Villain smirks, but joke’s on him

WHY is Johnny Depp still smirking? Maybe because the Internet has decided that Depp has already won this trial. As has Chris Rock, who said onstage last week that yes, we should “believe all women, just not Amber Heard.”

Wow.

Amber Heard isn’t a perfect victim. But guess what? There are no perfect victims.

Anyone who recalls the testimony of Harvey Weinstein’s rape victims — some of whom continued to have consensual sex with Weinstein after their attacks, who sent him warm emails, one even writing she hoped to introduce Weinstein to her mother — can attest to that.

So why such hatred for Heard? Why are there so few feminist voices standing up for her?

On Monday, she testified that Depp, more than once, grabbed her by the pubic bone and “taunt[ed] me, asking me if I thought I was ‘so f--king tough — tough like a man now?’ ”

Amber Heard has more recall, detail and receipts than Christine Blasey Ford ever did. Yet while Blasey Ford became an immediate cause célèbre, a truth-tomisogynist-power meme, a metric of liberal feminist bona fides, Amber Heard has become a punchline.

How is this fair? Or logical?

And really, it’s Depp who’s the joke here: The would-be coolest of the cool, a 58-year-old man coloring in court as photos of him nodding off, passed out on the floor, are entered into evidence. As we hear testimony that his drug and alcohol abuse has rendered him incontinent and uninsurable. As he smirks and laughs as Heard testifies to horrific abuse, to Depp forcibly searching her vagina for cocaine and, in another incident, raping her with a liquor bottle.

These are all awfully specific, humiliating details, and they only bolster Heard’s credibility. After all, it’s hard to keep the small stuff straight when you’re telling lots of big lies.

Yet the prevailing narrative, still, is that this trial is rehabbing Depp’s image, saving his career, and vindicating his reputation.

It is not. Depp is done.

H’wood toxic waste

Don’t believe me? Let’s revisit this cover story in The Hollywood Reporter which ran in December 2020, one month after Depp lost his UK libel suit — which declared him, essentially, a wife-beater.

“He’s radioactive,” one studio head told THR. “You simply can’t work with him now.”

This wasn’t just down to his anger, the magazine said, but Depp’s “unquenchable thirst for revenge.”

Another studio head called Depp “a huge liability . . . the discovery that came out in that trial alone would be enough to scare away any studio.”

“I use him as the model for telling my clients what not to do,” a top crisis manager told the magazine.

“It’s not a case of shooting himself in the foot. He shot himself in the face.”

Yet day in and day out, Depp’s female fans flood the courtroom and stare lovingly at the back of his head. They bring gifts he’ll never open. They mock a woman they refuse to believe — at all — even though false reports of domestic violence are extremely rare.

What will this trial do to women already afraid to report their abusers?

“When I go into the courtroom . . . it is majority women,” Law & Crime reporter Jesse Weber told

Mediaite. “When Heard . . . was testifying, I overheard a lot of people snickering, making snide comments,

and laughing . . . In fact, I observed one of the court officers going up to a group of Depp supporters in court and telling them to quiet down, to show respect to the witness on the stand.”

It’s a sad truism that no one is as hard on women as other women. Consider that a majority male jury convicted Harvey Weinstein.

Four men and three women sit on Depp’s jury.

While Heard, on the stand, explained how she learned to cover up her bruises — “Day two for me was always the trickiest; that’s when you get the most sensitivity . . . bruises don’t like to be touched,” Depp leaned into his lawyer and smirked.

Why does such vile testimony consistently elicit contempt from Johnny Depp?

Whether you think Heard is telling the truth or not, anyone who has ever been a victim of domestic violence will tell you: None of this is funny.

And why has the judge not rebuked Depp’s demeanor? What are we, as women, supposed to take away from this tacit endorsement of his behavior?

Monday’s testimony ended with one of Depp’s female lawyers — can’t have his first chair, a man, go after the little lady, am I right? — hammering Heard over her promise to donate her divorce settlement to charities, donations not yet fulfilled.

Clearly, the point is to establish Heard as a liar. Does she seem to be lying about this? Yes. Does it mean she’s lying about Depp’s abuse? No.

Both things can be true at the same time. Don’t ask Amber Heard to be a perfect victim.

But as for a perfect villain — well, Johnny Depp’s doing some of his best work in ages.