Five sexual assault allegations that would crush me

As the other shoe drops – and drops and drops and drops – in the draining of the Hollywood swamp of sexual predators, I keep thinking that the next one is going to truly devastate me. I mean, I was a bit devastated by the Louis CK revelations, as discussed in this post, but if I’m being honest, CK has only been a part of my life for about the past decade. There are pop culture personalities that would leave me far more devastated.

The following should not be thought of as a list of my five favorite Hollywood personalities, just the five who would most sadden me if they were revealed to be letches. I should say, the five who would most sadden me after thinking about it for about eight minutes.

For obvious reasons, they are all men. I suppose one day we may actually hear about a powerful woman harassing a man … and won’t that be a good day for our society, as it will mean that things aren’t as white male-dominated as they seem today.

They are:

5) George Clooney – Possibly the man I’d most like to be in Hollywood. Not only is he handsome and debonair and funny, but he seems incredibly nice, and doesn’t seem likely to ever treat women as pieces of meat. Clooney doesn’t make any of my lists of favorite actors, but he’s clearly a favorite personality of mine, a source of joy we could ill afford to lose from the Hollywood landscape.

4) Morgan Freeman – Maybe he’s inherited the grandfatherly black gentleman mantle I had once entrusted to Bill Cosby. Freeman is a treasure, and if I heard he was a skirt chaser, who would be the voice of God in my head?

3) Steven Spielberg – I’m not sure why I’m including Spielberg except that I felt a person with real power – the power that goes beyond being an influential actor – should appear here. I can’t imagine a filmography like his being something that becomes tainted, that we would have to distance ourselves from.

2) Tom Hanks – I had a moment of horror a week or two ago when a humor website posted the following headline: “Another Actress Steps Forward Accusing Tom Hanks of Being Nice.” The only parts of the sentence I initially took in were “another actress” and “Tom Hanks.” Sigh of relief upon comprehending the entire sentence. What can I say about Hanks that hasn’t already been said?

1) Barack Obama – Okay, Obama is not an actor, a director, a producer, or really, anything to do with Hollywood. But with other presidents very much connected to this wave of victims coming forward, particularly George H.W. Bush (to go along with what we already know about Clinton and Trump), I just thought about how it would literally kill me if something came out about my hero Barack Obama.

And to the hundred others whose tainting would drive a stake through my heart, but who I’m not thinking of right at this moment … well, you be good too.