The recent "open letter" to legendary film director Woody Allen by Mia Farrow's daughter Eliza Malone Dylan has ignited controversy about whether or not the Hollywood Left is protecting one of their own, and whether they should be.
Specifically, Eliza makes this claim:
For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how often he would take me away from my mom, siblings and friends to be alone with him. I didn’t like it when he would stick his thumb in my mouth. I didn’t like it when I had to get in bed with him under the sheets when he was in his underwear. I didn’t like it when he would place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out. I would hide under beds or lock myself in the bathroom to avoid these encounters, but he always found me. These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal. I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters. But what he did to me in the attic felt different. I couldn’t keep the secret anymore.So what did Woody Allen do? Eliza says:
He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies.The problem, of course, is that this is not a new allegation. In 1992, Mia made the same accusations of Woody Allen. Here's a timeline of the events, though it misses a few key details (more on that later). The key note is that the "Paris to act in movies" is mentioned in the 1992 media reports, not the trains. Was that always there and left out of reports? Or was it a later fabrication? Eliza Farrow seems to think the bit about the trains was the major element that stuck out in her mind in 2014, but was this one of the parts of the story that kept changing, causing the investigating team of doctors to suspect her of lying? Was the train bit a rehearsed element? Trained and experienced investigators look for this kind of thing, which they surely could at least find reason to believe in a personal interview. Can you or I tell a lie in a New York Times article? The paper has, shall I say, a history of containing some extraordinary stories that turn out not to be true.
The timeline later mentioned "Connecticut state’s attorney Frank S. Maco announced that while he found “probable cause” to prosecute Allen, he was dropping the case". What The Wrap leaves out, is that Maco was later disciplined for the 'probable cause' bit. Meanwhile, while the Farrows were (mostly) attacking Woody Allen for the past two weeks, The Daily Beast posted this gentle assault on the Farrows by a Woody Allen biographer, who while he didn't say that Woody was innocent (he even said he believes Eliza Farrow is honest in her story) did point out that the attacks on him aren't being based on a lot of facts (starting with "his daughter" Soon-Yi). It's a devastating attack on the accusations, which may explain why clueless left-wing feminists like Meghan Murphy are so mad about it (deciding just to call it an "old boys club" spiel without pointing out any of the inconvenient truths the article presents).
This is where I have to break with a lot of the conservatives who've been speaking on this issue. Twitchy has been on this a lot, as you might suspect, not liking Barbara Walters "creepily" defending Woody Allen on TV, positively hating Stephen King picking up on the same idea that the Guardian noticed about the open letter in the NYT, and being uncomfortable when FOX News host James Rosen didn't immediately sign up for the lynch mob. Twitchy is seeing this as just another Roman Polanski situation, where the Hollywood Left bands around its own and isn't worried how many abused children are spit out in it's wake.
But the one thing I think you'll see if you start reading some of the links that I've posted above is that this case is nowhere near as clear cut as the Roman Polanski case [for one thing, along with her sexual assaulting brother, Mia Farrow is still best buds with Roman Polanski! -ed], where the guy plead guilty and then fled the US rather than serve time. Common Twitchy target Whoopi Goldberg infamously defended Polanski by saying it "wasn't rape-rape", which was her ignorant way of trying to differentiate consensual sex with a minor from forcible sex with an unwilling partner (which itself is different from sexually molesting a 7-year old as Eliza Farrow says happened to her). The law already recognizes these, and can even consider them differing cases with differing degrees of seriousness...just ask Eric Tillman. Polanski was guilty, nobody doubts this. Whoopi may not think what he did was serious (it is, one may note, not much different mathematically than Woody Allen getting sexually involved with a 19 year old), but the US court system does. Polanski is supposed to be in jail. The events of 1992 led to the United States justice system deciding that Woody Allen wasn't supposed to be in jail. It caused him several custody issues (for semi-obvious reasons, even the suspicion of sexual impropriety will spook a judge from awarding custody, even if he doesn't have evidence to throw the guy in the clink), yes, but the learned opinion of law enforcement is that Dylan Farrow is lying.
[sorry everybody, I think that last bit is shocking so I redacted it out. Before you read it, everybody who's a shrill feminist should sit down, you're about to be hearing something you won't like. Third Edge of the Sword can't be held responsible for the consequences. I'll give you a bit of scrolling whitespace to help relax you. -ed]
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
The learned opinion of law enforcement is that Dylan Farrow is lying. The victim isn't telling you the truth.
Robert Weide thinks she's told a lie so often she believes it herself. The police believed that Mia had coached her into her story (the suspicious rehearsed quality referred to in that article we discussed). Barbara Walters believes this. Stephen King believes this. James Rosen was fearful this may be true. The thing to remember is that this sort of thing does actually happen. Rape accusations can be made without a rape taking place. The crying victim telling you the horrible story is saying things that aren't true. Even the CBC buys into this. It's still hard to get over. When looking at a creepy unwashed guy with a moustache and a small vulnerable child, the human instinct is to pick the latter as believable and not the former. When one person is a thin waif of a girl who tells you that she turned to depression and self-mutilation, and the other is an old man who has been known to fool around with girls much much younger than himself (and also put such desires on celluloid), it's easy to say that the former is the one to be trusted. It's the same factor that is probably causing a lot of Woody Allen's left-wing Hollywood friends to stick by him. For people like Barbara Walters, he's the trustworthy one.
In the end though, professional criminal investigators doing their jobs all said Woody Allen is highly likely to be innocent in this matter. The one person involved who said otherwise was censured by his colleagues for saying it without just cause. The balance of probabilities, let alone the reasonable doubt standard, is soundly in Woody Allen's favour. And for that, we should thank Barbara Walters, Stephen King, Alec Baldwin, and the rest of the Hollywood Left for accepting this. Now that they agree a rape accusation can be false, maybe they can apply it to students at Duke University, Bush appointees to the Supreme Court, or Desert Storm soldiers having a meeting in Las Vegas. Maybe they can apply it to a rash of other men who, like Woody Allen, have been accused of brutal things against their children in order to win petty custody battles. Maybe the notion that every victim is a white-clad angel whose story cannot be questioned will finally be abandoned, and justice rather than witch hunts can be the order of the day.
This is an important battle, and like it or not it can't be won with the Hollywood Left on the wrong side. Woody Allen may be guilty, but even if he is, it's too late to convict him in court, and it's far too risky to convict him in the rough and tumble world of public opinion. If this is going to be a moment to make the world a better place, let it be the watershed moment where the mainstream left ditched the feminist nonsense that every alleged rape victim is actually a rape victim, so that the guilty could be punished but the innocent not left with their lives destroyed (and their DNA in a government database) for the rest of their lives. We should be thanking them and congratulating them on getting it right for a change.
Then see if Mia and company can maybe ask why Roman Polanski hasn't been dealt with, or whether we should deal with a woman who would dare ruin her ex's life -- and her child's -- by concocting a story like this.
