I don’t know any good R. Kelly puns because I’ve never heard one of his songs. But it look’s like Chicago is heaping a few charges on him:
For more than two decades, the R&B singer R. Kelly has been trailed by allegations of sexual misconduct. He was married to a young singer who turned out to be 15 years old. There were claims that he controlled women in a cultlike atmosphere. An infamous sex tape. None of it meaningfully stood in his way.
Then, on Friday in Chicago, Mr. Kelly was charged.
The authorities are accusing him of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four victims, three of whom were underage, according to the Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx. Aggravated criminal sexual abuse can carry a sentence of three to seven years in prison for each count. Mr. Kelly faces 10 of them.
Ms. Foxx said the events occurred between 1998 and 2010. Mr. Kelly was accused of ejaculating on a fourth victim, identified by the initials L.C., during an attempted criminal sexual assault.
As a reminder:
This is not the first time that Mr. Kelly has been charged with a crime. He was arrested on child pornography charges in 2002 over a tape prosecutors said showed him having sex with and urinating on an underage girl. He was acquitted on all 14 counts he faced in the case, in 2008.
I don’t know why but I assumed he was either in jail or ostracized from the musical industry this whole time. I had no idea he was acquitted on those charges from a while back.
“Depp’s legal team believes Heard fabricated her claims in an effort to propel her career as the #MeToo movement was in full swing.”
“As a result of her false allegations against Mr. Depp, Ms. Heard became a darling of the #MeToo movement”
Yeah, I guess we will have to see, the Defense lawyers are stating he wasn’t abusive, which is their job to do. As well as make the Amber look bad.
The interesting part of that article is that the defense team sounds like they have surveillance video of her attacking Depp, and of her faking some abuse. I mean, that would change a lot.
I guess we will see what happens in the trial. Depp still seems like a skeezy guy even if he didn’t hit his girlfriend.
So starts the wave of accused people getting their jobs back.
James Gunn found his way back to Marvel a day or two ago. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is back in the good graces of Fox and Natl Geographic. And I’d expect more to come as reactions to these announcements are gauged by others in similar predicaments.
Fox had slated Cosmos to premiere March 3 but pulled it from the schedule as the investigation continued. Three women have accused Tyson of sexual misconduct.
“The investigation is complete, and we are moving forward with both StarTalk and Cosmos ,” Fox and Nat Geo said in a statement. " StarTalk will return to the air with the remaining 13 episodes in April on National Geographic, and both Fox and National Geographic are committed to finding an air date for Cosmos. There will be no further comment."
Conflating James Gunn and Harvey Weinstein had surely got to be one of the most irresponsible false equivalences you could make to suggest an arc of redemption, no?
NPR is having their annual fund drive, so I can’t listen to the radio these days. So I’ve gone back to an audiobook I started way back when it came out. Al Franken: Giant of the Senate.
I really miss Al. Listening to how he got elected, and listening to his tales in the Senate, I get mad thinking his Democratic colleagues sacrificed him on the alter of #MeToo. I hope it was worth it. I hope they got substantial legislation passed as a result.
Former Senator Al Franken continues dipping his toes in the pool of public rehabilitation. This time he brought a new replacement school built on a Native American reservation in MN to the public eye. As Senator, he helped secure money to have the old awful school repealed and replaced. The new school library is now built but needs books, so he went to Twitter, Facebook, and local news media requesting book donations (from the school librarian’s Amazon wishlist) and cash.
