Count Dooku

He's toast. There's no way Queen Latifah can stay associated with him.

candyrocket786

The timing is pretty interesting. I bet they have the announcements on a schedule and there's probably more to come.

DJariya

Yeah Latifah is Executive Producer of her show. She can easily have the studio fire him.

Sonic

I was reading some of the allegations towards Chris Noth. Crazy shit man. One accuser was saying he fingered her and he felt her tampon and he still wanted to have sex if her period was on it's last day. Crazy.

DJariya

Chris Noth fired effective immediately from The Equalizer. He was a series regular, but I watch the show and he only appears sporadically. Not a big loss.

Sonic

I feel sorry for his wife and children having to endure the heat and drama of this outcome. I just read that his wife is not feeling well and probably won't be spending Christmas with him. Chris Noth really F'ed himself over and his career.

printerati

Vanity Fair has posted an article about sexual harassment and assault by Jerry Lewis, with stories from Karen Sharpe ("The Disorderly Orderly"), Hope Holiday ("The Ladies Man"), Jill St. John ("Who's Minding The Store?"), Lainie Kazan, and even Amy Schumer. France in shambles.

Deftones

Is anyone surprised by that news? I am not.

dex14

GoldenJCJ

I can see how people may have been fooled when Lewis was young and funny “Martin and Lewis” days but he’s seemed like a piece of shit when I first knew of him when he was older and hosting the Jerry Lewis telethons. He had “creeper” written all over him.

devilshalo

Count Dooku

I know I am supposed to see this and just fall in line with thinking that Lewis was a horrible POS, but whenever I read any of these articles, what I really come away thinking is how slanted the journalism is.

DaveyJoe

Decker

Wow. “Maybe we should be more sympathetic to this dead powerful celebrity who multiple women are actively accusing of sexual assault and harassment and present his side of the story in a more charitable light“ is certainly a hot take.

Count Dooku

That would be a hot take. And maybe someone will post that thought for you to comment on it. That's not what I said. And that is not what I said means. So on a fail.

Decker

My apologies on the misinterpretation. By all means, please elaborate on why you feel “the journalism is so slanted”.

Kurt D

The problem here, there, and everywhere, is how the Internet has destroyed our ability to think critically. And that means all of us.

Back in the day most of us were taught to be able to read things like that article or whatever and discern if it was biased or not, then prize out the truth from the propaganda (as it were).

One could read that article and think "yeah, that's slanted" but also understand that there are facts or at least pre-slant assertions being conveyed. Now everyone just reacts to the gloss and often posts a reductive soundbite in response.

Count Dooku

Three things stand out from my memory of the article and video.
1)
The video is completely contextualized as being an expose about Jerry Lewis. Both of the women describe being sexually assaulted by Lewis, but neither claims he ever raped them. Then, in an example of slanted journalism, the video includes a section on how one of the women was raped, but by an anonymous man, and the incident had no connection to Jerry Lewis.

I could write this sentence to describe the video: After almost 60 years, Actress X speaks out and says that Jerry Lewis sexually assaulted her on the set of Movie X, and that she was raped.

Completely accurate and completely misleading.

If a journalist was creating a piece about how actresses suffered abuse in general, then the inclusion of the rape story would be appropriate. Since the piece is about Lewis' behavior, the rape story only serves to slant the story by conflating the incidents in the viewers minds.

2)
In the article, it includes the information that when Lewis died he did not will any of his estate to any family through his first wife.

So what?

At the time of Lewis' death, he and his first wife had been divorced for over three decades and she was in her 90s. His youngest child from that marriage was close to 60 years old. Was he supposed to give them money?
Did he have any relationship with any of his grandchildren from that marriage? Was he required to?

It sure makes him sound like an asshole, though, doesn't it?

Lewis left everything to his wife and their child. Seems normal. And as long as the article is throwing out irrelevant tidbits of info about Lewis, why not mention the billions of dollars he raised for MDA? Because that would make him sound like less of an asshole?

The story is about him sexually assaulting women on movie sets. What he did with his money 50 years later and his relationships with family have nothing to do with the story, and the negative details are only included to slant the narrative.

3)
Jill St. John essentially had no comment. She made a movie with Lewis 60 years ago and now he is dead. She offered no details about her interactions with Lewis that I recall.

For some reason the article included a description of how her and Lewis' character interacted IN THE MOVIE. And this is illuminating how?

It describes how in the movie, she was cast as a sexual aggressor and Lewis was her timid prey. And . . . ? So . . . ? The implication is that this is ironic. The slant is that even though no one is making any claims about Lewis' behavior on the set of that movie, we can draw conclusions based on what was in the script (that he didn't write).

-----------------
I don't doubt that Lewis did the things these women are accusing him of doing. And the despicable-ness of his actions speaks for itself. Honest journalism would recognize that, and not endeavor to present a slanted portrait of who Lewis was as a person by including irrelevant information and selectively negative-sounding details from his life in the story.


Does that answer your question?

Count Dooku

Here's what will be the historical record from Wikipedia:

There were no sexual harassment claims in that story from Jill St. John and Connie Stevens. In fact, Stevens made two movies with Lewis and had no complaints (that I recall) to about him.

Decker

I agree with you 100% about the random guy rape story being included. It was out of place in the context of this story. I have to assume when she opened up with that story the writer just felt obligated to include it so her experiences weren’t marginalized. But yes, it’s irrelevant here except as context to the power dynamics and state of mind. It shouldn’t have been included, though I appreciate that it was hard to edit out of her story as well. It REALLY shouldn’t have been part of that nine minute video clip.

My issue with your initial statement was that I think you mean the journalism here was sensationalized, meaning “made to be bigger and more scandalous than it truly was” rather than slanted which would mean “presenting a two sided issue in an unfairly biased way”.

Regardless thank you for your detailed and well thought out explanation. I appreciate it.

Count Dooku

No, I mean it is slanted.

Jerry Lewis was a human being with at least two sides to his personality. This article was written in a manner to suggest there was only one, which is a biased presentation. It even put a negative spin on him having a lot of kids.

It would be like writing an article about a serial killer and including the fact that he gave out full-size candy bars at Halloween with the suggestion that it was to promote childhood diabetes.

The presentation of who Jerry Lewis was in every aspect of his life was presented in an unfairly biased manner, so slanted.

Josh-da-man

I think Count Dooku might have been one of Jerry's Kids...

Count Dooku

Do you think there is a correlation between having muscular dystrophy and having standards for what constitutes good journalism?

Kurt D

If you have to ask, you'll never know!

Ash Ketchum

Karen Sharpe is 87 and still with us. She's the widow of Stanley Kramer, whom she met while filming Jerry Lewis's DISORDERLY ORDERLY (1964). The Lewis film turned out to be her last movie, although she made TV appearances through 1967. She married Kramer in 1966 and gave up acting not long after. Just yesterday I watched her in an episode of "Perry Mason" from 1958. Very pretty and quite a good actress.