The 411mania Douchebag of the Week

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of The 411 Douchebag of the Week. I’m Bryan Kristopowitz.

So, did Guillermo Del Toro steal from a late 1960’s play and a Dutch short film from 2015 for his Oscar nominated The Shape of Water? It sure seems like it.

Well, this article suggests it, and after having seen The Shape of Water, I have a hard time believing he wasn’t at least influenced by the Dutch film The Space Between Us. Go ahead and watch The Space Between Us and tell me it’s possible that he wasn’t influenced by it.

GDT has also been accused of lifting his The Shape of Water story from a play called Let Me Hear You Whisper by Paul Zindel that was televised in 1969 (the same play was filmed as part of something called American Playwrights Theater: The One-Acts with Rue McClanahan and Jean Stapleton). I haven’t watched either one of those (the 1969 play is, at the moment, still on YouTube) but, man, plenty of people have watched the play and said that GDT lifted from it.

So what happens here? Is it possible that this is all just one big coincidence? I guess it could be, but what are the odds of that? Is this controversy going to grow and eventually cost Del Toro and his movie potential Oscars? We’ll have to wait and see, I guess.

What do you guys think? Did Del Toro rip off the Dutch short and the play or is it all just a big coincidence?

And now onto this week’s Douchebag of the Week.

This week, the 411 Douchebag of the Week goes to former First Lady of the United States, U.S. Senator from New York, Secretary of State, and failed Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, for her half-assed response to a recent New York Times article detailing how she didn’t fire a campaign staffer accused of sexual harassment back in 2008. According to the article, then Senator Clinton didn’t fire her “faith adviser” Burns Strider after a campaign subordinate complained that Strider engaged in sexual harassment with her, presumably while on and off the job. Strider touched the subordinate inappropriately, kissed the woman on the forehead without permission, and sent her suggestive e-mails. Instead of firing Strider, as Clinton’s campaign manager recommended at the time, Clinton decided it was better to order Strider undergo counseling while docking him several weeks of pay. The female subordinate was moved to a different position within the campaign.

Now, sure, hindsight is always 20/20 and 2018 is a different time as compared to 2008. The whole “Me Too” thing wasn’t a thing back then and it was a competitive primary campaign with lots of moving parts and things happening. Maybe removing a guy like Strider didn’t seem like a good idea at that time, for whatever reason. None of those would necessarily be viable excuses for not removing Strider immediately from the campaign, but at least they, or something like them, would acknowledge that mistakes were made and we’ve all learned from them. Again, now is a different time than then. Did Secretary Clinton say anything remotely like that or explain why she decided it was best, at the time, to keep Strider on the campaign?

Of course not.

Instead, when the Times report was put out, Secretary Clinton responded by saying she was “dismayed when the incident occurred” and that she was “heartened the young woman came forward, was heard, and had her concerns taken seriously and addressed.” So far, that’s all Secretary Clinton has said (well, she did also say that all women should be heard”).

And that’s not good enough. Not at all. And when you consider that Strider was hired five years later to run Correct the Record, an independent outfit group that supported Secretary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign and was eventually fired months later for sexual harassment, it makes you wonder why this guy was allowed within ten feet of anything to do with a political campaign considering his reputation.

But aha! Correct the Record was an independent group, meaning that the Clinton campaign didn’t know anything about the group’s hiring practices. Because Strider wasn’t completely removed from the 2008 campaign, he probably had a “good” reputation at that time. He was loyal and “believed” in Clinton. That’s all that mattered. And, again, Strider was eventually fired for apparently doing the exact same thing.

So, Secretary Clinton, why didn’t you remove Strider from your campaign in 2008, making him persona non grata from then on? Was it a mistake? Yes. So why not admit it now? You’re not running for anything ever again. Your brand can’t be any more damaged than it is now, can it? So why not just admit the mistake and move on?

I can’t say I’m surprised by any of this. Politicians very rarely, if ever, admit they fucked up. And Secretary Clinton, even when not actively running for anything, can’t stop being one. That’s sad. And, again, not all that surprising.

**

And now for this week’s honorable mentions…

-The Republican Party, for its ongoing “FBI/deep state” conspiracy story. It makes no sense but that hasn’t prevented them from continuing to promote it as if it’s some real, massive scandal. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have one week of no monumental bullshit from these people?

-The Democratic Party, for once again failing to achieve a goddamn thing. When the whole government shutdown thing happened and both the Republicans and the Democrats appeared on television to explain why they were right and the other side was wrong, it was obvious within five seconds that the Democrats were going to lose. Every Republican said the exact same thing over and over again, even if that answer had absolutely nothing to do with the question asked by the host/reporter. The Democrats just flailed about, looking like they had no idea what was going on, and lacked any sort of message discipline. Aren’t these fucking people professional politicians? Don’t they appear on television all of the fucking time? Don’t they understand how all of this works?

This is why Democrats keep losing. They’re fucking clueless on even the most basic level.

-Former WWE employee Enzo Amore, for his ongoing rape controversy. Who the hell thought that Amore would have been removed from the WWE over something like this? I know I didn’t.

-Douchebag Hall of Famer Vince McMahon, for the horrible Monday Night Raw 25th Anniversary show last Monday. The show didn’t flow, didn’t feature any real big moments outside of the opening segment with Stone Cold Steve Austin, and completely wasted the Manhattan Center part of the show. Why not have a solid hour of programming from there, with two to three actual matches, instead of the confusing Undertaker segment and the burying of Woken Matt Hardy and the Revival? And, like Jim Cornette recently said in his assessment of the show, why the hell didn’t they have people in both places at some point on television? A wasted opportunity to be sure.

**

Thanks for reading. Agree? Disagree? Sign up with disqus and comment. You know you want to, so just go do it.

Please “like” The Gratuitous B-Movie Column on Facebook!

Oh, and B-movies rule. Always remember that.