My free speechy-weech
The bro's are insisting this is a free speech thing. (Checks watch) Right on time.
Russell Brand (top showbiz publicist Barbara Charone’s neat answer to the turn-of-the-millennium marketing problem that if Comedy-Is-The-New-Rock-And-Roll, why does it look like David Baddiel?) has spent a while setting this one up, you can’t help but suspect. Positioning himself as a persecuted voice in the wilderness, the kind of person that the powers that be might want to silence, he was totally ready.
So the moment that Russell’s brand changed from ‘allegedly sexy’ to ‘allegedly sexual assault-y’, he knew how to throw his opponent’s weight. The narrative would be ‘they are denying me access to free speech’, as soon as it became clear that the Mainstream Media (TM) might not want any more columns and bestselling booky-wooks and reality TV spin offs and Newsnight guest bookings and stand-up specials and Radio 2 shows where he broke all the broadcasting guidelines, thus shackling comedy’s ability to freely express itself for a decade or two, like the free speech warrior he is.
Brand’s reply to the multiple allegations in The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches didn’t come through the mainstream media, because they’d turned against him. It came through tiny unknown not-for-profit anarchist start-up YouTube, news of which was distributed mainly via discussion on the local grass roots network owned by penniless activist Elon Musk.
‘The elite are trying to stop me,’ he told us, completely uncensored, using media owned by the most powerful people on Earth. (The difference of course, is that we can all use those media too. So they don’t feel as special. I mean, for goodness’ sake, they might as well not be mainstream at all. What’s the point of being a celebrity if you have to get the bus with the stinkies?)
Brand told his followers to eschew Twitter and seek out alternative, edgier social media networks, like Rumble. (I assume he said ‘eschew’. I’ve not watched the new one. I sat through the first one. Christ. He sounds like Kenneth Williams playing a steampunk estate agent. I have my limits.)
Brand saying ‘shop for your free speech elsewhere’ annoyed Elon Musk. Like many 13-year-olds who’ve body swapped with the world’s most powerful billionaire (that’s what happened, right?), Musk loves the free speech thing so much that he naturally wants the biggest, noisiest free-speech-bro of the week on his platform, not someone else’s. It’s all about being in the gang. So he tweeted (or X-ed, or whatever he’ll be calling it next week) to say so.
And that’s what the issue is now, apparently. Free speech.
Not sexual assault.
I imagine if you’re one of the women finally feeling brave enough to describe how they felt about their experiences with Brand, that’s pretty rich. Because what you’ve never had is free speech. You might be beginning to feel a tiny hint of it thanks to the story breaking at long, long last. But you won’t be taking it for granted. It’ll be even more precious to you than it is to Russell. I imagine it feels like fresh water after years in the desert. You know what free speech is, and how valuable it is to tell your truth, because you were told you didn’t have it. He did.
You’ve not had free speech because you wouldn’t be believed.
You’ve not had free speech because the rape trial process is so distressing and the conviction rate so minuscule, that you know it might as well be legal.
You’ve not had free speech because the MO of narcissistic coercive sexual predators, and there are many of them, is to get consent first, and then to ignore it, so that the victims can’t go to the police anyway.
You’ve not had free speech because the MO of narcissistic coercive sexual predators, and there are many, many, many of them, is to pick on vulnerable people whose ability to speak out is already shackled because they’re a bit broken, maybe, likely to be labelled hysterical.
You’ve not had free speech because to level an accusation of assault will likely wreck your life.
You’ve not had free speech because you know that rich, powerful men employ powerful lawyers, that they can throw their legal weight about to the extent that two simply colossal media organisations were terrified right up to the point of broadcast.
You’ve not had free speech because the reaction to the news from most people (in and out of the industry) was ‘Oh, him. That’s no surprise.’ Which means we’d all decided that the sort of behaviour he boasted about as part of his act was kind of OK. He hadn’t broken the law. That you wanted to say that he’d broken humans like you wasn’t a problem for us, as a culture. So you don’t matter. Who’d listen to you? Just stay quiet. We’re not interested.
You’ve not had free speech because if he’s not going to prison, surely nothing’s wrong.
You’ve not had free speech because, apparently, his cock is in your mouth and your mascara is running.
You’ve not had free speech because when he boasted about the mascara thing, as part of his stage act, through a public address system, a whole room full of people who’d paid to see him do that, laughed.
You’ve not had free speech because the hilarious story of him gagging you with his penis until you cried was filmed using professional grade broadcasting equipment. And put out on the good old Mainstream Media (TM). And everyone laughed.
You’ve not had free speech because everyone ‘knows’ he was like that, because it’s his declared public persona, built by the Mainstream Media (TM) so what did you expect?
You’ve not had free speech because he had it, and is always going to have it. Not you.
He’s got the mic. And he’s got the dick.
Shut the fuck up. And cry til your makeup runs. Because that’s funny.
It must be.
Because everyone laughed.
Yeah. It’s about free speech.
Theirs.