Yesterday, I mentioned that horrible right-wing “comedian” Steven Crowder was getting divorced, and several of you replied, “Who?” Oh, how I envy you. More ugly details have emerged, specifically, videos of Steven and Hilary Crowder’s normal daily interactions. Hilary is trying to get stuff done and is incredibly conciliatory while Steven lounges with a cigar telling her what she can and can’t do, while being verbally abusive.
In the Ring camera video, which was captured on June 26, 2021, Steven Crowder is angry as he sits on the patio smoking, and Hilary Crowder is in a state of motion as she prepares to leave the house.
Steven Crowder insists that Hilary not take their one car to run errands as it would keep him housebound and that she, at nearly eight months pregnant, should take an UBER.
He also berates her for not doing her “wifely duties,” like grocery shopping, in a way that pleases him.
Tensions rise as Steven Crowder gets more agitated.
“Feeling some constraint?” Crowder said to his wife.
Crowder gets irritated and says that if Hilary, his very pregnant wife, takes the car, he can’t go to the gym, see his parents, or see his friends.
“The only way out of it is discipline and respect,” Crowder said to his wife.
Hilary Crowder, in an attempt to leave, tells her husband that she loves him and that she’s committed to the marriage.
Steven Crowder gets angrier and suggests that if she is committed to their marriage, she should put on gloves to give his dogs the medicine that his wife was concerned was toxic for pregnant women and walk their dogs.
As they headed inside, Crowder got angrier and angrier and was, by his admission (via audio I reviewed) yelling angrily and said, “I will fuck you up.” According to both Crowders, Steven immediately pulled back and realized what he said. But by that point, Hilary was frightened and left the house.
Hilary Crowder has since left his childlike ass, and has issued a statement that reads, in part:
“Hilary is currently living alone in Dallas, apart from her family and support system in Michigan, and is focused on taking care of her young children. She is not prepared at this time to speak about her divorce becoming public or the misleading statements made by Steven about their relationship.
The truth is that Hilary spent years hiding Steven’s mentally and emotionally abusive behavior from her friends and family while she attempted to save their marriage. She was the one who was asking to work on their relationship to keep the marriage intact for their unborn children.”
The video supports her claim that she was in a “mentally and emotionally abusive” relationship, and then some. Steven Crowder might not want to contest any legal decisions about alimony in their divorce, because she has his balls nailed to the wall right now.
That’s Steven Crowder, he’s done. I also mentioned the rape trial of Donald Trump. E. Jean Carroll was cross-examined yesterday. Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, settled on a familiar strategy: abusing the victim of the crime to discredit her. For instance, the fact that she did not scream was used to imply that she wasn’t actually raped.
Tacopina later attacked Carroll’s trustworthiness based upon her testimony that she laughed, but did not scream, when Donald Trump started to rape her. It did not go well for him.
Q: In fact, in response to this supposedly serious situation that you viewed as a fight, where you got physically hurt, it’s your story that you not only didn’t scream out, but you started laughing?
A: I did not scream. I started laughing. That is right. I don’t think I started laughing. I think I was laughing going into the dressing room, and I think I laughed pretty consistently after the kiss to absolutely throw cold water on anything he thought was about to happen. Laughing is a very good—I use the word weapon—to calm a man down if he has any erotic intention.
Undeterred, Tacopina doubled down on his attack.
Q: When you’re fighting and being sexually assaulted and raped, because you are not a screamer, as you describe it, you wouldn’t scream?
A: I’m not a screamer. You can’t beat up on me for not screaming.
It’s hideous what that lawyer is trying to do to the victim of a crime. Other lawyers aren’t impressed, either.
As I wrote yesterday, I do not know whether the jurors believed Carroll’s direct testimony that she was raped by Trump. Based on my 25+ years as a trial attorney, including service as an Assistant United States Attorney who focused on sex crimes, I am confident that any juror who did not already believe that Ms. Carroll lied in her direct testimony would not have been persuaded by any of the cross-examination that she was a liar.
In fact, it appeared that Tacopina—who is a very capable trial attorney—had an agenda that valued being mean to Ms. Carroll over undercutting her credibility. I would not be surprised if that was a direct order from Donald Trump.
Joe Tacopina can go home and lounge on his patio with a cigar now. I am deeply repulsed by what some men consider acceptable behavior. I’m just hoping that these are two women who will emerge triumphant.
Zebras don’t change their stripes.
Even if their lawyers recommend it.
If 45 values meanness over effective “legal work” (to dignify what Tacopina is doing) so be it. Let him crash and burn.
…And this is what I will play when they get their just desserts
https://youtu.be/Adgx9wt63NY
Wow, he missed two age old questions.
“What were you wearing?”
“Did you enjoy it?”
GIven the questioning was out of that same era’s playbook of blaming the victim.
As for Crowder, his wife should’ve taken a maul hammer to his kneecaps, so that he’d have a valid excuse for not getting off of his fat ass. And a few to the jaw, to improve his conversational skills.
Call it comprehensive body and fender work.
And this. “Death on two legs ”
https://youtu.be/UXzW-pZ5sUQ
Freddy Mercury gets really going at 1.40 .
BTW I first thought it was “Crowley”.
But being confused with Alastair Crowley was a step up for Steven C.
“What were you wearing” would have brought the jury’s attention to the dress. That still has the semen stains and DNA… not a good idea.
Meanwhile, Fox is being sued by a former employee for creating a racist and misogynistic environment in the workplace. Wait, you mean hosts who promote racism and misogyny on air also do it in the workplace?? What sense does THAT make?
STOP THE PRESS
“Senate Investigation into Brett Kavanaugh assault claims contained serious omissions”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/28/brett-kavanaugh-investigation-omissions-senate-sexual-assault-claims
Right, since the topic of this thread seems to be “men we wish we didn’t know”, I’ll mention one who came to my attention again yesterday.
This lovely fellow first came to my notice a while back (2-3 years ago?) when a “Dying with Dignity” bill was introduced in the Dail (Irish Parliament)—a provision that would allow for medically assisted suicide for someone terminally ill and who has little time left to live, all of which promises to be messy and miserable.
Our friend here is a TD (member of Parliament), a Healey-Rae, i.e., one of a dynasty from County Kerry who somehow regularly get themselves elected to the Dail despite not having the least smattering of brains or humanity. (A huge embarrassment for our country since such a man would never get elected anywhere else.)
In any case, he was opposed to the bill, his reasoning being that “there’s one fellow who brings us into this world and who later sees us out of it, and that’s God.” I see. We just have to wait for God to call us home, no matter how painful that waiting period might be.
Now I did send our feeble friend an e-mail. I pointed out to him that he was perfectly free to believe whatever he wanted to about “God”. That’s what religious freedom is all about. And if he believed that “God” wanted him to suffer the most terrible agony before death finally released him, he was perfectly free to do so. This Death with Dignity bill was optional. Nobody opposed to it was going to be forced to take advantage of it.
So I pleaded for freedom of choice. He’s free to do as his religious beliefs direct him, but why should he get to make my decision for me? His beliefs aren’t mine, so why should he have the right to impose them on me? Why should his beliefs determine what sort of death I’m going to die?
His generous reply to me was, “I respect your point of view and hope that you will respect mine.” I didn’t bother to pursue the conversation. Arguing with an imbecile is never profitable.
At any rate, after the introduction of the bill I didn’t hear much about it for a while. I feared it might be languishing and dying in the committee phase. But at last it’s back in news, as is our Kerry friend. He was pleading that his views should get a fair hearing before the committee. He seemed to be concerned on that point.
I mean, here we have a guy who’s campaigning to force people to suffer as miserably as possible before they finally die, but he’s worried that the rest of us aren’t going to be fair to him. Jeez, why would anybody ever get the idea of being unfair to him? We’re a sorry lot, aren’t we?
In divorce court, probably, but as a prominent right-wing bigot on social media raking in millions? Not so sure.
There are certainly plenty of Crowder apologists who watched that video and saw nothing more than a typical spat between a married couple, if that. Some are even accusing his wife of setting him up on camera to make him look bad for a favorable divorce settlement. As Trump has already demonstrated, if your fan base is made up of MRAs, incels, bigots, racists and misogynists, behavior like Crowder’s is what they expect from a real man, and they already believe women are only in it for the money.
I’m sure the immediate fallout will hurt his bottom line somewhat, and he can wave goodbye to any more $50 million offers, but regardless of whether he doubles down like Trump or seeks restoration for a few months like megachurch pastors typically do when they have been caught red-handed, he’s going to continue to rake in the cash.
The only consolation is that a lot of it will be going to his ex-wife and kids.
Why am I reminded of this?
https://www.salon.com/2017/12/04/alt-right-women-are-upset-that-alt-right-men-are-treating-them-terribly/
birgerjohansson: I don’t see how it matters, this news about Kavanaugh. The Senate majority got plenty of evidence he was a complete piece of shit human, and it convinced them he was their man.
Tacopina is doing a good job of convicing the jury that he is as big of an asshole as his client.
This will not end well for his client, I’m betting.
Did you see that the incelosphere is all a’flutter because one of their leading lights got laid? Oh dear, they should have forseen that failure mode.
Numerobis @ 13
One small advantage is, every comedian can joke about a supreme court judge who is a flasher without Kavanaugh daring to take them to court. The last thing the nasty party wants is to remind people of the past.
Marcus Ranum @ 15
It is as if a lot of them are assholes who begrudge him his improved life. Who would have thunk it?
There was a lot of coverage of those reactions on Youtube.
I’m mildly intrigued at learning that Crowder is exactly the same way offline as he is when he’s hosting. Like, this might explain why he’s such a failure of a comedian. He doesn’t know how to be any other way, and a good entertainer is at least minimally flexible enough to be temporarily different. He’s as one dimensional as they come. It’s quite pathetic, and if his one-dimensional nature wasn’t of being an evil piece of shit who is upset he’s not allowed to enslave women, I’d almost feel sorry for him. Instead, I’m going to laugh at him at his followers. Because they deserve nothing but scorn and derision.
Crowder famously boasted of being “louder.”
Now we’ve heard what he’s said.
His career is dead
But his proud boys could not be any pouder.
His incels are saying
Thank Gawd he ain’t gaying
Just a loser who ain’t now doing laying..
Like us he’s a loser that’s blamin’
With apologies to The Digital Cuttlefish.
Wasn’t Steven Crowder earning at least millions dollars, possibly tens of millions of dollars annually? How is it that they have one car? Is he also running a fucking scam on his family? I don’t get it.
He seems like a nice lad. Will go far.
Wait…
Louis
@20
He has a car.
He doesn’t care if she has one.
Plays right out of the Abusive Intimate Partner Handbook 101.
If she has a car, he can’t isolate her from friends and family, or anyone who would support her or help her.
Without a car, he can control when and where she goes someplace, what she does, who she sees.
If she had her own car, she could have gotten into HER car and left this worthless shitheel MUCH sooner than she did.
We also don’t know if he actually has millions or not. Even if he did, abusers don’t share wealth or power, they use wealth and/or power to control their intimate partners and kids, and frequently anyone else in their orbit. Case in point: Harvey Weinstein, who wasn’t just a rapist, he was a shit human being to everyone else who had to deal with him.
Old redneck joke: “Why barefoot and pregnant? Because shoes just leads to running away.”
Now substitute “car” for “shoes”.
RIght. He has one car, because abusers like to maintain every avenue of control that they can.
By the way, we only have one car, too, and my wife took it away this morning to go off to Wisconsin* for a week. I’m housebound! Do I need to file for a divorce?
*My daughter Skatje is doing her final PhD defense on the 18th of May, so Mary is going to do some toddler-sitting.**
**Not really “sitting”. Mary goes armed with books and activities and lesson plans, Iliana is going to get an education.
silvrhalide,
Like you, I recognized the one car, more control move.
18 years ago, my daughter was pregnant and in an abusive relationship, living 300 miles from her family and friends.
My mother-in-law was near the end of her life at the time, and requested that we go to Florida to pick up her car to give it to our daughter in Texas. We did so, and we took the precaution of keeping the title of the car in my husband’s name along with our daughter. The abusive partner was not pleased, but that good old Toyota served my daughter well for several years as she was raising her son as a single Mom. Unfortunately, she had to co-parent with the jackass, until the boy was 16 and decked his father, telling him to “go to hell”.
She finally has found happiness with a high school sweetheart from her past, and her son finally has a good and supportive male role model in the house.
It’s rough (and expensive!) to be the parents of a woman who is going through this sort of thing.
Magistramaria @ 25
I don’t know what to say, except thank Zod your daughter and her son finally are safe.
Right, controlling her makes a lot of sense. What a fucking scum.
And he certainly has millions. He used to have an extremely popular YT channel (now it is demonetized as far as I know).
@24
That is precisely what abusers do.
Well I certainly hope the conversation about the car and the trip didn’t go like the one in the video did.
That was an extremely difficult video to watch.
Even knowing that she made it out alive, I was expecting him to hit her or beat her. Judging from Crowder’s wife’s actions and reactions, I’m guessing that she was expecting it too.
By the way, the time when a women is most in danger from an intimate partner is when she is pregnant. As Crowder’s wife quite visibly is in the video. The time an abused woman is most vulnerable and most likely to die at the hands of her abusive partner is when she is pregnant with the asshole’s kid.
Even if there were two cars in the Crowder household, you can bet there would be a problem with her using “her” car. It would seldom, if ever, be available for her use. Abusers do things like remove the distributor cap, slash tires, hide or steal car keys or otherwise prevent their victim from using the car. Because in an abusive relationship, a car IS a means of escape. Which is why, despite Crowder’s ostensible millions, his wife will NEVER have her own car or ready access to his car as long as she is in that relationship. And yes, that car is clearly HIS car, not THEIR car. The one-car household isn’t the issue. The ABUSE and CONTROL are the issues.
I don’t know, do you?
I certainly hope the cat isn’t puking everywhere like she did the last time your wife went on a trip. Although it is hairball season because it’s shedding season.
Also, I’d make arrangements with friends/neighbors for rides in the event of an actual emergency while your wife is gone, if only because the storm that is literally sweeping the nation is flooding a lot of rivers and lakes–Yellowstone is closed due the flooding from that storm–and hoofing it to higher ground with the cat in tow will not be fun.
For the record, some married neighbors in my community only have one car. They use it for groceries and in the winter, because they bicycle everywhere and I do mean everywhere. (Bicycling in a foot of snow is largely a waste of time and bicycling in the winter with icy and/or snowy roads is actively suicidal.)
It is not an abusive relationship.
If one of them needs to use the car, they let the other person know and then just take the car.
Nobody needs to beg or negotiate like that poor woman in the video.
@26
That was really smart, keeping the car in your husband’s name and your daughter’s name. That way her abuser couldn’t steal or sell the car out from under her and couldn’t have the car removed from the property because it was also in your daughter’s name. If it was just in her name, it could be automatically his in a community property state. And how kind and smart your mother-in-law was, giving her car to her granddaughter.
You can’t make them leave an abuser but you can pave an escape route.
I’m glad your daughter finally got out and is in a better place and a better relationship now.
silvrhalide,
She got out of his home by the time her son was 7 or 8, and has struggled to pay bills and go to school ever since.
Unfortunately, the jackass still used his relationship with the boy to exert some control over her life.
Many of our tax returns went to help her fight to retain custody of her child!
Her oldest sister, who has no children, has also helped to financially support them.
We all breathed a sigh of relief at a very joyful wedding last summer!
Unfortunately his father had sabotaged my grandson’s confidence in school. Whether because of a lack of confidence or to spite his father, he was failing many classes. Now that my daughter and her husband are the only influences, he is attending an academy for at-risk students and is on track to graduate in December. He’s beginning to consider going to college.
I recently saw his picture in his tux, since he’ll be going to prom tomorrow. I can’t wait to see the prom pictures with his date.
We raise our children hoping that they will never experience such things in their lives, but we never know what will actually happen.
‘Right-wing’ has become synonyms with ‘evil’.
While I’m sure Crowder used this as a control mechanism, the idea that a household should have one car per qualified driver if they can afford it is the height of environmental irresponsibility.
You’re right, in aggregate. We should have mostly walkable neighborhoods. There should be a plethora of safe, efficient, public transit options. Bikes should be an easy way for most people to get around.
Even in those situations, you would still need a car per qualified driver for the people who live in rural areas. And, fun fact- we don’t live in those situation her, so having less than one car per driver is a good way to isolate people.
antigone10@33,
Most of the world somehow manages without. As did even the USA until a few decades ago.
Saw… well, heard enough of the video to trigger flashbacks. I’m happy she managed to get away from him, I really am, I just question the necessity of showing the video everywhere.
KG, no car here, walk with a cane – barely some days. Haven’t been to my endocrinologist in over a year, missed my eye surgeon follow up, due to lack of transportation and the office being over 5 miles away. Don’t need a car, huh? That vascular surgeon can also wait to check my abdominal aorta until it ruptures.
I have a coffee maker that needs to go back for warranty replacement by mid-week, need to take it to a fedex office drop off center, the closest being 10 miles away. So, once that date passes, I’m throwing it literally into the river outside.
I can manage without a car, by managing to die a lot fucking earlier.
@32 It’s really easy to have an excellent and cheap mass transit system when your country is about double the size of Oregon (which is what Germany ballparks at–just as one example). It’s a lot harder to have a mass transit system in a country the size of the US. Even if the US could afford and build a mass transit system, there are a lot of people for whom that is simply not a realistic option. Also keep in mind that yes, there was a time in the US when most families were single-car families but it was also the same time period in which most women, at least middle and upper class women, didn’t work outside of the home. (It was also a time period where doctors prescribed pills like “mother’s little helper”. Not exactly a coincidence, is it.)
That was back when a family of four could reliably live on one (male) person’s salary. Now it takes two people working full time or more to live in something other than a cardboard box, let alone buy a house or apartment.
It’s also easy to say “only one car per household” or “everyone should take mass transit”. There are a LOT of people for whom that is not a working solution. And providing “solutions” like “get a ride from a friend” or “get an Uber” isn’t the solution. Relying on a friend for all your transportation needs is both irresponsible and exploitative and also just shifts the environmental cost (among other costs, like gas/electricity, the upkeep and the initial price of the car) to someone else. It doesn’t make you an environmental hero. And “get an Uber”–how, exactly, is it somehow okay to exploit an already exploited person to provide you with transportation service? Exploited people are everywhere, not just in the global south. First, the stock market doesn’t even think that rideshare services companies will be around in ten years–some rideshare companies like Via have already gone out of business and Wall St expects others to follow–and second, your money goes directly to a company that has outsourced all of the costs and risks to their non-employee “associates”. Rideshare companies are the epitome of the crappiness that is the gig economy.
Some other hypotheticals to consider:
-a friend of mine is an EMT (paid) and a firefighter (volunteer). She is a very healthy, very strong person. Should she be morally required to walk 2-3 miles home after a 12 hour shift at the fire station, in which she may or may not have had to fight fires? What about the days when she just works a 12 hour shift as an EMT and is tired AF and just wants to go home? Morally, can she get in a car? It’s not a far drive but it feels a lot farther under those circumstances. In all weather?
-another friend of mine has an autoimmune disease. Sometimes she feels fine, sometimes she can barely get out of bed. Morally, is she allowed to drive a car, even if her destination is only a short distance away? What if she feels fine in the morning but is cognizant of the fact that that could literally change at any minute? Should she still walk to places within walking distance?
-the Better Half’s mom has had a heart attack, a fractured hip and has a host of other medical issues. She lives in a major city, which has extensive mass transit. She also walks only with a walker and has a home health care aide 7 days a week. She never learned to drive because the mass transit in her city is relatively cheap and plentiful. Is she allowed to own a car, which her adult child drives, in order to get to medical appointments and the like? The BH already does all the shopping and errands. Should she be required to walk (using a walker) to the local bus stop, then get on the subway, to run essential errands and go to medical appointments? At all hours of the day and night? In all types of weather? Or does she get to keep the car for errands, medical appointments and as a hedge against medical emergencies?
-does a mom with 3 kids get to have a car to run errands and drop all three of her kids off at their various sports and activities on a Saturday or does she just get the kids up at the crack of dawn to take mass transit to ALL the kids’ destinations, several of which are in opposite directions? Or should she give the oldest one a shove towards mass transit and hope the kid makes it there 1) on time and 2) at all, while ferrying the other two around on mass transit?
I really hope you took what wzrd1 wrote @36 to heart. Not everyone is healthy enough or able-bodied enough to take mass transit or bicycle to places.
Not everyone who IS disabled LOOKS disabled.
Getting back to the original video… I noticed, in addition to the extremely toxic conversation about taking the ONE car, douchbag Crowder taunts his wife, saying “why don’t you call an Uber” to which she answers “you know I can’t”. Which tells me that she doesn’t have control of her finances, her phone or both.
The one-car only status of the household isn’t about environmental responsibility. It’s about CONTROL.
It doesn’t make her an eco-hero, it just makes her a victim.
Add in, my last Uber ride cost me $30.00 and change, just for a trip to and from the supermarket a couple of miles away. My trip to the VA, which was a one hour ride, was thankfully covered by the VA, otherwise I’d have not gotten my COVID booster.
Some folks take great delight in telling people to spend money that they can’t afford to spend.
Case in point, I need to return a $39.00 coffee maker for a warranty claim, which will expire on Thursday. Take an Uber, it’ll likely be around $50.00 total, at a minimum – to return and exchange a $39.00 coffee maker. I’m wracking my brain trying to get a lift to the store, but if that fails, I intend to toss the fucking thing into the river.
Now, I could take a bus and transfer, carrying a dripping coffee maker the whole way, leaving me sodden as well. Totally optimal solution! The river is closer, it’s across the street from me.