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Hollywood Tag

We covered a bit of the meeting between President Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at the Oval Office, as they were surrounded by press. Our initial report focused on West's experience with the MAGA hat. But the meeting contained so much more that could be consequential. West used the highly public venue to preach the value of Trump's "Make America Great Again" approach, excoriate the Democrats, and persuade the president to reconsider implementing "stop and frisk" in Chicago.

A judge dismissed one out of six sexual assault charges against movie producer Harvey Weinstein after the prosecutors admitted that the lead detective on the case did not tell them that one witness doubted one of the accusers. From The New York Times:
Mr. Weinstein, 66, was charged in May with raping one woman and forcing another, Lucia Evans, to perform oral sex on him. Ms. Evans, a marketing executive, had testified to a state grand jury that the forced sex act had occurred in 2004, during a casting meeting at the offices of Mr. Weinstein’s film company, Miramax, in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood.

Superstar Taylor Swift has always remained silent on politics...until now. On her Instagram account, Swift took the opportunity to slam Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for the senate, and endorse Tennessee Democrats. She wrote that "several events" in her life "and in the world in the past two years" changed her mind and explains why she can't support Blackburn:
Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me.

Hollywood legend Burt Reynolds passed away at the age of 82 this week from cardiopulmonary arrest. He will be sorely missed.

What do you consider the most historical moments of the 20th century? I'd say the Russians raising the Soviet Union flag over the Reichstag when they conquered Berlin (damn, I so wish it was the American flag, though). Liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act. The Miracle on Ice in 1980. The Berlin Wall tumbling down. President Bill Clinton sending the first presidential email to space to Senator  John Glenn. There's obviously one more that happened in 1969. A Gallup poll from December 1999 asked the people that same question and America placing men on the moon came in at #7. I cannot imagine that feeling watching Neil Armstrong walk down the ladder and placing the American flag on the moon. ICONIC. HISTORICAL. Yeah, well, Hollywood has decided to water down history and omitted that iconic piece of history from the Neil Armstrong movie First Man.

On Sunday, the #MeToo movement received a shock when a report dropped that claimed Asia Argento, one its prominent members, allegedly sexually abused a 17-year-old male and paid him off. Argento not only denies the assault, but she has thrown her former boyfriend Anthony Bourdain under the bus and insists he paid off the accuser. Yeah, the same Bourdain that took his own life this year and is not here to defend himself.

The New York Times dropped a bombshell on Monday that revealed actress and director Asia Argento, one of the first females to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, paid off a man who accused her of sexual abuse. From the Times:
But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.

The most Hollywood thing to have happened has happened in West Hollywood. The municipalities five-member city council approved a proposal to remove Trump's star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They claim vandalism and demonstrations are the reason behind their decision. And also Trumps "treatment of women and his views on climate change." Oh yes, and there's also the "decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, a ban on transgender military officers and the separation of families at the U.S. border with Mexico, among reasons for the removal." Basically, everything.

Has-been talk-show host and former actor Rosie O'Donnell is trolling President Trump. Reports are circulating that O'Donnell, whose only claims to fame in recent years are allegations of illegal campaign donations and divorcing her wife, will be joining some protest at which gaggles of #Resistance protesters will sing Broadway tunes in the general direction of the White House.

Comparing a sitting president to Hitler is the new normal. Sarah Silverman unofficially kicked things off by dressing as Der Fuhrer on Conan O'Brien's TBS couch two years ago to hammer home that ugly message. Since then, President Donald Trump has been called Hitler countless times by newspapers, pundits and especially celebrities. That's when stars aren't comparing Trump to a murderer.

I was thrilled to be able to get in touch with my inner geek this week as I had the opportunity to join one of my dearest friends at San Diego Comic-Con 2018. While I had hoped to escape politics while I was at the Convention Center, the inability of progressives to move to the next stage of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle meant that it was thrust upon me at various times.