It was already a bad year for Hollywood – people simply aren’t buying tickets to their remakes and rehashed ideas anymore – and it just keeps getting worse. The curtain is being pulled back and exposing a permissive and enabling culture of disgusting people who’d have Caligula telling them to have some decency.
While the media is covering the story at the moment, it won’t for long. This is a major scandal and it negatively impacts two industries the media is known to protect: Hollywood and Democrats. No matter how bad it gets, the press will always return to their natural state of liberal bias and protection.
That’s why it’s important for everyone with a story to tell about the perverse, abusive culture in Hollywood needs to come forward now.
Even though he’s a pariah at the moment, Harvey Weinstein is still rich, incredibly powerful, and undoubtedly knows where a lot of other people’s bodies are buried. There is little question large chunks of the entertainment and political worlds of Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC, are living in fear that he might talk. That incentivizes the existing power structure to “put this story to bed” as quickly as possible. So, if new allegations against someone else come out later it can, in the classic defensive move perfected by Bill and Hillary Clinton, be declared “old news” and dismissed.
Dozens of young actresses have detailed their encounters with Weinstein, yet the media is already shifting the story to other, bigger picture issues. “He’s basically Trump,” was Tina Brown’s attempt to exonerate herself of any enabling.
Brown – the liberal darling, editor and former Weinstein business partner – is the founder of “Women In The World,” a group, according to their bio on Twitter, that is “(i)n association with @NYTimes. Convening women leaders, activists & change-makers to share stories & offer solutions for a better life for women & girls.” She plead ignorance about the monster in her midst because, well, she had to. Caring about women is her brand, just like being a progressive activist was Weinstein’s brand.
Sure, she knew about the bullying, but that’s about it, she claims.
And in her handwashing piece she manages to pull the typical trick of people attempting to change the subject – she conflates the issue at hand with past issues. She mentions Bill O’Reilly, Bill Cosby, and of course, Donald Trump. Curiously missing is Bill Clinton, someone else known for his aggression toward women, including a rape allegation.
But Brown hangs out with the Clintons, like she probably hung out with Weinstein. As did so many in entertainment and the news media. That world is a very small pool – there are only so many houses in the Hamptons, after all.
What Brown did others are doing – shifting the horror of Hurricane Harvey Weinstein to bash the President – is a well-worn tactic. What they are trying to stop doing is covering the story as the story and make it a “big picture” issue, like all of society is guilty, to one degree or another.
You’ll find more stories talking about Weinstein’s alleged “sexual harassment” and even “sexual assault” than you will stories mentioning the fact that three women have accused this high-roller in the Democratic Party elite of raping them.
Not mentioning that fact is deliberate, it downplays the monster’s actions, therefore, it downplays the monster they were all very close to.
The media wants this story over worse than they wanted it killed before it broke. Progressive NBC News wanted it gone so badly they refused to report the story’s biggest bombshells and forced their reporter to take the story to a competitor. What kind of “news” organization does that? The last example I know of is Newsweek acting to protect Bill Clinton from the Monica Lewinsky story. Thank God for Matt Drudge in that case, and thank God for Ronan Farrow in this one.
Yes, I’m a partisan, so take this with however much salt you like, but the stories of what Harvey Weinstein is accused of doing are disgusting. And I will never believe the people closest to him had no idea how he was. Too many people have come forward to admit they’d heard the stories for that claim to be taken seriously. I’d noticed the rumors and comments in TV shows and I’m on the opposite coast and not in the business, so the only way those closest to him didn’t have a clue is they consciously turned a blind eye to it because it was in their best interest to do so.
That’s what really allowed Harvey Weinstein to get away with it so long – he was making a lot of money for these people or giving them a lot for their campaigns. They didn’t give a damn what he did because the checks cleared. Money in Hollywood and Washington can forgive any sin…except getting caught.
Once exposed the, “Yeah, I know him, but barely” starts from the people who attended every function he did, vacationed with him, went to dinner, etc., etc.
Washington and LA are enormous metropolitan areas with incredibly small towns inside them, and none is smaller than the moneyed powerful. That’s where Weinstein lived; that’s where they all live.
To the powerful, people are pawns and disposable. Journalists could easily be bought off with access, dirt on someone else, or a wad of cash. Any peek behind the curtain, as we’ve learned this week, can be shut down almost at will. And then, finally, it couldn’t.
But that machine that kept Harvey Weinstein’s secrets secret for so long wasn’t destroyed, it was just circumvented for the moment. There’s too much money and power at stake to allow that for very long.
That’s why the clock is ticking, and Hollywood’s victims of sexual abuse of any sort have to move quickly. They have to get their stories out now, this week, to keep the pathway alive for others to follow. The abuse machine will not be voluntarily dismantled, it must be destroyed.
Dozens of women have come forward to expose what Weinstein has done, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t end with him.
A female producer has accused Roy Price, an executive at Amazon’s streaming service of “repeatedly and insistently” propositioning her. He’s since been suspended, but he didn’t exist in a vacuum any more than Weinstein did.
Actors Terry Crews and James Van Der Beek have also told how they were groped and grabbed by powerful men Tinseltown. The sexual abuse and entitlement in Hollywood isn’t confined to one gender or sexual orientation; it is systemic.
The Weinstein story has set up the dominoes, but there are people who are highly paid to make sure the damage is contained; that they don’t all fall. They need to be knocked down en masse or the others will remain standing.
The only way to do that is for as many people as possible come forward now, while the world is looking and the media can’t make them look away.
Tom Hanks wasn’t really surprised, DiCaprio pled ignorance and shock, Theron heard the stories, Affleck has his own problems, Streep pulled a Sargent Schultz, Fonda “feels ashamed” at not being able to find the ability to condemn Harvey the way she’s condemned the country on so many occasions, and so on and so on…
No one’s hands are truly clean.
But they soon will be if Harvey Weinstein and a guy running a streaming service are allowed to take the fall for everyone else.
Anyone who has been harassed, pressured, groped, forced, or whatever needs to come forward now if they really want this to end. There has to be judgement day for Hollywood, a full pervert purge.
It’s the time to come forward, to name names – both of the perps and the enablers who aided or knew and did nothing. If that doesn’t happen there will be another of Hollywood’s favorite things – a sequel. Because if it ends where it is now, it doesn’t end at all.
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