The #MeToo movement took a serious hit the other day when it was revealed that Asia Argento, one of the accusers of Harvey Weinstein’s ‘rapacious’ behavior, had herself, even more recently, paid $380,000 to silence a then under-age young man who’d otherwise have gone public about her behavior, namely her having committed statutory rape.
What is it about moments like this that I find so deeply satisfying? Is it that, unbeknownst even to myself, I’m an incorrigible misogynist? Or is it because I like to see MeToo-ism – like so many other social justice movements that feel compelled to so mindlessly overstate their case – find itself hoist by its own petard?
Some people are knee-jerkedly on the side of the underdog. I’m not. My knee jerks for own-petard-hoisting. That’s why 9/11 was so satisfying. That’s why I’d like to see a typical Islamophoic American family, with non-refundable reservations for a chalet on some ski-hill in the Canadian Rockies, turned back at the border because they have one of those Christian fish symbols on their rear bumper. Or, apropos the refugee crisis, how ‘bout Air Force One, having just crossed the Atlantic, being denied landing rights anywhere within its remaining fuel supply radius? Or after the latest shelling of Gaza, an appropriately small nuclear device detonated over, say, downtown Tel Aviv.
We’re told to be careful what we wish for. Wasn’t that the message of the giant marshmallow in Ghostbusters? Ah, but if only! Still, 9/11 and Asia Argento. That’s only two in seventeen years. It’s hard learning to settle for what one can get. But the Buddhists are right. That’s the secret of happiness.
Categories: Editorials
Paulosophical Vimplications 
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