British comedian Russell Brand has posted a video denying “serious criminal allegations” set to be made against him in an upcoming television program.
“But amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” Brand said.
"These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.
"And as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.
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ruh roh, Russell.
Brand has always been happy to be a cultural ambassador for whatever will attract him the most fans and make him the most money.
His protestations here are only aimed at his gleamy eyed fans, and so that he can hear voices of agreement to soothe him. I find the news treating it as though it’s aimed at a broader audience or indicative of anything evedential to be a bit dishonest. “Man continues to play fiddle to fiddle lovers”, wow, someone get these guys a Pullitzer.
David Pakman made a good video about Brand, that also came up to my mind. But yeah, Brand is a grifter.
https://odysee.com/@davidpakman:7/what-happened-to-russell-brand:1
I followed Brand’s turn during COVID, and his YouTube methodology felt like a calculated attempt at a digital personality cult of sorts. Between language he used, the constant reinforcement of revelatory in-group thinking, the leader-as-peer-but-really-leader self-characterizations, the topics and tropes conveniently serving his professional career, it all seemed to be a deliberate construction of an online personality cult to harness COVID disaffection, general malaise, and conspiracy thinking.
One interesting thing about Brand today is that he’s not as quick and exuberant as he once was, and so you can much more easily see the scaffolding and calculation. He’s now repellent instead of rakish.
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Good stuff and thank you, I’ll definitely give this a watch.
I was in my late teens and early 20s when Brand was selling my age group a bohemian lifestyle. I’m not the type to idolize, but a lot of what he said did resonate with me in a “Mom: we have Bill Hicks at home” sort of way.
I remember Charlie Brooker criticizing him for prancing around the student loan protests in the early 2010s and started to lose respect for him from there on.
It’s been difficult to watch his gradual (and recently, expedient) decline since those early days, as he’s a genuinely witty and charismatic person who has frequently said quite touching and soul-bearing things. All of that said, none of this news surprises me, in fact, it felt inevitable.