Silencing Woody Allen is an abuse of power by Ronan Farrow

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Cancel culture has claimed another victim, killing publication of Woody Allen’s memoir “Apropos of Nothing,” just a month before it was to hit stores.

Because how dare anyone publish anything someone else doesn’t like?

Hachette Book Group announced the death Friday, just four days after its imprint Grand Central Publishing announced the book’s existence. On Thursday, dozens of staffers from Grand Central and another Hachette imprint — Little, Brown & Co. — staged a walkout to protest the publication.

They were rallying behind a Little, Brown author who’d complained: Ronan Farrow, Allen’s estranged son, who threatened to switch publishers if his father’s book went ahead.

Ronan believes his sister Dylan’s claims that Woody abused her as a child in 1992, though two investigations (one by the state’s child welfare agency, another by the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital) concluded the girl hadn’t been assaulted. It’s all complicated by Woody’s affair and later marriage with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Ronan’s mother (and Woody’s longtime paramour).

Apparently, Woody Allen doesn’t get to give his side of the story — or any story.

Yes, Ronan Farrow claims he’s upset because no one reached out to him to fact-check his dad’s book. Come on: No one’s doing deep checking (beyond libel-proofing) of a memoir these days.

Maybe Hachette made a cold business decision: Farrow, the lead journalist exposing #MeToo outrages, is surely the fatter cash cow. Maybe the publisher figures it can’t cross the PC leanings of nearly everyone who might work for it in this era.

But Ronan Farrow (and the Hachette staffers) are most in the wrong. No matter how deep his anger, it’s obscene for a journalist to be silencing anyone. He claims to stand against abusers of power — but he has just flagrantly abused his own.

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