NBC News has made no secret of where they stand on the accusations against Russell Brand. A few days ago they had an article claiming that Brand had 'attacked the British government' by questioning their use of an online safety bill to try to get his channels demonetized on several social networking platforms.
Today they're out with their latest hot-take on the whole kerfuffle: Not only is Brand bad, but ALL popular British comedy from the early part of the 21st century is bad too.
Russell Brand has denied allegations of rape, sexual assault and grooming made against him.
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 25, 2023
But few can reject the toxic misogynist media culture of the 2000s in which Brand was a peacocking protagonist. https://t.co/g7wuody5Be
From the NBC News:
...it’s not just Brand’s career or his former employers that are facing new scrutiny, but the ’00s as a whole, with Britain confronting the reality that this ugliness may lurk much closer to the surface of public life than many realized or admitted.
These sorts of navel-gazing pieces are common these days whenever accusations of any kind are made against someone. Nothing is ever the actions of one bad person (assuming one takes the accusations against Brand at face value that is), everything is 'systematic' and proof of 'ugly truths'.
There can be no doubt that British humor in that period was 'edgy, but much of British humor has always been bifurcated between stodgy very dry humor and off-the-wall shock humor. It is what it is, as even the article itself notes before handwaving that 'this time it was different'.
Britain has always had its own particular brand of risqué humor, often exporting it to the States, where stars like Brand, who had a brief stint in Hollywood movies, shocked its traditionally more puritanical audiences.
“British comedy has always been bawdy, raunchy and winking,” said Wynter Mitchell-Rohrbaugh, a cultural commentator and podcaster based in Los Angeles. “The audience takes it in, they don’t think too much of it, but then when you get into real-life consequences, real-life allegations,” such as those leveled at Brand, “it pivots and changes things a lot.”
The replies were not kind to the NBC piece, as one might expect.
And few can reject your lack of caring before he started saying things you don’t like
— Billy Carruthers (@BillyCarruther3) September 25, 2023
Was he like that in the early 2000’s?
— Angela Malone (@HomeMalone328) September 25, 2023
But now is when you decide to have an issue with his past.
It’s odd timing considering he was exposing drug companies and the money given to politicians, during Covid.
Funny how these things always seem to be timed, huh?
lol same network as Matt Lauer 😂🤣😂😂
— Abri (@mm77atl) September 25, 2023
Excellent point, if NBC is looking to air out cultural issues maybe they should air out some of the issues in their own workplace culture.
Yes, he is entitled to deny accusations, weird isn't it.
— Hugo Saucedo (@HSaucedo83) September 25, 2023
Your second statement is opinion, probably some blue haired interns opinion. It means nothing.
“We may not have proof but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to smear him anyway!”
— (•_•) (@AsTheWorldBurnz) September 25, 2023
When you're not sure you have the goods on the man the safest plan is surely to damn the ethos from which he sprung. A lot of the names listed as Brand's co-troublemakers, like Noel Fielding and Danny Dyer, may not be familiar names to American audiences but they're very well known to British audiences. Trying to drag them down along with Brand to air out the sins against liberal pieties committed 10-20 years ago will, one hopes, blow up in NBC's face.
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