Is Every Hollywood Story Now About Rape Accusations? Pretty Much, Yeah

A few weeks ago, a story about multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, if not downright rape, against a named celebrity, would’ve been a story with legs. Now there’s barely time to fit them all in. Thanks, Harvey Weinstein. That’s not me saying that, that’s the rapists talking.

Danny Masterson now stands accused by four different women of rape in the early 2000’s, during the height of his popularity on That 70’s Show. One of the women filed a police report at the time, but the cases was dropped when the Church of Scientology, which calls Masterson a proud son, flooded the D.A. with Scientology witness testimony insisting upon Masterson’s innocence and the girl’s bullshit. Nobody wants to take on Scientology, not for some chick who got raped by a then big named actor. That case won’t fly.

According to reports, the remaining women’s cases have stalled at the LAPD despite a strong body of evidence supporting that Masterson knew the women, was with the women, and exchanged emails and other communications regarding the sexual assaults with both the Church, and in turn, threatening letters to at least one of the accusers.

Masterson’s currently re-teamed with buddy Ashton Kutcher on the show, The Ranch, currently filming season two for Netflix. Half of Netflix’s staff these days are involved in providing comments on actors in their shows raping people. You’d think maybe they could ask a few more followups during casting, like, “Are you super duper one-hundred percent positive nobody’s going to accuse you of rape? Because you never said super duper sure the first time.”

There’s pressure on Netflix to cancel The Ranch due to these looming allegations. That’s because of Netflix’s sleight of hand where they pretended to cancel House of Cards after the Spacey boy fondling charges even though they already have next season in the can and never intended to make another. The Ranch is still actively filming. And on principle, it’s maybe not right to shut down production and fire fifty workers over uncharged allegations of rape. They don’t shut down Congress every time one of those fuckers is alleged to have committed a crime. Would that they could.

With 39.4% of Hollywood facing outing as a sex criminal in the coming weeks, somebody better figure out a policy on how to handle this shit while keeping the machine rolling. Ford didn’t stop the assembly line simply because all the chassis riveters suddenly died of influenza. People need their Netflix. It’s their omelette. Now break a few eggs.