Time Person of the Year 2017

And the honor goes to:

"The Silence Breakers"

"When movie stars don't know where to go, what hope is there for the rest of us? What hope is there for the janitor who's being harassed by a co-worker but remains silent out of fear she'll lose the job she needs to support her children? For the administrative assistant who repeatedly fends off a superior who won't take no for an answer? For the hotel housekeeper who never knows, as she goes about replacing towels and cleaning toilets, if a guest is going to corner her in a room she can't escape?"

I can't even keep up with the accusations and the firings these days. The Metropolitan Opera Company in NYC may be on the brink of collapse, because the sheer star power of director/conductor James Levine has been keeping the dinosaur alive for years. Charlie Rose, for Dog's sake! If you google "latest harassment allegations", you get "About 53,300,000 results"!

I don't think I've ever seen or read anything like this.

Madam Oh's picture

This spate of accusations is sudden. I would be surprised to find a single woman anywhere who hasn't had to deal with unwanted sexual advances, situations where they were vulnerable to forced encounters, or simply being terrified out of their gourd by the simple urgency of the desire among a lot of men, and plenty among them have been raped and had to deal with blame from society if they try to talk about it. Men to a lesser degree also face this, sometimes from other men, sometimes from women. We've all mostly dealt with this as a private grief.

There has been some talk that at east some of the victims are being paid to step forward and tell their stories, and that this is encouraging a lot of others to open up as well, especially when they see guys losing their jobs over this and being unable to retaliate. Some are saying the real goal of all this is hope that a way can be found to impeach the president, since the Russian collusion narrative seems to be collapsing. It is one of the ways he was attacked during the campaign, and has sticking power with the ladies who were among the most aggrieved by their candidate's loss. What simply amazes me, though, is that a number of men have lost their jobs over mere allegations. Where is due process?

Of course, I am not there in America to get a real grasp of why this is exploding forth the way it is, and will have to defer to people with a closer view. Being at a distance, though, I may have a grasp of the forest rather than the trees.