something yeah i think i think that i think it's good to deal with that that kind of [ __ ] but we're catching a lot of other people in this net and we've got to slow down okay so what happens in this play uh what ends up happening is uh john proctor is um presented he stays in prison for a while while they're sorting through all this stuff and they're executing different people and understand that a number of people are falsely accuse others just so that they themselves will not be suspected and so there are a number of people who are pressured to turn on their friends and their neighbors and people in their family so that they themselves will not be hanged as a witch but there are but not everybody does it and there are some who don't go along with it and choose to be executed choose to be executed instead of falsely testifying against their friends and neighbors and anyway so john proctor is presented he's in prison for a while and then they pull him out and by this point in the play the tide has started to turn in terms of the public opinion of the town people are starting to realize that this has gone too far and that oh my god maybe it wasn't even legitimate in the first place and uh and so what happens is those who are running these trials like the the main judge and his his guys they start to get really really nervous and so they feel like to put things to rest and to kind of to kind of convince everybody they need to get the uh they need to get one important person to turn they need to get someone like john proctor whom everybody knows is this individualist and this nietzsche and you know ubermensch this man of strength of character who won't you know who who's not into [ __ ] or whatever they need to get him to turn and to say that there are witches in the town to accuse others and so they go to him they go to john proctor you know he's been like rotting in in jail and everything right expecting to be killed and they go to him and they say we will give you your freedom today and you can be back with your family and whatever we'll give you your freedom all you have to do is say that you saw some other people with the devil and that you yourself uh you yourself were with the devil but now you're not okay in other words they're like look just admit that you were a witch and that your turn you've turned from it and also admit that other people you know in town are witches that you know that they are and then we will let you go and you just have to sign sign this document stating that so he says no i'm not going to accuse anybody else i'm not going to do that so you know he he he stands up for that and then they say okay okay fine you don't have to falsely accuse anyone else but you have to admit what you did you have to admit that you were a witch and they said if you admit that you're a witch then we will we will set you free today and all this can be over but you just have to sign this document stating it and so you know they present this document to him and he goes to sign it because he is you know he's so sick of being in jail and of basically he's like he's been you know starving in this this puritan prison and he wants to see his family and he loves his wife you know even though he cheated on her he loves his wife and his children all and he wants he wants things this to be over and so he they put this out in front of him to sign and he goes to sign it he goes to sign it and he he scribbles he scribbles to sign it but he just in the end he can't and so he takes it he rips it up he rips it up um and so he's hanged for it and so the story of the crucible is really about how a man who feels like he is not a good person a man who feels like he has morally failed in a number of ways in terms of cheating on his wife and stuff finds this kind of redemption uh by just refusing to lie by just being truthful by standing for the truth and it's this really simple act of just not admitting to a lie it is such a radical act you know i it's who is it that i think is it jordan peterson who says that um one of the most radical things that you can do is just just not say yes to a lie and so this pressure now that we have with me too uh and in in in case especially in cases that are you know where the the person maybe is not has a weird image you know like marilyn manson or is maybe not the most politically popular and you know at times like with cuomo you know the the idea that is so easy for these people to it it is so it is so easy for us to not say anything even when we see that something is wrong all right and so you know i i just think that's interesting i wanted to talk about that play because i keep seeing so many i feel like i feel like people need to go back and read that play to really understand the nature of witch hunts and mass hysteria and the idea that yes the young can lie against the old women can lie uh against men about men and uh in these you know and these things have been written about and they were being written about and great works of 20th century literature and different context all right uh so so anyway um i i guess that i hope that you've gotten something out of this and really you know i i still want to i still want to do a follow-up video a more extensive follow-up video to the cuomo situation and actually i'm interviewing interviewing some people and stuff that i think will be relevant to that and then also you know i'm going to come out with another manson video and i'm going to be working with greta we're putting one together on evan rachel wood and and so forth so point is i've got a lot coming out about these individual cases and we'll certainly have something out on the dep herd situation too soon but i wanted to i wanted to get this video out and just kind of touch on some things that have been that have been interesting to me or have been bothering me and also discuss the crucible because i did i do think there's like a lot of timeless timeless lessons there for us that a lot of people still need no you still need to learn all right as always uh subscribe uh donate if you want to uh click like leave a comment negative or positive whatever and um i will i will see you again soon bye bye

Channel: Colonel Kurtz

Views: 6,904

Rating: 4.9450173 out of 5

Keywords: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, MeToo, Marilyn Manson, Andrew Cuomo, Lindsey Boylan, Evan Rachel Wood, The Crucible, Arthur Miller

Id: qhQkhg4eUzY

Length: 69min 56sec (4196 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021