Is there a gender grace gap?

Usually I reserve for this newsletter the questions I can’t get out of my head but have nowhere else to put, but today I dropped a few about CNN’s decision to bring Jeffrey Toobin back on air down over at Salon, if you’d like to read over there.

It turns out “cancel culture” is probably more accurately described as forced hiatus culture for powerful men who aren’t embroiled in litigation or grand jury proceedings, and seven and a half months is, it would seem, the appropriate amount of time to let pass between exposing yourself to one set of colleagues and being fired for it, and talking about it jovially on-air with another.

I am fascinated by the media/entertainment industry belief that taking a disgraced famous man off camera is tantamount to ruining his life, and the contradictions between the faith in their unique talents and their imagined helplessness. Without the shine of the camera lights these men might become destitute paupers, the thinking goes, haunting the want ads, and yet at the same time they are also indispensable, irreplaceable, treasured geniuses. How can they be both at the same time? Magic!

Will Kathy Griffin ever be invited back to host a CNN special broadcast after her “one terrible mistake”? She’s been fired by the network from which Toobin took his seven and a half month sabbatical for four years now. I think we all know the answer to that question, which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking.

I know I promised my mother’s tarot cards for the next newsletter, and I’ll make good on that soon. In the meanwhile, I’ll just be over here thinking about this Emma Stone scene every time a legal problem arises on CNN that only a brilliant mind that makes moronic decisions could possibly address.