James Franco's glittering career first showed signs of faltering in 2014, when a 17-year-old girl shared messages the then-35-year-old sent her on Instagram, trying to coerce her into showing up at his hotel despite knowing her age. At the time, Franco brushed off his behavior, saying he "used bad judgment." But in 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, multiple women came forward to accuse Franco of ******* ual misconduct at his former acting school, Studio 4, which eventually led to a class-action lawsuit and a multi-million-dollar legal settlement in 2021. Though Franco admitted to having ******* with his students and previously undergoing treatment for ******* addiction, he did not address any allegations of ******* ual exploitation or misconduct. Since then, the now 48-year-old has mostly remained out of the spotlight.
Now, just like other previously canceled men who are making comebacks — including Louis C.K., Jonathan Majors and Kevin ******* ey, among others — Franco has re-emerged in the Shortical microdrama "Love, Lies & Frank." In the series, he plays Jimmy Frank, a dejected ad agency CEO who is millions of dollars in debt to a pack of unsavory werewolves donning terrible prosthetics who are threatening the company Jimmy's father built from the ground up. Across 46 episodes, ranging from 40 seconds to two minutes, Franco appears alongside established vertical actors Eric Guilmette and Neela Jolen. Guilmette, playing Jimmy's stepbrother Cameron Frank, and Jolen, who stars as Daniella Hansen, a junior creative at the company determined to rise in the ranks, embrace their roles with gusto despite a predictable plot and having to act through werewolf fangs.
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James Franco Stars in 'Love, Lies & Frank' Microdrama on Shortical
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#shortical #love #lies

At the outset, it's getting exhausting having to write about these things again, but alas, here we are.
In 1991, feminist journalist Susan Faludi wrote a book entitled Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, where she contended that when women achieve social, political and cultural progress, a vicious backlash follows, usually manifesting from a sub-section of men who feel genuinely threatened by accomplished women.
This is by no means an unfamiliar phenomenon.
All four waves of feminism that brought major advances (the right to vote, reproductive rights, women ascending to leadership, #MeToo , etc.) were met with a full-throated effort to reverse them, whether through the political processes, acts of violence or online misogyny.
Now, that same dynamic has developed due to the soaring popularity of the WNBA in its 30th season.

#political #susan

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Former Sen. Bob Packwood, a moderate Oregon Republican whose reputation as a champion of abortion and women's rights was spoiled at the end of his career by allegations of ****** ual harassment, has died. He was 93.
Packwood's death on Saturday was announced in an obituary sent to media outlets by his family. The release didn't include additional details.
Packwood was a political scrapper who first refused to quit the chamber in which he had served for 27 years, saying he didn't want to be remembered only for that controversy.
Before the #MeToo era, Packwood stood out as an example of private behavior undermining a man's public image. He had been praised by Planned Parenthood and others.
The great-grandson of a member of the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention, Packwood established himself as a social moderate and fiscal conservative who often voted across party lines. He considered running for president in 1980.

Expecting any level of ideological consistency from partisan political actors is a fool's errand; even so, the amount of sheer hypocrisy generated by the Graham Platner scandal is striking.
In response to fresh allegations that Platner, the presumptive Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, was abusive in his past relationships, conservatives who in the past have been correctly discerning of the motivations behind certain **** ual misconduct claims are now heralding these accusations as all but confirmed. In fact, they have **** ailed The New York Times, which published a detailed story about Platner's dating history and alleged violent episodes, for not going further in its indictment.
Meanwhile, many Democrats who gleefully and uncritically embraced the "believe all women" mantra of the #MeToo era are broadly dismissive of the Times story, even though the evidence of wrongdoing is arguably more compelling in this case.
What do I mean by that? The central accusation unfurled by the Times comes from Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015. Fifield is a Republican activist, which is probably enough reason for some people to be dismissive of the claims — her partisan reasons for raising issues about Platner's behavior and character are obvious. Nevertheless, Fifield claims that Platner often grabbed her, dragged her, and shoved her during arguments and when he was drinking; he once "twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn't get out," she told the Times. Fifield denied that he ever seriously hurt her, instead characterizing his behavior as "rough."
In an appearance on MSNBC last week, Platner strongly denied that any of these altercations took place, though he has conceded to being a bad boyfriend in the past and has chalked this up to psychological trauma from his service as a U.S. Marine.

The sequel to the biggest victory of the #MeToo era starts Tuesday when disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein is retried in New York for alleged ***** crimes.

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