It’s quite unfair of N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes, I feel, to focus on a pair of financially-settled sexual harassment civil suits filed against Casey Affleck in 2010 — unfortunate but minor in the grand scheme of things.

It’s even shittier to roughly equate this over-and-done-with incident with Nate Parker‘s Penn State history, Mel Gibson‘s unfortunate outbursts of ’06 and ’10, that charge of indecent sexual assault facing Bill Cosby, Amber Heard‘s withdrawn domestic violence complaint against Johnny Depp and that non-story involving Maria Schneider, Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando. Why didn’t Barnes throw in Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Errol Flynn while he was at it?

And to suggest that Affleck hasn’t faced a lot of heat over the 2010 lawsuit because he’s connected with powerful people (i.e., his brother Ben) or because he’s white…wow. Serious off-the-reservation stuff.

From an 11.27 piece called “Stephen Frears’ The Hit“: “Affleck may have behaved unfortunately, but he didn’t do anything that would fall under the headings of criminal, much less grotesque or ghastly. While he may have acted in a boorish fashion, Affleck didn’t assault or hurt anyone, and while he was hit with a civil lawsuit (which he settled) he was never charged with anything. It was never on that level.”

Here’s my quote in a 1.6 Guardian article covering the same ground, written by Rory Carroll:

“Jeffrey Wells, a veteran Hollywood columnist and blogger, thinks there should be a separation of church (cinema) and state (filmmakers’ private lives). The media had no business dredging up the Affleck allegations, he said.

“’It’s not decent to try make a thing about this given the two women involved took the money and went away, so to speak. I mean, it’s over.’

“If the older Affleck and Damon helped dampen the story, well, kudos, said Wells.

“’Maybe that’s a factor. If it is, that’s good, because [the allegations] are not even close to approaching the Woody Allen allegations, or Polanski. It seems to boil down to asshole, boorish behaviour. So what?'”