{"id":3817,"date":"2019-12-30T23:59:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T23:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/?p=3817"},"modified":"2019-12-31T00:03:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T00:03:32","slug":"bombshell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/bombshell\/","title":{"rendered":"Bombshell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is disturbing and at times difficult to watch. No, I am not talking about the movie Cats<\/em>. I am talking about Bombshell<\/em>, which takes you into the world of Fox News, which was at the time essentially a rape factory. It involved both Fox News hosts and management going all the way to the top. I suspect it still is to some extent, although the spotlight on them toned down some of the worst abuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blondes were especially targeted by Fox\nNews President Roger Ailes, brilliantly portrayed by John Lithgow,\nand almost unrecognizable in his Roger fat suit. Roger Ailes is\nportrayed as horrible, because that is what he was. The only small\ncomfort I had while watching this movie was repeatedly reminding\nmyself that Ailes was dead. There were 23 known victims and probably\ncountless others, since he has been accused of this pattern of\nbehavior all the way back to the 1960s when he worked on the Mike\nDouglas talk show. He may have walked away from the Fox scandal an\neven richer man (instead of firing him for cause they paid him $40\nmillion to leave), but he did not live long to enjoy it. He died just\na year later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlize Theron plays Megan Kelly as if\nshe is channeling her, Nicole Kidman is Gretchen Carlson and Margot\nRobbie plays the fictitious Fox up and comer Kayla Pospisil. This is\nan amazing cast, and they disappear into their characters. There are\nso many actors that I really like in this and I did not recognize\nabout half of them. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a couple of actors from The\nGood Place<\/em>. Marc Evan\nJackson plays Fox newscaster Chris Wallace, the son of legendary\nreporter Mike Wallace. If you work at Fox, you yourself are not a\nlegendary reporter. It is where careers go to die. The indefatigable\nD’Arcy Carden appears as fictional Fox News employee Rebekah. Carden\nmay be the hardest working woman in show business right now, doing\nfour series where she was a regular character, three movies, and a\nbunch of tv one offs. That was this year alone.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allison\nJanney plays civil rights attorney Susan Estrich. Civil rights\nattorney Lisa Bloom, whose mother is attorney Gloria Alrez, destroyed\nher reputation by representing Harvey Weinstein in an underhanded\nway. Susan Estrich’s reputation was similarly damaged by her\nrepresentation of Ailes, using her understanding of victims to\nundermine them. Civil rights attorneys who represent victims should\nnever turn around and represent the victimizers. No victim can ever\ntrust them after that, nor should they. She is brilliant and\nremarkably accomplished, but what she did for Ailes was unforgivable,\nespecially her attacks on the reporter who broke the story. I find it\nhard to believe that she did not know Ailes was guilty of repeated\nsexual harassment. <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has a huge cast of extremely\ntalented actors, perhaps some of the best casting overall I have\nseen. When you have a cast of such familiar faces playing such\nfamiliar faces, it is easy to get caught up in trying to identify all\nthe actors. Here I was just pulled into the story and found them all\nquite believable. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This movie is important, but it is not\nfor everyone. Regular Fox viewers will find it uncomfortable, and\nthose with a low tolerance for the abuse of women will also find it\nhard to watch. It was too much for my wife. There are moments where\nit plays like a horror film. You almost hear the menacing music every\ntime Ailes appears on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the important messages in the\nfilm is that these serial sexual harassers and rapists get away with\nit on their own. It takes a lot of enablers. Mirimax protected Harvey\nWeinstein, colleges protect rapists, the Catholic Church protected\nCatholic Priests who raped children. These people continue with their\nassaults for years because other people help facilitate it. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this film, we see it is pretty much\neveryone at Fox who protect and enable Roger Ailes. One of the most\nsinister is his door keeper, played by an excellent but oddly\nuncredited Holland Taylor (the law professor from Legally Blonde<\/em>).\n Here she portrays a woman who seems to be pimping for Ailes, and\nfully aware of what went on behind that closed door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually in a film like this you have a\nhero who takes down the bad guys. While the bad guys do get taken\ndown, no one in this film is a hero. They do what they do for their\nown selfish reasons. There is a great scene where Megan Kelly simply\ncan not get that maybe her actions could help other women and why\nthat might be important. Misogyny was built into the core of Fox\nNews, and pretty much everyone just went along with it, even the\nwomen. It was, after all, less a place of journalism and more a\npropaganda outlet for the right wing beliefs of owner Rupert Murdock,\nexcellently played by Malcom McDowell. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay Roach, who also directed the 2012\nGame Change<\/em>, tells an important story, but it is sadly\nincomplete. The film does not go into any detail about what was done\nto the women we know were harassed. The reason is simple. They are\nunder non-disclosure agreements from Fox and can not talk about what\nhappened to them. The fact that they are still being muzzled gives us\na clue as to just how egregious the behavior at Fox was. To further\nreinforce the fact that there really are no heroes, these women took\na settlement and a vow of silence instead of fully outing their\nvictimizers. The film in a note at the end points out that the\nsettlements to these women were dwarfed by the payouts to Ailes and\nO’Reilly, who walked away with millions and their victims silenced. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Shine, who took over from Ailes,\nwas forced out for the numerous sexual harassment accusations leveled\nagainst him, along with accusations of racist hiring practices.\nUnlike the others, he did not get a huge payout. He moved to the\nTrump Administration, generally a safe haven for serial sexual\nharassers and racists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is disturbing and at times difficult to watch. No, I am not talking about the movie Cats. I am talking about Bombshell, which takes you into the world of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,57,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-entertainment","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3817"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3821,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions\/3821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sexinreview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}