It is not enough to absolve ourselves by pretending that this has always been a cloak-and-dagger affair. Hollywood culture is rape culture — and it always has been. There is a reason that “casting couch” is a slang term. The same thing is true in the music industry. Do we really want to pretend that the now-septuagenarians responsible for “Under My Thumb” and “Stray Cat Blues” (“But it’s no hanging matter / It’s no capital crime … I bet, bet your mama don’t know you scream like that / I bet your mother don’t know you can spit like that”) have uniformly respected boundaries, including those involving the age of consent, over the course of their long and storied careers?
In 1980 paramedics were summoned to the home of Don Henley of The Eagles, where they found two girls, aged 15 and 16 respectively; the former was arrested for being under the influence of drugs and the latter, who was naked when the authorities arrived, charged with prostitution. Henley paid a $2,500 fine and got probation.
Ted Nugent, a man who has performed at numerous official Republican Party functions, became the legal guardian of a 17-year-old girl in Hawaii rather than face potential kidnapping charges.
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