July 19, 2018

Harvey Weinstein Is Still a Pig

Lev Radin/Pacific Press via ZUMA

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Donald Trump may be sucking up all the oxygen allocated for piggish men these days, but let’s not forget Harvey Weinstein! He’s fighting back against Ashley Judd’s suit by accusing her of defrauding him, “a bold legal strategy for the former movie executive” according to the Los Angeles Times. Check this out:

Judd’s suit alleged that Weinstein dissuaded director Peter Jackson and his partner from casting Judd after she rejected Weinstein at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills….The filing says the incident happened on a single day and included asking her to choose his clothes, watch him shower and give him a massage.

Judd, according to court documents, said that once inside the hotel room, she deflected the producer’s advances by saying she would let him touch her only after she won an Academy Award in one of his movies. “According to Plaintiff, Weinstein negotiated, ‘When you get nominated,’ to which Plaintiff replied, ‘No, when I win.’ ”

Her lawyers say this was a mock bargain designed to let her escape the room. But Weinstein’s lawyers claim the deal was real. “Weinstein then attempted to live up to his part of the bargain by trying to cast Plaintiff in as many roles as possible that could earn her an Academy Award.”

Quite a guy, that Harvey. I’m thinking of changing my mind about long-term solitary confinement being torture. Or maybe I’m not.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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