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Dylan Farrow

What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.

For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like. 

I didn’t like how often he would take me away from my mom, siblings and friends to be alone with him. I didn’t like it when he would stick his thumb in my mouth. I didn’t like it when I had to get in bed with him under the sheets when he was in his underwear. I didn’t like it when he would place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out. I would hide under beds or lock myself in the bathroom to avoid these encounters, but he always found me. These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal. I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters. But what he did to me in the attic felt different. I couldn’t keep the secret anymore.

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Hollywood Reporter reports Gerald Molen, an Oscar-winning producer of Schindler's List, is accusing the Academy of discriminating against a religious movie in revoking its nomination in the best song category.

In a feisty letter to Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, a copy of which was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Molen attacks the group's Jan. 29 decision to rescind the nomination for Alone Yet Not Alone, an overtly faith-based film, over allegations that its songwriter Bruce Broughton, a former Academy governor, improperly lobbied members of the song branch. If Broughton and co-writer Dennis Spiegel are ineligible for an Oscar merely for asking people to give their tune a listen, he argues, more Oscar winners should be required to return their statues because they all promoted their work to some degree or another.

"Every film, director, writer, cinematographer, actor, art director, costume designer and efx house finds a way to pitch or promote their work. Many will see this decision as faith-based bigotry pure and simple," Molen says in the letter to Boone Isaacs.

The Academy nominated "Alone Yet Not Alone" for best song then took back the nomination two weeks later saying that Broughton improperly emailed "members of the branch to make them aware of his submission during the nominations voting period." The nomination had been controversial because Alone Yet Not Alone earned just $134,000 in its 21-day run and Broughton is a former governor and current music branch executive committee member.

In the movie, the song is sung not by a professionally trained singer, but by Joni Eareckson Tada, a 64-year-old woman who has been without the use of her arms and legs for 47 years and runs a charity that provides wheelchairs to needy children. She also authors Christian books and broadcasts Christian radio.

"Critics will pounce and accuse us of being out of touch and needlessly offending middle America by stripping this song -- a song sung by a quadriplegic hero to evangelical Christians who has captured the imagination of the American people -- of its nomination," Molen writes. "In my humble opinion, it seems to me that this has turned a Cinderella story that America loves into a story of the wicked stepmother who wants to keep her daughter from the ball, with we the Academy cast as the villain."

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The Blaze repots MSNBC’s latest public apology shows the network has a problem that is “spiraling out of control,” TheBlaze’s S.E. Cupp said Thursday.

The network prompted outrage Wednesday after it sent a tweet claiming that “the rightwing” would supposedly “hate” a Cheerios commercial because it featured a biracial family. It eventually responded to online pushback by deleting the offending tweet and issuing a retraction.

Cupp is a former co-host of MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” a show on which race “came up a lot.”

“I always welcomed that idea where someone, some less thoughtful pundit, would introduce that idea that half the country is racist because they’re Republican, because I thought, ‘This is great. If liberalism exposes tolerance, I’m glad we are showing and exposing that lack of tolerance for what it is,” she said Thursday on TheBlaze TV’s “Real News.” “It’s all they can see.”

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The Hill reports Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) political stock is rated a buy by major Republican fundraisers in Washington, who are bullish on Rubio’s future as a 2016 presidential candidate.

A group of Republican fundraising heavyweights and wise men in Washington’s business community are solidly behind Rubio, and see him not only as someone who could win the White House, but someone they can work with.

The fundraisers include Bill Paxon, a former New York lawmaker who is now a senior adviser at Akin Gump; Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Wholesalers Association; and Wayne Berman, a big-time donor with a knack for picking winning candidates in presidential primaries.

All three are a party of the business wing of the Republican Party that has clashed with the Tea Party. Their support for Rubio suggests they see him as a possible ally going forward.
Political strategists think Rubio’s chances of winning the GOP nomination in 2016 are looking better because of the bridge scandal embroiling New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) decision to forego a White House bid to aim for the gavel of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

“Marco Rubio is very much in the top tier of potential Republican candidates. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t looked at any data and doesn’t understand the dynamics of the Republican primary,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who counts Rubio as one of his clients. “Look at who votes. It’s very difficult to make the case that Chris Christie has a better chance winning the primary than Rubio.”

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