It’s been a long four years since the emergence of the Access Hollywood tape on October 7, 2016. That gross, utterly dispiriting snippet of video was just one of the starting points of our current national nightmare, which at this point includes—but is not limited to—a raging pandemic, the celebration of white supremacy at the highest levels of government, crimes against humanity at the border, and flagrant, endless corruption.
As demented as that sounds, on the four-year anniversary of that truly crappy event, I’m here to offer you a ray of hope. Before you whisper, “Oh, fuck off” and resume your doomscrolling, please understand that this sliver of guarded, vulnerable hope is one that I acquired through enormously difficult personal and professional experiences.
One of those very hard things: In the fall of 2014, almost exactly a year after my father’s death, I was sexually assaulted by a television executive. Months later I reported his actions to his employer and endured more agony when he received zero consequences for what he did. Almost exactly two years after my nightmare evening with that creep, Donald Trump—a man credibly accused of alleged sexual misconduct by dozens of women—was a candidate for president, and the Access Hollywood tape dropped. Things that occurred even earlier this year now seem almost unreal—apparently I visited California in January and dined with others inside restaurants; surely that was a dream?—but I remember that 2016 weekend all too clearly.
There was the cold, gut-churning nausea that gripped me when I listened to Billy Bush and Trump laughing it up and talking about women as if they were inanimate objects. My heart was broken as I watched them phonily greet an unsuspecting woman after their douchebro “banter,” and my entire being filled with rage every time I recalled Trump saying, “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”
As I write this, I feel echoes of the PTSD the clip triggered then. I know I’m not the only survivor who spent that weekend in a haze of anxiety, turmoil, and reignited trauma. The friend who turned me on to marijuana edibles as a means of easing full-body panic attacks continues to be one of my heroes. But the waves of reactions—and the reactionary, terrifying braying from Trump supporters—did not let up all weekend.
The Friday that the tape hit the news, I tweeted a reaction from the depth of my angry, heartsick soul: “Do you know how real this is for women? That we never know who talks like this after we leave a room? I feel so sick.” That tweet went viral. The following morning I woke up to an enormous wave of horrific abuse. By that point in my digital life, I was sort of used to rape threats; I’d lived through Gamergate, and—before and after that trial run of weaponized, Trumpist toxicity—I’d watched for years as Black women and other women of color got much worse abuse than I typically did.
But something in my brain hit a wall that Saturday morning. The combination of glee and intensity in those waves of hate felt like it had reached a new high (or low, more accurately). I’d been sent not only hate and threats, but images of concentration camp ovens. What fresh hell was this?
The one bright spot that dark weekend was Lin-Manuel Miranda hosting Saturday Night Live. Not because it was an especially memorable episode, but because, at one point, he danced down a studio hallway singing, “You’re never gonna be president” to a portrait of Donald Trump.
Oh, how long ago that seems.
Trump was elected, of course. Probably not despite the Access Hollywood tape, but quite possibly because of it—because of his bellicose racism, sexism, and xenophobia; because of the appetite, in some quarters, for his endless ability to encourage the worst actions from the most nightmarish bullies.
There are a lot of problems in this country, and my profound devotion goes to the organizers and activists systematically and relentlessly taking all of them on. They’re the real heroes.
But since the drop of that tape and the ascendance of Trump, I’ve tried to do my small part as a critic, observer, and reporter of the immensely powerful entertainment industry—which, on my worst days, I half-believe was created to spawn entitled monsters like Trump and Billy Bush. What happened on that tape matters for a lot of reasons, not least because it encapsulates many biased, monstrous, and exclusionary tendencies that have been not just tolerated but celebrated in the entertainment industry for decades.