Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, is openly blacklisting filmmaker Woody Allen.
Late last week, Allen was forced to file a $68 million breach of contract suit against Amazon after the company backed out of its obligation to release Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York, which was completed in 2017.
Amazon is also refusing to fulfill a four-picture deal.
The suit says Amazon canceled the contract in June 2018. According to Variety, Amazon’s representatives explained that the contract dissolution was “due to supervening events, including renewed allegations against Mr. Allen, his own controversial comments, and the increasing refusal of top talent to work with or be associated with him in any way, all of which have frustrated the purpose of the Agreement.”
Note the words “renewed allegations,” which directly refer to a 25-year-old allegation that Allen molested his daughter, Dylan Farrow.
Where to begin…
First off, when Amazon entered into the contract with Allen, the company already knew about the 1993 allegation.
Secondly, due process — a whole lot of due process, including investigations in two different states — not only resulted in no charges being filed against Allen; the investigations also ended up exonerating him.
“But, but, but,” the #MeToo blacklisters will argue, “Amazon is a private company, and a private company should be allowed to do business with whomever it chooses.”
You mean, like the 1950s’ blacklist, where private companies — namely, movie and television studios — blacklisted leftists? Is that blacklist okay now? Because, by that logic, it is.
And as the Amazon statement makes clear, it is not only Amazon blacklisting Allen; so, too, are Hollywood’s “top talent,” meaning actors and actresses, who should be the first ones refusing to participate in another blacklist, a repeat of the dark days of the 1950s.
What’s especially illuminating is that at the same time Amazon was blacklisting Woody Allen over his icky personal life, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos was apparently engaging in some extra-marital ickiness of his own — namely, sending dick pics to his mistress.
One wonders if Jeff Bezos’ personal life would exclude him from a four-picture Amazon deal.
Naturally, the Bezos-owned Washington Post is defending the Bezos Blacklist. After Allen filed his suit, the far-left paper sought to justify the boss’s blacklist with a headline that could have just as easily been run during the McCarthy era: “In Woody Allen-Amazon lawsuit, an explosive Hollywood question: What happens when old allegations meet new attitudes?”
Oh, so “new attitudes” justify blacklists now. Screw the outdated concept of the presumption of innocence. Screw due process… It’s the “new attitudes” that will decide when the vigilante lynch mob is or is not justified in destroying a whole man…
Listen, you are either for blacklisting people without due process, or you are against it. You either stand on that simple principle, or you do not.
And to be blacklisted by someone as recklessly narcissistic as Jeff Bezos, someone responsible for the biggest company in the world, who sends compromising pictures of himself to his mistress…
But he owns the Washington Post, so he can do whatever he wants.
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