THE Vote and Suddenly Seymour Too!

Still mulling the similarities between Christine Keeler and Virgina Giuffre

So much is happening, we probably can all agree that it’s tough to keep up, but today, is the vote most of us have been waiting for. Per the requirements of age, I have a series of doctor’s appointments today, errands to run and a highly anticipated visit with daughter and grandson, so, I will only be able to follow breaking news when I am in waiting rooms and parked in standing traffic.

Having written about the curious case of MTG, and recently, a retrospective on another teen, Christine Keeler of Swinging Sixties Profumo fame, who was used and misused for politics and power, my husband and I had a collective moment watching the news and suddenly remembered it was our 14th anniversary! Off we went for a lovely dinner and I asked him, “What do you remember hearing about the Christine Keeler scandal?”. My husband is a Mancunian, and he is my go-to for all things Union Jack. What followed was a conversation so incredible, I had to see for myself.

My husband is in his early 60s, so barely a babe in swaddling at the time of the UK Secretary of War, Profumo’s resignation. BUT, my husband explained, he had watched the 1989 movie, Scandal, in his late but still hormonal 20’s, many times. Hmmm…”many times”? I only knew of two types of movies my husband watched many times, John Wayne movies and those that were titillating, emphasis on the ‘titill’.

I said it seemed to me that there were a lot of similarities between Virginia Giuffre and Christine Keeler. He, rejoined, fairly strongly that I had it wrong about Miss Keeler. You see he had had years of history classes and hearing about it growing up, and the general trickle-down consensus through the years, was that she was the sole reason for those darkly resigning Parliamentary times.

Not knowing anything about the movie, as I was not much of a movie goer in the late ‘80s, up to my eyeballs in children as it were, I asked my love to find it for me and put it on, and so my love did for me. I sank back into the couch to watch, observing how my now older and wiser hubby quickly scooted into another room to watch THE hockey game. Apparently Scandal and Joanne Walley had lost its charm. Priorities!

I gasped as I saw the opening credits: Produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. In that one credit I knew I would not be seeing the real story. Soon the soft pink porn glow of Scandal scrolled forward, and I understood more clearly my husband’s memory of watching it many times nearly 40 years earlier! Scandal was the epitome of the almost X, but still R rated, pushing the envelope, type of movie that the Weinsteins loved making. Weinstein produced Sex, Lies and Videotape the same year. Within minutes of the movie’s opening scenes, I saw Weinstein’s grimy, slimy shadow all over the depiction of teen, Christine Keeler. I heard over and over and saw on the blasted Closed Caption (that I couldn’t get off the screen, hitting every button on my tv remote!), the words that almost all the much older, powerful men, called Christine, “Little Baby”. From her pimp, Stephen Ward to Profumo and others, “Little Baby” was their term of endearment. It made my skin crawl. It was bad enough to hear it, but to see the words on the CC made it indelible.

Scene after scene depicted teenager Keeler as “knowing”, “willing", “a vixen”, “a slut”, “whore”, and even wily and calculating. The men? Well, as the future critic I became of this movie, the men were played as playful, (Ward in particular), “just having a bit o’ fun”, somewhat unwitting and fumbling, precocious boys, just being boys. They behaved as though the trafficking of young women, many still in their teens, most trying to break into modeling and show business, desperate to leave poverty, neglect and childhood sexual abuse behind them, as almost altruistic and even benevolent. While “doing” the girls, they were also doing them a favor. Epstein felt exactly the same way. If Keeler was as calculating as she was portrayed at the time, she would have left with more of the jewels and made sure she was taken care of, but she didn’t.

Hours earlier while my husband enjoyed our dinner he kept saying, “Oh, Keeler was way different than Giuffre.” Wait ‘til you see the movie, he said. I realized that a 37-year-old movie was bound to be “ick and ew” to me, but I was unprepared for the Weinstein-ian and Epstein-ian similarities. One early scene had Christine introduced to the eyes wide shut uppity crusty palaces of iniquity. She sat down to dine with elegantly attired guests; the gorgeously dressed table was exquisite except for an ice sculpture of a full engorged upright two-foot-high phallus. As Weinstein wanted, Joanne Walley, as Keeler, portrayed her emotions as “mildly amused” but not alarmed. At the time, Keeler was only 17.

There were many scenes of slightly disguised debauchery and eventually I got bored and didn’t finish it, turning instead to Ken Burn’s newest, The American Revolution, which I found an odd counterpoint to what is going on in our nation at this time set against our backdrop of the international Epstein saga; a 5 administration, four decade country-compromising scandal…but back to Scandal, both the British brand and the American variety.

The Profumo Affair was over in 2 years, and Keeler was imprisoned for perjury, but not a single man who was involved faced jail time. Profumo resigned and his pimp, osteopath to Prince Phillip, took an overdose of pills, as he faced court. Keeler was portrayed as a low-level prostitute, “deserving what she got” for most of the rest of her life. When she passed in 2017, she left 77, 0000 pounds to her son, Seymour Platt, with whom she had an up and down relationship, but eventually reconciled. Along with the inheritance, Keeler also left a request to her son; to vindicate her reputation and overturn her conviction, and he has made it his life mission to accomplish her request. As late as spring of 2025, his petition was turned down. He is not giving up. Epstein’s accusers will never give up, either.

For Epstein’s survivors, it is not the early 60s, it’s not the late 1980s of excess and a down slope into the ‘ME’ 90s, Epstein and Trump’s Golden Age of models and pageantry; it’s 2025 and things have changed. For one thing, Weinstein is dying in prison, Epstein was unalived, and 47 is on his back foot. The Fearless Four led the way and within hours, Trump will soon be facing a bigger debasement than he did on the four states, “winner take all Tuesday”, just two weeks ago today. It is expected that today’s vote will see an amber avalanche, a crimson cascade, a flaming flood of Republicans, changing sides, defying the President. If he lost his voice screaming in a meeting yesterday, supposedly over tariffs, imagine how much smoke will come out of his hairy tufted ears tonight.

Yesterday, I spent a little time watching old interviews of Christine Keeler over several decades. She was not unintelligent, was well spoken and thoughtful. There was great sadness in her eyes and a lot of resignation. It seemed her fiercely protective, inborn pride made her determined not to look like a victim. She protested too much. Over the decades her life swung lower and lower, rung by rung until she was nearly living as she did as a child, in a converted railway carriages on the outskirts of town. Had she had the support the Epstein/Maxwell/Trump survivors have, she likely would have spoken differently. Now, she may not have, but I believe she would have and from what I am reading about her persistent and loving son, Seymour, she may yet be speaking to us, albeit posthumously. I hope that, suddenly, Seymour, also sees that there is support out there and maybe, just maybe, an Epstein survivor will reach out to him.

And just like that, my fickle fascination for this story will probably be assuaged, by watching with buttery popcorn glee, as finally, finally, those in the Epstein files are exposed and the women, once as young as 13 and 14 are vindicated, one by one. And, as Sky Roberts, Virginia Giuffre’s brother and Seymour Platt navigate and restore honest memories of their loved ones, may both Virginia and Christine receive their long-awaited vindication for childhoods gone too soon.

I will be checking in to see the voting from the cardiologist and internist offices today!

Love, gratitude for brave people and solidarity with all survivors of sexual assault.

Kim

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