NY Times Writers Can’t Handle ‘Misogynistic’ Depp Decision: GOP Hates ‘Mouthy Women’

Johnny is an actor Depp brought a defamation case against his former wife, actress Amanda Heard, after she made domestic abuse allegations in a 2018 piece for the Washington Post. Most everyone, right and left, following the trial believed Depp and considered Heard a liar, an opinion supported by the jury verdict in Depp’s favor — that Heard libeled him with “actual malice.” It’s left the liberals at the New York Times Discombobulated and disturbed that the wrong verdict had been reached

A.O. Movie critic Scott gave the verdict zero stars in Saturday’s paper. A.O. Scott’s one-word summary: Misogyny! “Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Verdict: The Actual Malice of the Trial.”

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were a defamation trial that was both baffling, shameful, and uplifting. Now that it has ended with the jury finding in favor of Depp on all questions and in favor of Heard on only one, it’s clear that the confusion was the point.

Scott suggested that the trials would distort the straightforward, truthful story of Depp’s abusive husband.

Depp was already a winner even before the verdict. What had looked to many like a clear-cut case of domestic violence had devolved into a “both sides” melodrama….

Scott disingenuously insisted he didn’t mean we should always believe all women, but basically, yes, we should believe all women, especially when it’s only a man’s reputation at stake.

We should know by now that the symmetry implied by that phrase is an ideological fiction, that women who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have a much harder time being listened to than their assailants. I don’t mean that women always tell the truth, that men are always guilty as charged, or that due process isn’t the bedrock of justice. But Depp-Heard wasn’t a criminal trial; it was a civil action intended to measure the reputational harm each one claimed the other had done. This means it was less based on facts than on emotions.

Depp was favored by the television audience. One guess.

Because he’s a man. Celebrity and masculinity confer mutually reinforcing advantages….

Scott lamented the backlash against “cancel culture” now meant that “Creeps can be treated like martyrs. Every loudmouth should be treated as a free-speech fighter.….” In Scott’s deranged view, this wasn’t just one trial verdict, but proof that “Misogyny isn’t the subtext of American political rage and social dysfunction; all too often, it’s the plain text….”

Columnist Michelle Goldberg also was bitterly traumatized by a verdict that didn’t go the way she wished: “The Amber Heard Verdict Was a Travesty. Others Will Follow.”  

The verdict in Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard is difficult to explain logically.

….The explosion of defiant, desperate feminist energy that was #MeToo has now been smothered by an even fiercer reaction. #MeToo was an initiative of women sharing their stories. Heard’s identity as a survivor has now been destroyed. Other women may reconsider.

Would it not have been okay if Heard had lied under oath to you? That was implied by this bizarre sentence.

….Even if Heard lied about everything during the trial — even if she’d never suffered domestic abuse — she still would have Reprezente it. But if the police call wasn’t part of a hoax, then it’s hard to see how Heard hadn’t suffered as well.

Not a word of Heard’s bizarre claim that Depp pushed former girlfriend-model Kate Moss pushed down the stairs, refuted by Moss herself, or the mulitple contradictions Heard committed on the witness stand.

Goldberg came clean about the root of her distress: The verdict is making sexist conservatives happy.

….much of the conservative movement, which has cheered Depp, a man who once joked about assassinating Trump, for slaying the #MeToo gorgon….If there’s one thing they hate more than decadent Hollywood elites, it’s mouthy women.