I feel (felt?) like that too, but that is a LOT of worst…
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Not all but plenty are. Is it so surprising? Many are power hungry. Besides, hasn’t looking the other way for your “friend” or family been silently accepted? We’ve been corrupt for some time. The only mystery to me is how he made money at the beginning. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was blackmail although nobody is coming out to say it. The same may be happening even now somewhere. Epstein is a symptom of corrupt power, rather than an isolated incident imo.
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This is what Massie had to say yesterday when asked about the handling of the Epstein files (he said more, but I removed the rest because it would violate rules for this particular thread):
“This is about the Epstein class …. They’re billionaires who were friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C.”
I won’t link to it here, because it’s political, but Robert Reich expands on Massie’s comments in an excellent piece on his substack. One of his comments: The Epstein Class. Not just the people who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein or the subset who abused young girls. It’s an interconnected world of hugely rich, prominent, entitled, smug, powerful, self-important (mostly) men.
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I was thinking of Wasserstein. He was sexting - not illegal - in the early 2000s.
Was there later stuff after Epstein was known - I don’t know.
Not sure his age but I’m sure he was a horny young guy then, likely connected with Epstein via his family contacts.
Should that alone cause all this outrage?
I am watching the podcast where they say a lot of people met him and were like no thanks to a relationship with Epstein. “A lot of people went into that house or met him at a party and were like no thanks.” “A lot of people…had the judgment, saw photos of underage girls lining the walls as Virginia Guiffre describes it. And were like this ain’t right.” But did they do anything about it?!
Ezra Klein says “Plenty of people saw him for what he was.” A woman journalist was invited to a dinner at Epstein’s house with [3 famous people] and said “what the F is this? The pedo’s ball?”. He says “[high positioned, rich woman we all know] sees him perfectly clearly.”
But are these people just going on their merry way? Of maybe there is nothing they think they can do?
I think it’s very difficult to accuse someone of something so heinous if you aren’t 100% certain. But … it’s now “in hindsight.” People who suspected but weren’t sure should, IMO, be sharing what they saw and what they thought. At the very least it would validate the claims of the victims that terrible things were happening.
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I kinda wonder why he didn’t just name names? I am in jail, why not put the screws to those guys not in jail with me? The ultimate power play.
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I think he intended to - someone that connected was not going to go down without a scandalous fight. I don’t believe he committed suicide.
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This is not Casey Wasserman’s first foray into tabloid scandal. His scuzzy behavior seems to be consistent and not a one-off.
He is not accused of a crime and won’t be going to jail. But he is being appropriately named and shamed by his clients and peers. Artists and athletes have a choice in who represents them, and they (quite rightly) no longer want their brands to be associated with Wasserman.
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Snitches get stitches. Unless the shanking does the job to the point where stitches don’t help
Or they get hanged.
Ohhh - didn’t know about this - just the Epstein stuff. Interesting to see if he hangs on to his olympic thing.
Unless he has rules against, of course, having flings with employees is not illegal…but bad practice, absolutely.
Thanks for sharing.
Love “The Epstein Class” Aptly labeled. The Epstein class was the enabler. The crimes didn’t happen in a vacuum imo.
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Hoping this works as a free link.
For those of us who lived and breathed pop culture in the 90s, Karen Mulder was one of the OG Supermodels.
She tried to blow the lid off this story a long time ago, but she was called crazy and placed on psychiatric hold and eventually disappeared from public view. Prince Albert of Monaco was the big name that she named back then.
Her story demands revisiting. Coincidentally, NYT has a story today on Naomi Campbell’s cozy ties to Epstein.
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Wow - thanks for sharing. I hope she is ok today. Nothing on her wikipedia page.
Crazy story. Where are all the other models of that time to support her? If she was raped and assaulted, she clearly wasn’t the only.
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Not that different than other powerful people (although Epstein was more public and larger scale). Harvey Weinstein operated for years and only when more powerful women like Gwyneth Paltro went public was he stopped. The brothers/cousin in Miami on trial for attacking women they invited to parties (even flew in from other countries), and their power was money and influence (and parents protecting them); if women reported them, it was brushed off or the women were threatened and walked away.
But I don’t believe those who walked away from Epstein couldn’t have done more. If you see 20 young girls at a party, report it. Is it illegal to invite 16 year olds to a party? No, but it is illegal (in Florida and NY) to serve them alcohol and drugs, to transport them to islands.
He was a con man, but had help from Wexner. He made his money in the 1980-90s and it grew rapidly because of tax laws that allowed him to keep so much of it in the Islands. He conned his way into a job at the Dalton school in Manhattan and met people through that, and then met X who introduced him to Y. Wexner supported him, let him live in the Manhattan town house (then gave it to him), but Wexner claims he knew nothing.
“By 1995, Epstein was a director of the Wexner Foundation and Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was also the president of Wexner’s Property, which developed part of the town of New Albany outside Columbus, Ohio, where Wexner lived. Epstein made millions in fees by managing Wexner’s financial affairs. Epstein often attended Victoria’s Secret fashion shows, and hosted the models at his New York City home, as well as helping aspiring models get work with the company.[50][51] In 1996, Epstein changed the name of his firm to the Financial Trust Company[21] and, for tax advantages, based it on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.[21] By relocating to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Epstein was able to reduce federal income taxes by 90 percent.”
For me, this thread is like a traffic accident I can’t look away from. I know their is nothing I can do to change anything, but I just can’t believe it happened.
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He had money, and he was willing to spend it to cultivate relationships with important people who often flew under the radar of other rich people.
And this pattern—using money (or the equivalent) to acquire relationships—seems baked into being human, and it’s something that we generally approve of, and it ain’t new, we have done precisely that for a long time. It was, after all, the scop who recited the version of Beowulf that we have who said (my translation follows):
So a young hero should accomplish good things with splendid money-gifts [while still] in his father’s bosom, so that afterwards men remain with him, dear companions to stand with the people when war comes.
I think that until the “me too” movement exposed abuse for what it is–common, even commonplace and enabled by secrets and lies–many people, especially men, just didn’t see it as a Big Picture issue.
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Or the women had tried, but made no progress against powerful people. Or they’d been paid to keep quiet and go away.
I went to a small (20 people and the secret service!) fundraiser for Ted Kennedy in 1980. I was pretty impressed with him (I was 21 years old) and never gave a second thought to his past, that his drunk driving had killed a person (and her parents fought it and didn’t get very far), and that maybe everything wasn’t as perfect as I thought. Would I have gone to a ‘private party’ if invited to meet even more famous people? You bet.
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He was also (allegedly) mentored as a young man by Donald Barr, who was the head of Dalton School when Epstein was hired there.
Take a gander at Barr’s history (OSS) and his family tree (Bill Barr).
Surely just a coincidence right?
Also, there’s this sci-fi novel…
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To me it seems to work like this.
You are a billionaire. You can have anything in the world you want. You start down that path and get bored. So you want something that maybe you can’t have.
Epstein facilitated that fantasy for a bunch of sick rich guys. He used people like Maxwell and that lawyer from Goldman to help obtain the product.
It is sick and we should burn it all down. But the rich are too powerful.
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