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Charlie Rose: Detestable Person to Other Detestable Person

Charlie Rose sits across a table from Louis CK against a black background, gesturing during an interview
“So then I thought you might shed a single, crystalline tear of sadness and shame. Can you cry on command?”

Charlie Rose has some balls on him, and we know this because several women have alleged they were forced to see them in person.

There have been questions about powerful, abusive men felled by #MeToo. How long is long enough for them to stay out of the public eye? Is there anything they can do to atone for the abuse they visited on comparatively powerless women?

I don’t have any substantive opinion on that, but I can say that a show hosted by one of them featuring interviews with the rest of them is not the way to go. But Rose has apparently decided it’s time to pave his own road to redemption. (Or whatever.) (Side note: Rose has reportedly been hanging out with Sean Penn and Woody Allen, so there’s that, too. Future guests, perhaps?)

You have to give him credit for swinging for the fences. (Note: You do not have to do that.) It’s like if he was all, “Can I borrow your car?” and you said no, and then he said, “Can I steal your car, sell it for drug money, buy a bunch of cocaine, cut it with caustic chemicals, sell it in your neighborhood, and then blame it all on you?” Not just still no, Charlie, but extra no.

I’m not saying redemption isn’t possible, even for serious offenders. (Up to a point. Fuck you, Harvey Weinstein.) But that’s up to the offended, not the offended. Your comeback is not your call. You don’t get to self-rehab or assign yourself a penalty, like a criminal sentencing himself to community service in the tasting room at Ben & Jerry’s. “I’ve decided I’m going to have my very own TV show again, but it’s okay, because I’ll be talking about how gosh-darn sorry I am about harassing as many as 27 women over the course of three decades. And rehabbing other men who have decided that they feel like returning to the limelight.”

It’s a bold move, Charlie, but it’s one that makes you look like more of a shit rather than less. And that’s all that matters.


One thought on

  1. Interesting that you mention Woody Allen… “You don’t get to self-rehab or assign yourself a penalty,” is basically what Woody’s character says to Martin Landau’s character at the end of Crimes and Misdemeanors. “In the absence of God, he is forced to assume that responsibility himself.”

    I don’t know if/how that is significant or relevant. It just struck me as an interesting coincidence.

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