I literally put my head in my hands and wailed when I read the news headline yesterday: Chris Hardwick’s AMC Talk Show Yanked After Abuse Allegations. Is it too much to ask to enjoy a straight up podcast with a funny guy and not get caught up in sexual politics?! FAARRKKK! I’m so mad. 

I love his podcast ID10T. No. Really. I love it. He’s engaged, he clearly digs what he does, he lets the interviewee have their head, he’s irreverent, he’s quick witted. I’ve guffawed out loud at his quick repartee. My petty self had even forgiven him his great good fortune in marrying a woman who he’s clearly in love with but must also help that she is an heiress in her own right. This is surely social climbing in the best sense. Love is love. Whaddya gonna do if she’s also related to the guy who built the Hearst Castle? 

But I digress. 

Chloe Dykstra chronicles a toxic relationship with Chris H prior to his fairy tale nuptials that again goes to show the dissonance between our public and private faces. We all have them but some are definitively more extreme than others. And it bugs me no end that the likes of Chris H appears to be Janus-faced. But more importantly, it concerns me that my first instinct was to mistrust Ms Dykstra on my initial reading of this still-breaking news. I tell myself it’s my impartial brain, my skepticism that the #MeToo movement will invariably have a downside when charges are made against innocent men. Just because I'm a woman doesn’t mean I will blithely and blindly agree with my peeps based purely on gender. Life is nuanced, and slippery, and one thing can look this way but hold it up to different angles and other shadows form, light will refract and reflect in whole other ways. I want and hope this to be the case for Chris H. I want to trust my judgement of what I think he is, above and beyond what I read in Chloe’s article. 

But why side with him when she writes this:

Because of my leaving him for someone else, he made calls to several companies I received regular work from to get me fired by threatening to never work with them. He succeeded. I was blacklisted. With the assistance of a woman who’d gained my trust and my heart over the past year, he steamrolled my career.  

And then this:

Let me add here: I’ll never forget the night this man slept in a cot at the foot of my hospital bed after my surgery. It made me believe that deep down inside of him maybe there was a man who loved me.
Then, after my recovery, he and my mother were greeted by the doctor.
“The surgery went well, she’ll be fine,” said my doctor.
“Thank god,” said my mother.
“That’s great. When do you think I can have sex with her again?” said my ex.

Really, Chris, REALLY?!

This is the dude who introduced me to Alie Ward FFS. (It’s a fabulous interview, go listen. Now! And then subscribe to Ologies) 

There’s so much to pick apart in this age of #MeToo and don’t think for a moment that this blog post is all I’ll say on the matter. For us ladies, it’s a conversation we have in our heads, with each other, with other males (generally at shouting levels—at least for me), we think about it when we watch our beautiful nieces as they grow into bigger versions of their bolshie selves. We find ourselves sitting bolt right up in our beds and slapping our foreheads as murkiness swims up out of the dark to remind us that we all have tales to tell. 

A young woman—Eurydice Dixon—was raped and murdered in a Melbourne park just last week. She paid the heaviest price in this age of #MeToo. She will not be reaping any of its rewards. If there are to be any. 

As for Chris Hardwick, do I delete my subscription to his podcast, how do I reconcile my doubts over a perceived unfairness to him (aren’t there at least two sides to every story?) and sadness for Ms Dykstra, are all men essentially women-hating misogynists who secretly want to shove cameras up our skirts and take dirty pictures?

What a shit show.