Originally published at: Kutcher faces new PR nightmare after disturbing comment about underage Hilary Duff resurfaces | Boing Boing
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You know what would have been better than writing the letter on Danny Masterson’s behalf?
Not writing a letter on Danny Masterson’s behalf and saying absolutely nothing about it.
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Topher Grace definitely had the right idea on that score.
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Topher Grace’s wife Ashley Hinshaw shared a message in support of rape survivors following the news that Danny Masterson was sentenced to 30 years in prison on two counts of rape.
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Well, maybe a letter calling Danny Masterson out? 
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What is the point of giving a character reference to a rapist? They’ve demonstrated exactly what their character is.
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Also true.
It could come off as hypocritical from his former castmates. It runs the risk of questions like:
“Did you know about this behavior before?”
“Why didn’t you act sooner?”
“Were you involved in any of this?”
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Two counts was the leniency. Those were the ones that made it through the gauntlet of Scientology harassment and LAPD inaction. It should have been at least four.
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Tbf though: a 25 year old commenting on waiting for a 15 year old to be of age would have such a role model
Edit is needed. F is frightening in this context. Sorry to trigger anyone
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No. Why the fuck should we?
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Can’t wait for conservatives to cry about cancel culture about this story while also complaining about liberals supporting pedo cannibalism cults in Hollywood
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Ricci nails it: It can be really hard to accept that somebody you like(d) can do terrible things. I think it’s also hard to understand how your desire that they be forgiven might compound the hurt for their victims. (And, when they’re a celebrity, compound the hurt for lots of other victims, too.)
When I was in high school one of my favorite teachers went to prison for having sex with a 14yo female student. A few years later, when I was in college, he wrote me to request a character reference for his upcoming parole hearing. I talked to a few people about it, and only one (a family member who was a brilliantly compassionate and intelligent social worker who specifically worked with abused women) really made me think hard about it. On the one hand, neither she nor I believed that a longer stint in prison would erase the damage he’d done or make a difference in whether he’d do it again. On the other hand, she asked me the reasons why I liked him as a teacher and would want to support him, and pointed out that my description of him was a pretty classic profile of a groomer/abuser. And she helped me focus less on him (and me) and more on the victim.
I ended up ignoring the letter. For many years I wasn’t sure if I did the right thing or not. But the more I think about it now, the more convinced I am that my family member helped me refocus in the right way: my positive experience as a male student who never suffered any abuse had little relevance to the debt he owed society for raping my classmate. I wish Kutcher and Kunis had someone as wise as my family member to counsel them.
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Took us a while to get mad about the Duff clip.
At the time this was normal things that were said, not that they were not icky then (and some interpreted it as “edgy”). But it aged to being just plain unacceptable to say.
Consider that this was a show that had writers and editors, these words were chosen by a team; it was a failure of society not of just AK.
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No. It wasn’t normal then either
Doesn’t matter if a writer or producer or 100 other people came up with that line. Kutcher said it. He bears full responsibility for what he said. Along with anyone else who thought that was appropriate or funny.
Let’s not make excuses please
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I just want to be clear. I wouldn’t write a letter asking a judge to go easy on a member of my own family who I thought was guilty of raping one person much less multiple people. If I thought the person was wrongly convicted, sure, but these people (Kutcher, Kunis, Rupp, Smith, etc.) are making a rather great to do about his professionalism, his dislike of drugs and alcohol, and the fact that he has a daughter to argue for a lighter sentence.
Several years ago, Kutcher was a very vocal advocate against Craigslist for its sexual services listings because they could be used to traffic children. When real “of age” sex workers argued that their use of Craigslist was a way for them to more safely solicit clients, Kutcher quite aggressively attacked the sex workers, made bad faith arguments about their wanting the exploitation of children to continue, and made these people’s lives miserable even when they were advocating for common sense age verification protocols for the people using those Craigslist services. Sex work isn’t my bag, but I think it should exist in as legal and safe a way as possible.
It seems clear now that Kutcher is against people receiving fair compensation for their sexual services and against women having a choice in who they have sexual relations with. It also seems apparent that he thinks having a child is a get-out-of-a-rape-conviction chit to be passed across the table at convenient times.
As far as joking about the prospects of being with underaged girls in the 90s and early 2000s, I won’t defend it… but it was a fairly typical edgy comedy trope at the time. I thought it was weird at the time, but this was the era when racial slurs, school shooting jokes, anti-trans jokes, and rape jokes were fairly commonplace (the whole end of history thing).
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Maybe people weren’t aware of it?
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I didn’t watch Punk’d, so this is a first for me. I never particularly liked Kutcher and I hate celebrity prank shows.
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Me neither, though I was vaguely aware of it.
It was also on in early 2000s, so it’s not like clips would have circulated in quite the same way back then, so stuff like that might have flown under the radar more often. Youtube didn’t start until 2005, for one.
and this is well before our current ongoing conversations about sexual harassment and the like we’ve had since Me too really blew up in Hollywood and some assholes got taken down. 
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