Crime

L.A. District Attorney Preparing A Sexual Harassment Task Force

That moment when America officially took Hollywood more seriously than the President.

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(Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

* 60 million people voted for a president who was caught on tape explaining how he was famous enough to grab women by their genitals without consent.
* The people of Alabama are about to vote for an alleged pedophile, stating plainly that even if the allegations are proven against him they’d still send him to the United States Senate.
* But this country is finally ready to do something… about sexual harassment in Hollywood.

Los Angeles County prosecutors are preparing to tackle Hollywood’s growing tide of sexual misconduct accusations with a new task force.

The group of veteran sex crimes prosecutors will “ensure a uniformed approach to the legal review and possible prosecution of any case that meets both the legal and factual standards for criminal prosecution,” Jackie Lacey, the Los Angeles County district attorney, said in a statement Thursday.

Don’t get me wrong: this is a good thing, and long overdue. It is clear that powerful men in the entertainment industry have been taking advantage of young people, women and men, for (possibly) ever. Nothing was done, because nobody cared. And law enforcement let at least some of these people get away with more than mere “inappropriate behavior” but actual crimes.

Since the time of Eliot Spitzer, the New York Attorney General’s office has made it their mission to be the “regulator of last resort” of Wall Street. If the L.A. D.A.’s office would make it their mission to be the defender of women and young people in Hollywood, it would be a good and appropriate use of prosecutorial power.

But… the national willingness to finally go after sexual predators in Hollywood puts into stark relief our unwillingness to do anything about sexual predators in our politics.

We shouldn’t have to have a double standard, we should hold the REPRESENTATIVES OF AMERICA to at least the same standard we hold our purveyors of popular culture. We can be outraged at Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. We can take away Louie CK’s new movie. AND we can take away Roy Moore’s presumptive Senate seat and never let Donald Trump go a day without knowing that we haven’t forgotten the 11 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. WE CAN DO BOTH.

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What stops us from doing both would seem to be… Republicans. Progressives have turned on “our” guys. Louie CK was generally regarded as a pro-feminist comic in a culture that has too few of them. He’s done now. Anthony Weiner is not the mayor of New York, he’s in jail for sending dick pics to under-aged women. Bill Clinton is not the president, and it’s unlikely he’d be able to win a Democratic nomination in this climate, even just looking at the instances where he’s admitted to having mutually consensual relations with that woman.

There is no liberal man, in politics or culture, who could maintain his liberal fans after credible allegations of inappropriate sexual contact with a 14-year-old.

Will Republicans meet us at the same standard?

And if not, why?

The L.A. task force is a nice step. Where’s the D.C. task force? … Where’s the Montgomery D.A. task force? How many more disgusting things have to be revealed before the “Christian” parts of the country start to take this seriously?

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L.A. County District Attorney Forms Task Force for Hollywood’s Sexual Misconduct [NBC News]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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