Her story is pretty horrifying.

The press focused on Allen's admitted (because it was proven) sexual relationship with his other sort-of daughter, Soon-Yi. But when that story broke, Dylan Farrow, far younger than Soon-Yi, also claimed to have been molested by Woody Allen.

This was quickly dismissed as just some stories put into her head by Mia Farrow, who was understandably crazed with anger at the thought of her boyfriend/partner having seduced her older adopted daughter.

But here is Dylan Farrow now, making the same accusations as a 28-year-old adult.

The Daily Beast digests part of her open letter (full letter above), as she calls out various celebrities for continuing to appear in Woody Allen's largely dreary exercises in self-plagiarism.

Dylan blames the cult of celebrity for striking abuse victims dumb by continuing to support people like her dad. “The message that Hollywood sends matters for them,” she writes. As propagators of this message, she names the actors who have continued to work with Allen despite the allegations against him. These include the stars of the Oscar nominated Blue Jasmine – Cate Blanchett, Louis CK, Alec Baldwin – but also Emma Stone, the lead in Allen’s next feature, Magic in the Moonlight, and Allen’s current muse, Scarlett Johansson, as well as his old one, Diane Keaton. “What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson?” Dylan asks. “You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?”

Does Hollywood have a problem?

Spoiler alert: Yes. As Adam Carolla says, if you can dance, you can get away with anything, from punching a girlfriend to killing someone.

Woody Allen can dance (well, so to speak), and so can Roman Polanski, and so who cares about the young girls they molest or rape (respectively)? They are Talents, and Talents have carte blanche to do whatever they wish.

Not So Fast? A Woody Allen friend and biographer refuted the Dylan claims last month, when Ronan and Mia Farrow had reasserted them during the Golden Globes awards (during which Allen was given a Lifetime Achievement award.

He does make some good points in Allen's defense on the Dylan allegations:

A brief but chilling synopsis of the accusation is as follows: On August 4, 1992, almost four months after the revelation about Woody and Soon-Yi’s relationship understandably ignited a firestorm within the Farrow household, Woody was visiting Frog Hollow, the Farrow country home in Bridgewater, Connecticut, where Mia and several of her kids were staying. During an unsupervised moment, Woody allegedly took Dylan into the attic and, shall we say, “touched her inappropriately.” Later in the day, it was alleged that the child was wearing her sundress, but that her underpants were missing. The following day, Mia’s daughter allegedly told her mother what had happened, and Mia put the child’s recounting of the story on videotape as evidence.

...

[I]f MiaÂ’s account is true, it means that in the middle of custody and support negotiations, during which Woody needed to be on his best behavior, in a house belonging to his furious ex-girlfriend, and filled with people seething mad at him, Woody, who is a well-known claustrophobic, decided this would be the ideal time and place to take his daughter into an attic and molest her, quickly, before a house full of children and nannies noticed they were both missing.

I did not realize that this event was alleged to have taken place during the firestorm following the Soon-Yi revelations. I imagined that the allegation was made during that time, but that the allegation regarded prior molestation.

I have to admit, this scenario does seem unlikely to me.

Not So Fast on Not So Fast? While the attic encounter does seem unlikely, it's wrong of me to claim that's the one charge of molestation alleged. Per Dylan's letter, she alleges a pattern of molestation-like/molestation behavior before that, and that it's just the attic event that made her tell her mom about it.

I will link a commenter's recap of this (quoting her letter) because what is alleged is so creepy I don't want to quote it on the site.

I guess I'm now up in the air about this.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (372)
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We Politely Request That All Off-Topic or Political Comments Be Directed to the Thread Directly Below This One, Which Will Serve Officially as the Current "Active Conversation" Thread for All Discussions Not Related To This Topic.

"Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly."

-- M.F.K.Fisher

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

-- J.R.R.Tolkien more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:14 PM | Comments (219)
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I would never leave you hangin.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 02:14 PM | Comments (1843)
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Wow.

While the country is discussing the possibility of legalizing drugs, it should always be remembered and frequently be stated that drugs are very dangerous, and even when they don't kill you, they tend to corrupt you and enfeeble your mind.

I think it's a legitimate question as to whether it is better to dissuade drug use through criminal intervention or through public persuasion and warnings, but we must at least have the latter.

The media has treated the decriminalization of marijuana in Colorado as a social advance to be openly celebrated (as they openly celebrate gay marriage). Very often their cheerleading on the subject displaces all sense of responsibility in reminding the public that every intoxicant, from alcohol to pot to heroin, poses risks to the user, from the relatively minor yet still bad (habituation, changes in personality, lack of ambition, an increasing centrality of the drug in one's priority of needs) to the major (unemployability, domestic strife and violence) to the terminal (death due to overdose).

One of the fears of those who favor continued prohibition -- a well-justified fear -- is that without anti-drug laws and police enforcement of them, there will be no social or cultural backstop to reduce what they believe will ultimately be an explosion in drug use (and, therefore, an explosion in the negative consequences of drug use).

With reports such as this one -- with Anderson Cooper getting the giggles over the possibility that his reporter in Colorado might herself be high -- we see that the prohibitionists have a point.

The prohibitionists claim that the country (and its media) is simply not mature enough, or nuanced enough it its thinking, to simultaneously campaign for decriminalization while also remaining anti-drug-use as a social/cultural/personal matter.

That is, the prohibitionists fear that the country is simply not mature enough in its thinking on social issues, and so cannot conceive of a category of "legal and yet harmful and so to be avoided." And that this immaturity of thought then permits only two realistic regimes:

1. Drugs are bad and thus must be illegal, or

2. Drugs should not be illegal, and in fact, are pretty darned good so why not try some drugs?

If those are the only two choices on the menu, then I myself -- currently in favor of experimental decriminalization -- will have to revert to a prohibitionist stance.

I would like the more mature option -- "legal and yet harmful and thus to be avoided" -- to be on the table.

But if the organs of public information and cultural signaling cannot themselves conceive of that third option, and will immaturely take "legality" to mean "benevolence" themselves, then the anti-prohibitionist movement will be over pretty quickly.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (490)
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I think we're running out of Roman numerals. This is an early SB post in case anyone wanted to start talkin trash. There will be another one at gametime.

Last game of the season, Broncos and Seahawks.

How's the weather in East Rutherford NJ today? Not bad. Looks like snow tomorrow.

Oh and some jackass mailed some baking soda to several hotels around Metlife Stadium and also Rudy Giuliani's midtown business office. What a dick.

ICYMI, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman might not be the dick you think he is (sorry, Buzzfeed link). I think I like this kid.

Happy Superbowl - more later!

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:54 AM | Comments (169)
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... Busy Day At Casa Andy Edition

Thanks to Twitter, here's some gun stuff ...

Winchester .22 LR Recall

Topic of the Week - Gun Safes

Gun Of The Week

(answer below)
more...

Posted by: andy at 07:20 AM | Comments (167)
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And for the free expression of those odd and faintly disturbing questions that you have tamped down for years.....

From Cafe Hayek

The public … thinks that conservationists conserve nature. This is like saying footballers score goals; it is the aim, but it is a poor description of what most of them spend most of the match doing. Most conservationists can and do talk for hours to each other without mentioning an animal or plant. I have seen them do it many times. They talk about committees, guidelines, grant applications, advertising campaigns, legislation conventions, protocols, conferences, secretariats, treaties, regulations, resources – just like the businessmen they affect to despise.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:13 PM | Comments (66)
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Take that, SCOAMF

Posted by: andy at 04:22 AM | Comments (272)
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This morning's open thread for non-book discussion is brought to you by a little hand jive: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:06 AM | Comments (35)
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Where the Wild Things Are - Curtain From The Opera Set, 1979

(Image courtesy of tygertale blog. Yeah, I didn't know that WTWTA had been made into an opera, either.)

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the award-winning AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Amazon and... Kobo?

According to a reader survey by goodereader.com, Amazon and Kobo are basically tied as being the online bookstore of choice for serious readers. And by serious, they mean "users that often buy 50-100 books a year and often have more than one e-reader in the household." The results:

Amazon and Kobo were tied with 35.34% of the overall votes and these two stores have the largest international footprint. They exist in over 30 different countries and offer millions of titles. Kobo has a much larger library of titles, with over 3.6 million available, they are also easier for people to buy books from. One of the advantages these two companies have is their extensive portfolio of e-readers and tablets to facilitate reading.

The Barnes & Noble Nook was predicted to go under completely this year, but it's not dead, yet:

Barnes and Noble might be seeing a 30% decline on their hardware and eBook sales during the past holiday season, but they they do have user loyalty. 10.04% of our readers prefer to buy their Nook Books, but 99% of the participants originated from the US...Their ecosystem is fairly well developed and they offer self-published titles under the Nook Press banner and full color content optimized for the Nook HD. The sole new device of 2013 was the Nook Glowlight, which tends to be your best friend for binge reading.

So we'll see if B&N can make up lost ground. And then there's this tidbit:

Sadly, Android and iOS readers have to be based in the US/UK to buy books online.

I did not know that.

Windows 8 Tablet Price Reduction

My next e-reader/tablet purchase may be some sort of Windows 8 device. I think W8 is an abysmal interface for desktop computers (I much prefer Windows 7), but it should work well in the tablet environment it was obviously designed for.

Which is good because the price is coming down on a number of Windows 8 tablets:

Among the tablets that can now be picked up for cheap include the Dell Venue 8 Pro which has seen a $70 drop in price from the original $299. This does make the offering quite lucrative for a tablet that offers 32 GB of storage. Also at $229, the Dell Venue 8 Pro is slam bang in the territory of 2013 Nexus 7 that offers 16 GB of storage and an inch less of screen space (but with more pixels) for the same price.

I have to say that $229 for a 32GB tablet is mighty tempting. But

What is also interesting is that Microsoft is not extending the generosity to its own Surface range that continues to retail at the original price tags.

Huh. I wonder why? I also wonder what answer I would get from a Microsoft rep if I asked why I should buy a Surface instead of a lower-priced competitor?

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:10 AM | Comments (138)
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