That's right, here's Vanessa's tweet:
𝕍 𝕒 𝕟 𝕖 𝕤 𝕤 𝕒 ℂ 𝕒 𝕣 𝕝 𝕥 𝕠 𝕟
@VanessaCarlton
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Mar 7
Lindsey has a history of abuse of women. What is amazing is how she holds her own with such grace. He should be told to **** off.
It was in response to someone posting the clip of Stevie and Lindsey debating her lyrics and the poster took offense at Stevie comparing herself to Bob Dylan in that exchange.
While it makes me uncomfortable to say it, I think there is probably enough out there between Carol Ann Harris' book, comments by Keith Olsen, and most importantly (to me), Richard Dashut basically confirming the instances of abuse on his now-defunct tumblr, to say that there was some physical violence going on in the LB/CAH relationship, at least, and maybe with other women (not Stevie). I know there were drugs and a lot of dysfunction, but for me, at least, there's enough for me to believe there is truth in the allegations. If it were someone we didn't admire, maybe the bar wouldn't even be so high to believe. On that same twitter thread that Vanessa commented on, Sara Fleetwood came out and said that she knew personally that Lindsey had worked very hard to change his life, both with professional help and without, and that she didn't think it was a fair characterization of who he is now. But obviously, each of us has to draw our own conclusions from what is out there.
Why I think this matters in the context of the firing is this -- most people want to feel justified when they do things that they know are going to be unpopular. It's not enough to say, well, I didn't want to work with him, and I have the power to get the others to fire him. It needs to be, he deserved it. And my theory, based on very little, admittedly, is that two thoughts came together for Stevie/Mick/Azoff/McVies to make the call to dump Lindsey: (1) they didn't need him to make money and (2) for Stevie, in particular, Lindsey was a bad guy who deserved it. I think the timing of Me Too absolutely gave Stevie that moral high ground she would have wanted to make the call to get rid of him, like she was done dealing with his "abusive" behavior and being difficult and she wanted to spend the rest of her career without it. That need to be justified is also why they did that whole press tour saying he refused to tour. Maybe my expectations are low, but part of me wondered if they would pull out the big gun of the abuse allegations when he sued, but I guess they didn't want to totally torch him in case they needed him later to make $$$$.
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