Everyone needs to stop talking about soy. Right now.
The arrest of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs isn’t about the 1,000 bottles of butter and baby oil discovered during March raids at his properties in Los Angeles and Miami; he coordinated and documented allegations of physical and sexual abuse.
These are not cleverly named “Freak Offs” parties; these are the systematic coercion, intimidation and trafficking of many women over many years.
It’s not even about Diddy, or at least not only Diddy; it’s about the hundreds who enabled it, the thousands who turned a blind eye, and the culture that once again allowed the brutal treatment of women and men to remain an “open secret” for years, as long as it’s a crime. rich enough, famous enough, and powerful enough.
But sure, let’s joke. all that fat.
On Tuesday, a day after Combs was arrested in New York, federal prosecutors released a 14-page indictment charging Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation for prostitution. Much of it focuses on Combs’ “Freak Offs,” in which prosecutors say Combs and his associates lured female victims with promises of romantic relationships and/or professional support, and secured participation “including by obtaining and distributing drugs to them, controlling their careers, using their financial support and threatening to cut it off, and using fear and violence.” (Combs pleaded guilty to the charges and remains in custody awaiting trial.)
The indictment paints the hip-hop star not only as a man with abusive behavior toward women, but also as the head of an organization that routinely engaged in illegal activities, including racketeering.
It also contained evidence obtained during the federal investigation that led to his arrest and trial, including drugs, an AR-15 rifle and ammunition, devices containing “Freak Offs” videos and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricating oil.
Not surprisingly, oil and grease — rather than drugs, AR-15s or, you know, potential heinous crimes — immediately caught the public’s attention, especially on social media, where “Johnson & Johnson” immediately began trending.
“I have a good relationship with him here. (Drew Barrymore),” rapper 50 Cent posted Tuesday, “and I don’t have 1,000 bottles of butter in the house.” Even the hosts of “The View” mentioned the liquid when discussing the allegations, with Whoopi Goldberg and Alyssa Farah Griffin laughing as they did so. They reminded viewers that it’s not a crime to have lube.
But as the show’s legal expert, Sunny Hostin, was quick to point out, it could be evidence of one — and not just one — “Freak Off,” in which, as described in the indictment, Combs used “force, threats of violence, and coercion against the victims,” engaged in long-term sexual acts with male sex workers,” distributed “various controlled substances to the victims, in part to keep them compliant and submissive,” and recorded sexual acts without consent.
The fact that copious amounts of lube are more prominent than accounts by numerous of Combs’ wives of sexual and physical abuse by Combs only underscores the larger problem. Seven years after #MeToo, many women still don’t want to speak out about abuse they’ve suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful, and those who do often find that society has become angrier and more suspicious rather than more sensitive . . . especially those without “receipts,” including videos. And the inability to leave an abusive situation or relationship is still often equated with consent.
Last year, four women, including Combs’ longtime girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed a lawsuit accusing Combs of physical and sexual abuse; producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones made a similar claim. Combs denied all of the allegations and suggested the plaintiffs were seeking a payday (he and Ventura settled out of court) until earlier this year, when CNN published a 2016 video of him kissing Ventura in the hallway of a violently attacked hotel. Combs later apologized and claimed he had gone to treatment and rehab.
Following Combs’ arrest, social media and news outlets were abuzz with people claiming his alleged behavior was an “open secret,” and as the cases of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and other #MeToo predators have shown, it often is an “open secret,” symbolizing “if you’re rich and powerful enough, you can lose anything.”
But after reading Combs’s indictment and then seeing people start listing all the “red flags” that have been raised about Combs over the years, it was hard to think about Giselle Pellicote. For weeks, the world watched in horror as Pelicot called her ex-husband Dominque, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to drugging and raping her, and dozens of men accused of raping her.
We wonder how so many seemingly ordinary men could commit such a crime. How could others, who may have seen but not responded to Dominique Pelicot’s chat room invitation, remain silent? Why did no one call the police?
Like the alleged crimes in the Pelicott case, the charges against Combs arise from events that prosecutors say spanned decades and allegedly involved multiple people, including those who worked for Combs — hence the racketeering charges. Combs is also believed to have put together nondisclosure agreements (another familiar element of #MeToo cases), but has no one been involved in much of the effort to organize the “Freak Offs” described in the indictment to break their silence or make anonymous calls to police?
As a Times report detailed earlier this year, Combs has long established himself as an outlaw — after all, his flagship company is called Bad Boy Entertainment. An iconic figure who helped make hip-hop a cultural force, he’s a rich and powerful man who’s consistently managed to stay out of trouble until the revelation of his sexually explicit clothing.
Like Weinstein, his success (and outrage) has outpaced the rumors; like Epstein, there is speculation about whether Combs will name other alleged participants in the “Freak Offs” and whether those names will offer him any leverage as he fights the new allegations.
As Weinstein, Epstein, and many others have shown, our culture often has a hard time accepting the fact that people who are funny, generous, or capable of creating great art can also be monsters of epic proportions. And pretending that such contradictions don’t exist, with all the historical evidence against them, makes the rest of us a little more squeamish.
It’s natural to joke about the 1,000 containers of lube (that’s a lot of lube), but that shouldn’t replace or distract from what the charges really allege: a rich and powerful man exploited his business and many employees called themselves a regular drug dealer, assault, brutality, threats, kidnapping and exploitation of people for years and “partying.” There’s nothing funny about any of this.
