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.
…
ruh roh, Russell.
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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