In a recent episode of his podcast ‘Quite Frankly,’ journalist Frank Elaridi recounted a past encounter with Courtney Love. He revealed an incident where the singer groped him during an interview and discussed the cancel culture in this context.
Elaridi’s encounter with Love occurred while he was a journalist for Nightline, at around 24 years of age. He was assigned to interview her at the Coachella music festival almost a decade ago.
According to him, the incident happened as follows:
“I’m at her afterparty interviewing her in a side room, and she’s like, come hang out with us! So I do. We take a photo together, and the second the photo’s done, she grabs my crotch like, really hard.”
After his statements, the journalist showed a picture of the moment and shared his opinions about the cancel culture when his guest Nahko Bear asked whether he wanted to cancel the Hole vocalist. He said:
“That would never cross my mind to be like, let me go after her now, 10 years later. She’s a rockstar in my head; not to justify it or say it’s OK, but in my head, that would never cross my mind to do that. [But] maybe we should talk about it. Is it because she’s a woman and I’m a man?”
Despite having no intention to go after the singer and thinking her motives weren’t ‘predatory,’ Elaridi noted that men in the spotlight suffered from less by the media. Opposing the idea of canceling people, he also mentioned the reason behind the double standard and explained:
“My hope is that we get to a place where we have open and honest conversations and give people a chance to grow and evolve rather than just accuse and cast them out permanently.
With that in mind, I do see why there might be a double standard where it’s just not the same because I didn’t ever feel in danger or like she could overpower me. I was young, naive, and went along with it because people were watching, and I thought it was what ‘cool’ people do.”
You can watch the full interview in the video below.
