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Sean “Diddy” Combs and the limits of hedonism

The sordid details emerging from the arrest of music impresario Sean Combs (variously known as "Puff Daddy" and "P. Diddy") highlights the fact that the hedonism exemplified by Hollywood is much worse than the public knows.

This should not be surprising since we have a steady stream of escapees with lurid stories to tell.  Show business has always been sordid and the refuge of perverts, but in large part because of residual World War II patriotism and shrewd marketing, the film industry maintained the illusion that while their morality was certainly looser than that of the mainstream, it was still within the outer bounds of decency.

The infamous casting couch, for example, was in large part consensual.  Yes, young women (and men!) could be pressured to trade sex for money and fame, perhaps even compelled to, but entertainment is always a Faustian bargain.  

To put it another way, if your a sexually chaste, modest person, show business isn't for you.  It belongs to the amoral and ambitious.

For a while, folks thought that there was a floor to the depravity, but as with every human society freed from moral restraint, there are no naturally stopping points.  Adultery yields to orgies which include sodomy and then rape, incest and pederasty all become possible because there is no underlying morality to deny them.

It's not surprising or implausible that Combs could launch massive orgies involving every possible vice and that much of Hollywood attended them.  Like the ancient pagan cults, membership was a mark of distinction and initiation into the sacred mysterious necessarily involved moral outrages to bind oneself to the group.  This the same thing, and it is no accident that the most closely held secret in the world is the Epstein client list.  They protect their own.

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