OXON HILL, Md. — On Friday, former Pussycat Doll and Grammy-winning singer Kaya Jones spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). She insisted that sexual assault is a tremendous problem in Hollywood but slammed the liberals who have weaponized the success of the #MeToo movement to spread “hate” — likely referring to the attacks on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“The #MeToo movement politicizes the #MeToo movement,” Jones said at a CPAC panel on conservatives in media and the arts chaired by Marji Ross, president of Regnery Publishing. “That’s where they’ve lost control, because they’ve used it basically to fuel so much hate.”
The singer argued that if the #MeToo leaders had “just kept on board with it being about what women have gone through and not politicized and weaponized it, I think that it would have moved further.”
.@KayaJones hits the nail on the head about the #MeToo movement: “They killed it” by politicizing it. But it’s very necessary, especially in Hollywood @CPAC #CPAC2019 pic.twitter.com/qAgRCesNAU
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) March 2, 2019
Jones suggested that “there’s a lot of conservatives in Hollywood.” She would not name them, but she said many of the artists that conservative Americans think are liberal are secretly conservative. They don’t speak out for many reasons, she said.
“The sexual advances on talent in Hollywood is atrocious if you want the truth,” she said. “Women have to give something and men have to give something.”
Chillingly, she connected the sexual assault epidemic to the horrific tragedy of abortion. “That also means their child, aborting that, too. There are levels of this,” Jones said.
“Young minds and incredible artists, unfortunately, give something up, and they turn on themselves and they turn on their moral compass,” Jones lamented. “They become something that they’re not in order to fuel a dream.”
.@KayaJones speaks from the music industry: In Hollywood, there’s sexual predation, you have to “sell your body for fame.” @CPAC #CPAC2019 pic.twitter.com/OtwPAKTowm
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) March 1, 2019
Jones predicted another upcoming wave in the #MeToo movement: men. “What you are going to see is the men coming forward,” she told the CPAC panel. “A lot of the men in Hollywood are coming forward on the pedophilia and the abuse that they’ve endured. That’s the next wave you’re about to see, and that’s exciting. It’s very exciting.”
The panel also included: Deal W. Hudson, publisher and editor of The Christian Review, who insisted the root problem is that conservatives cannot defend their ideas; Michael Ramirez, a cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who suggested conservatives are more “right-brain” and artistic creativity is more “left-brain; and Hannah Yoest, art director at The Bulwark, who agreed with Jones that conservatives need to stand up and infiltrate the arts.
For her part, Marji Ross insisted that conservatives need to make good art that doesn’t focus on conservative ideas or hit people over the head with a conservative message, but, rather, includes a conservative message in its more subtle themes. Over-politicized art is not good art.
Similarly, an over-politicized #MeToo movement is not a good #MeToo movement. Jones was clear — and cases like those of Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar prove — that sexual assault is a real problem in Hollywood and elsewhere. The #MeToo movement needs to go on, and it needs to work through the legal system, where the accused have due process rights. Liberals weaponized it against Brett Kavanaugh and others, however, and that may have derailed the movement’s important work.
The former Pussycat Doll was exactly right, and Americans need to listen up.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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