Michael Douglas claims he didn’t masturbate in front of an employee in the 1980s. I really don’t have a lot of trouble believing that, it’s honestly a pretty weird thing to do. In fact, giving an interview to Deadline where you explain that you never masturbated in front of an employee seems really weird. Except when you find out a former employee has been running around town trying to get allegations that you did masturbate in front of her published. Which is what happened to Michael Douglas.
So let’s talk about these allegations Douglas’s former employee is making. She allegedly told The Hollywood Reporter that Douglas used “colorful” and “raunchy” language in front of her. Not at her, but in private conversations he had with other people that she overheard or was in the room for. I sat and looked at that allegation and I thought “who gives a s**t?” Seriously, people swear, I just said s**t in the sentence before this one.
The other allegation she made is that Douglas masturbated in front of her and blackballed her from the industry. Douglas denies this, and he sounds pretty indignant about it even being said.
Finally, masturbating in front of her? I don’t know where to begin. This is a complete lie, fabrication, no truth to it whatsoever.
The reporter told me, ‘she did say that you never harassed her, never touched her,’ and I said…okay. So I didn’t know where this comes from.
Douglas said he wanted to get out in front of this and tell his side of the story and shape the narrative, because of what Deadline described as the “She Said, He’s Gone” nature of some current accusations. And there’s some truth to that.
A lot of the people accused of sexual misconduct clearly did some pretty bad s**t. Harvey Weinstein is a monster made of rape. Kevin Spacey was wagging his dick at everyone who walked by him on the set of House of Cards. Roman Polanski raped more than one really young girl. Charlie Rose sexually harassed his employees for decades. These are people who don’t deserve a second chance. Louis C.K. is a more borderline case, where what he did was wrong but it’s pretty easy to see how he tried to avoid abusing his power even if that’s what he ultimately was doing.
But there have been an increasing number of accusations coming out that have made me stop and say “so?” James Franco is accused of.. what, exactly? Making advances to women who were over the age of consent? I’ve seen attempts to blackball Fred Armisen (which have thankfully failed) for losing interest in dating women after having consensual sex with them. Garrison Keillor was fired by Minnesota Public Radio and had all traces of his work scrubbed from existence for patting a co-worker on the back when she was upset. Netflix cut Max Landis out of a Bright sequel because he’s allegedly a bad boyfriend and a bit of a player.
Sexual assault and sexual harassment are a big deal. We need to put a stop to them. But as the #metoo moment drags on, it seems like everyone who was actually doing anything really wrong has already been outed, and now we’re running around looking for one-off mistakes, misunderstandings, or people who are just kind of jerks and lumping them in with serial sexual predators, which is disturbing. I don’t blame Michael Douglas for wanting to get out in front of this story from a former employee with an apparent axe to grind because Douglas fired her for being bad at her job.