Misbehavior leaves Hollywood folks reeling

I always have to be reminded when it's the Oscars time of year. I remember when a character in the "Doonesbury" comic strip referred to those celebrities as "tinsel-crazed morons." The strip had a celebrity at the podium telling a lame joke. John Wayne got in a little trouble with the law, we learned. "He double-parked his horse outside," the celebrity said, drawing affected laughter. The strip was from when Doonesbury had a heady and fresh air about it, appealing to youth who didn't feel in the mainstream yet.
I remember a few years back when the strip seemed to do something provocative and someone wondered why we weren't hearing more about it. A Star Tribune letter writer said "it's because no one reads (the strip) anymore." Well, George Burns kept going until he was nearly 100.
The Biblical epics were a big deal when I was a kid. There were a number of "robes and sandals" movies. The peak of that was with Moses holding up that big staff or baton or whatever it was, and parting the sea. The good people streamed through. And then I wanted to warn the chariot drivers: "I wouldn't go in there if I were you." That line was redux for the "Rambo II" movie where we saw a bad guy commander telling his charges to go somewhere where we knew they'd be goners. "I wouldn't go in there if I were you." Del Sarlette thought the sequel should be called "Second Blood" (after "First Blood").
Hollywood sequels are more effective than they used to be. In a previous time, they were considered risky to do. I have read that when planning a sequel, just take whatever ingredient that made the first movie successful and overdo it. An example of that was the "Jaws" sequel. The shark attacks got so passe, I heard a smattering of laughter in the theater. As time passed, Hollywood grabbed ahold of the "franchise" concept and realized that if a particular movie grabbed the audience, like "Batman," work hard at subsequent movies to make them truly as appealing as the original. Go back and re-make the very first installment. This would have been unthinkable when I was a young adult (attending movies at the twin theaters outside Crossroads Center, St. Cloud MN).
Fast-forward to today: Hollywood is panicked and paranoid in the year 2018. We should accept all sorts of foolishness and ungainly behavior among the Hollywood crowd when it comes to seeking sex or romance (sex to be prioritized, I assume). I'm sure there were unwritten rules for years, rules calling for young attractive women to be passive in the face of drooling powerful men. The "boys will be boys" ethos has gotten wiped out quickly. There are men rising every morning worried that some past untoward behavior will come to light, to an extent their professional existence could get wiped out.
Here in Minnesota the toll has been enormous for the iconic Garrison Keillor, someone who we'd all like to be proud of for his folksy and thoughtful humor. Keillor has been thrown virtually on his heels. Unlike many others in his position, he isn't taking it sitting down. He's fighting back even though his past emails definitely leave one squirming a little.
You know, when it comes to Keillor and Hillary Clinton and others, I am amazed at the sheer quantity of emails these people leave behind to be sifted through. My God, tens of thousands of emails or hundreds of thousands? Did they just sit around all day typing emails? How did they get by in the pre-digital age? A city manager somewhere in Minnesota has been quoted saying email "is a time eater." He had concerns about the time investment. Can each email really be justified in terms of something getting accomplished?
In my early days of emailing at the Sun Tribune newspaper, I began wondering about such issues. Turns out my email quantity was dwarfed by what Clinton and other celebrities do.
Keillor may be starting a somewhat successful pushback on the sexual harassment phenomenon. There are legitimate issues to weigh here. I speak as someone who was once in a workplace where two individuals, one of them married, began one of those "lovebird" things and ended up announcing their intention to get married. It had to begin as one of the two making an advance. My own theory, just a theory, is that the woman made the primary advance. It ended up not being harassment because the male was receptive. What if he was not receptive? Is this how we define sexual harassment? By whether the target of the overture is receptive or not? Our legal system usually wouldn't follow such logic. The behavior would have to be judged by consistent standards, or ought to be. There should be no natural bias toward the woman.
We all know that workplace relationships can get well outside the bounds of "work" objectives. If I were to live my life over, I'd make a resolution to develop no personal affinity with anyone in the workplace, no matter how harmless it might seem.
Keillor warns of an overreaction to a pattern of romantic overtures that can happen in the workplace. Will people be bludgeoned into fearing any sort of scent of romance in the workplace? Will the legal repercussions be too severe? But isn't it true that numerous married couples came together because of workplace affinity? If these are to be snuffed out, what is to become of our society? Where is someone supposed to meet a prospective mate? Only at church? I don't go to bars so that's no option for me.
So Hollywood is gripped by paranoia related to the Weinstein scandal and other such dirty laundry (Charlie Rose etc.). Studios are trying to ban the press from their parties at Oscars time. Banning the press!
I remember that after the goalpost incident at UMM in 2005, certain people close to administration tried banning "the media" from even being present for the memorial program held for the deceased UMM student, Rick Rose. "No media" is how the memo came down. Once someone on our staff made an issue of this, another communications person at UMM got involved. This second person knew full well you couldn't ban the media. At the same time, she argued "we don't want any TV trucks here." Today I doubt very much that "trucks" are needed for media people to get video of something. And of course, the most problematic angle is trying to define what "the press" is. Anyone can be press or media. Aren't I showing that right now?
I have a grin a little like the cat that ate the canary as I ponder all the nuances of the sexual harassment topic. And that's because I have never even asked a woman on a date. I once queried my friend and co-worker Howard Moser how the people at DeToy's Restaurant would react if I entered the place with a female companion sometime. He said: "They all know you're too smart to do that."
Addendum re. the movie "The Ten Commandments": Us fans of Maynard Ferguson the trumpet player have read all our lives that Maynard played with the orchestra in the soundtrack of that movie. We're non-plussed as we realize we simply cannot pick out the sound of his trumpet, try as we might, repeatedly.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com