In all honesty it doesn’t even matter if the assault charges against Kevin Spacey were dropped, the man’s career is about as low as it can get at this point without it being completely ruined and destroyed. His reputation was tarnished the moment he came under fire for sexual assault and the subsequent fallout from the MeToo movement as well didn’t help one bit. Whether he can be trusted or not isn’t really the issue any longer since if he can then it’s going to take the rest of his life possibly to win people back to his side. If he can’t, then life as he knows it has come as close to rock bottom as it’s likely going to get unless something else comes along. Spacey just hasn’t been able to catch a break since this matter came up and like many other men in Hollywood he was called out in the name of a movement that was all too real and decidedly nasty when it started targeting men left and right, but was also rather blatant in its disregard for what kind of fallout it might have produced.
As Judy Kurtz of The Hill reminds us this allegation led Netflix to cut ties with him completely and resulted in him getting the boot from the movie All The Money in the World. No one wanted to work with him since he’d become box office poison following the alleged assault and as a result his career started to plummet quicker than a mallard during duck season. The pot shots that a lot of us took at this guy on the way down were horrendous in many ways and continue to be so. It’s very true that what he was accused of doing was just as horrible, and it’s likely that no one has shed a tear for him in the past couple of years, but at the same time the idea of the case being dropped seems to leave some shred of doubt behind that might have shown that he wasn’t quite the devil he was made out to be.
Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic even wrote about the matter of a phone being lost, the same phone that would have completely fried Spacey had the evidence actually been on it, which it was not apparently. This is enough to make you shake your head since quite honestly it’s been seen in the past that Spacey is not a boy scout by any means, he’s been crass and even extremely rude to people off screen and been something of a pain in the neck for some folks. But not liking a person and attempting to ruin their career is beyond reprehensible, especially when there’s no evidence to back it up. Many that supported the MeToo movement, if they have the courage at this point, would likely come forward and state that there are extenuating circumstances or that someone was paid off, threatened, bribed, so on and so forth, just to indicate that Spacey is in fact a horrible person. But without evidence, even if it’s the truth, it doesn’t matter in a court of law since it can’t be proven and it therefore can’t be punished.
Stars get away with horrible things sometimes, there’s no doubt of this. Celebrities both on and off the screen can be terrible people despite the fact that the face they show the public is a pleasant one. But despite the behavior we see, the false smiles and the ideas they bring about how they value their fans and the people around them, any truth that they’re horrible people isn’t able to be punished or even realized unless there’s solid proof, damning evidence of them doing something so horribly wrong. Spacey isn’t off the hook despite the case being thrown out, and it’s likely that his career isn’t going to just snap back from this. Some people might be crossing their arms and saying that this is good, that he deserves to suffer a bit because they still believe he’s guilty. But others will hopefully step back a bit and sate their lust for drama somewhere else and let the man be. Guilty or not he’s been through quite an ordeal that is still ongoing since his reputation, the one thing that an actor can’t afford to lose, is shot through in a big way and won’t likely recover anytime soon. Those that are bound and determined to keep pecking away at whatever remains are no better than vultures seeking to take their little bite out of what remains simply because they can.
Was Spacey really guilty? Who knows, but one thing is certain, he’s being punished by the court of public opinion to this day and that’s a judgment that has no set expiration date. So long as people think he’s worth hating they’ll keep on doing it.
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