On Feb. 28, 2016, the entertainment industry gave the Oscar for best picture to "Spotlight," a fictionalized version of The Boston Globe's reporting of sexual abuse and its cover-up within the Catholic Church in Boston. The self-congratulation looks amazing now, after the exposure of decades of alleged harassment, and perhaps even rape, by Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein.
"This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican," said "Spotlight" producer Michael Sugar. "Pope Francis, it's time to protect the children and restore the faith."
We can guess no one will make a movie about the decades of harassment by Weinstein and Hollywood's cover-up. And, certainly, no one would win an Oscar for it. No Holy Father in Tinseltown has moral authority. Feminist superstars like Meryl Streep professed they hadn't the slightest idea of what their friend Harvey was doing ... which makes them either profoundly cynical or amazingly clueless.
A far more believable response came from French actress Lea Seydoux, who wrote in the Guardian that she was groped by Weinstein. She said: "Everyone knew what Harvey was up to and no one did anything. It's unbelievable that he's been able to act like this for decades and still keep his career."
If the liberal intelligentsia found it completely unbelievable that a Catholic bishop might have been uninformed about sexual abuse by priests, then how do they expect anyone to believe it's impossible for the Streeps of Hollywood to be unaware?
The news reports on this scandal have underplayed or ignored the deep hypocrisy of Weinstein's business efforts against bullying and sexual assault. His company distributed the documentary "Bully" to theaters in 2012. In 2015, it funded and distributed "The Hunting Ground," a documentary pitched as "a startling expose of rape crimes on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups and the devastating toll they take on students and their families."
Months after the 2016 Oscars, Hollywood feminists railed against President Donald Trump for a 2005 videotape in which he made crude remarks about what a powerful man can do to women. They shared their outrage on Twitter -- Cher, Patricia Arquette, Debra Messing, Lena Dunham, and Ashley Judd. The day after Trump's inauguration, the Hollywood feminists marched in Washington, D.C., in Park City, Utah (where they hold the Sundance Film Festival), and other cities. There in the Utah "feminist" crowd was one Harvey Weinstein.
Judd, who notoriously screamed grotesqueries at Trump at the March on Washington, was the first big name to allow her name to be used in The New York Times story on Weinstein. Dunham wrote in the Times that she regretted shaking Weinstein's hand at a Weinstein-organized rally for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She had heard the rumors but ultimately "made a calculation" since she desperately wanted Clinton to win.
Can today's young women in Hollywood count on an anti-Weinstein "choir" to "resonate" around the entertainment industry? The Catholic Church has taken dramatic steps to prevent the abuse of children. It is Hollywood's turn to put its money where its mouth has been.
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