I don’t normally comment on popular culture, but the ‘Hurricane Harvey Weinstein” Hollywood sex scandal marks a such a radical change in our “cultural high ground” that it deserves comment based on observation’s I’ve read from Twitter commentator Thomas Wictor and science fiction and fantasy writer John Ringo over on Instapundit.
First, Thomas Wictor was a music journalist for 10 years in Hollywood and has just posted a tweetstorm about Harvey Weinstein Hollywood sex scandal in light his experiences then.
See this link for the concise posting of those tweets —
…So do liberal actresses and models and all the rest really think conservative men are the worst human beings in the world?
.Yes. Yes, they do. Because they have to work every day with some of the ACTUALLY worst human beings in the world. And they have to believe conservative men are worse. Otherwise, there’s no point to being on the ‘good’ side.
.Thus when Donald Trump said some needlessly crass things and alleged to have groped women, they immediately saw in him not just Harvey (all the rest of the abusers in Hollywood High not to mention Billy ‘I did not rape that woman’ Clinton) but WORSE THAN HARVEY.
.Because Trump has to be worse. They can’t really be slaves to some of the most vile human beings on the face of the planet.
.Got news for you ladies: Yes, yes, you are. You enable them every day and by doing so you not only support the abusers, you directly or indirectly tell all the hurt new cheerleaders: Welcome to the bigs, sis. Now shut up and act.
.You’re blaming the wrong side.
And both these observations together made me realize that Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” wasn’t so much about a conservative patriarchal dystopia converting women into tools of the patriarchy than her projecting her life experiences in the Harvey Weinsteinesque “rape culture” in the patriarchal male dominated, progressive left, media institutions onto conservative men a’la Ringo.
In other words, if Ringo’s Lefty Female/Feminist Projection model holds and I think it does, Margaret Atwood appears to have been as much a “Handmaiden” in 1985 as was Ashley Judd was in 2016. And so is every other lefty actress who was screeching at Pres. Trump, that Harvey Weinstein “Helped” career wise, including most of the actresses given Oscar’s over the last 20 years.
All those Hollywood women’s achievements are now tainted not only by the question of whether or not they slept with Harvey Weinstein, but how complicit they were in enabling his Handmaiden style systematic patriarchal abuse of women for decades.
Because we know from Ringo’s and Wictor’s observations — and by what what these actresses said about Pres. Trump, and what they didn’t say about Harvey Weinstein — that they are all “Harvey’s Horrid Hollywood Handmaidens.”
They all knew —
Sleazy: Harvey Weinstein’s Contract Allowed for Sexual Harassment
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/10/12/sleazy-harvey-weinsteins-contract-allowed-sexual-harassment-long-willing-pay-monetary-price/
Atwood has said that the book was partly inspired by what she saw when visiting Afghanistan:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/17/afghanistan.weekend7
IMO, the book would have been more intellectually honest had it contained a foreword or afterword mentioning this and discussing the point that there are in the world countries in which many of the characteristics seen in her novel exist in reality. I don’t recall seeing any such thing in the copy that I read.
Google Weinstein and any associated actress, filtering for stories older than a week or two. These stories have been out there for years and years. Maybe a small number are just jealousy, i.e., “She only got her break because she did X with him”, but there’s little reason to believe that.
I don’t believe the most extreme horrors will be uncovered. There’s too much at stake, and they are too hard to prove, or even believe. Look what happened to the guy who accused Brian Singer a couple of years ago. Recall what happened to Michael Jackson’s accusers.
All those who partied with Harvey for years and supported the Clintons should save their breath with their “But Trump…” nonsense. No one’s listening to you, scumbags.
There is far too much straw in all this. People making up stories, then using them as a reference, is funny but kinda dumb.
Pengun,
Nope.
See:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/278234/
THE DAM HAS BURST: The Weinstein Co. Nears The Brink As Agencies Cut Off Talent Supply.
Agents did not want to be on record, but reactions ranged from not wanting to risk the wrath of clients in the event of more fallout by putting them into TWC projects, and others said that if there was evidence of Weinstein benefiting directly or indirectly in projects, the agencies wanted no part of it. They felt even a re-branded company will carry a tarnish, and hoped that projects would be sold off. This wasn’t unanimous; at least one said that if Bob Weinstein and Glasser could change the messaging, and make it clear that Harvey Weinstein’s indiscretions were not in fact covered up, forgiveness could come over time.
But with a splintered board of directors and financiers that were already upset that a TV sale to ITV got derailed in the wake of that NYPD investigation that focused on Harvey Weinstein but didn’t yield charges, with another live sale prospectus possibly harmed by these latest allegations, does TWC have that time? We have heard that some financiers are already poring over the list of plum projects they might pry loose. And agents are looking for outs for their clients on projects that are percolating.
Who wants to work for a company where one of the founding partners had a sexual harassment clause in his contract?
33 Posted at 12:23 pm by Stephen Green
I’m fascinated that anyone is surprised by this whole story, or that there are people really, suddenly offended by something that has been talked and joked about for decades.
I recall an anecdote, real or apocryphal, about Marilyn Monroe when she had made a few big hits and got a big new contract, was reported to have said, “Now I don’t have to give blow jobs to anyone I don’t want to.”
Secondarily, who in their right mind ever considered any of these celebrity types as being people whose opinion mattered in any area but how to make movies? (And given the utter crap that most movies and TV shows are, who admires any of these people for anything they do?)
We have allowed the celebrity obsessed media to foist on the general public the idea that because some bozo acted or was somehow involved in some movie or television crap-fest, that these celebrities have also acquired some type of important wisdom the rest of us should pay attention to, and respect.
The result is that any idiot who can get themselves in a movie or TV show, suddenly becomes a person of importance, whose opinions on numerous other subjects should be listened to and respected, even when they are utterly unqualified to give advice or leadership about any of these other subjects.
As I have stated before, my complaint about the media, in general, is not it’s bias, which I can spot a mile away, but it’s ignorance, superficiality, fetish for celebrities, and absolute cowardice, both physically and intellectually.
The moral cowardice that is so ingrained in this celebrity worship is on full, and disgusting, display in all of this “casting couch” business.
To be blunt, none of them are good enough actors to pull off the sudden outraged and indignant baloney they are now trying to sell, when it is more than painfully obvious that they have known about, and tolerated, this very behavior for decades, and not just by this Harvey a–hole.
“I’m fascinated that anyone is surprised by this whole story, or that there are people really, suddenly offended by something that has been talked and joked about for decades.”
I can’t speak for the others, VR, about being surprised that Jabba the Weinstein has been a complete and total pig; people who follow the entertainment biz have known about him for years. What IS the surprise is that he was outed by the NY Times, and the New Yorker … and all of a sudden like this. The NYT for certain had squashed at least one adverse story about his habits. Don’t know about the New Yorker, but it looks like his piggish behavior had always been covered up before this. Why now? No idea why they would kick off the preference cascade, but it was certainly due.
Felonia von Pantsuit lost and his company is losing money.
He wasn’t needed any more.
Sgt. Mom asks: “Why now? No idea why they would kick off the preference cascade, but it was certainly due.”
I suppose it would prove I’m a kook to even wonder if the Weinstein scandal was deliberately engineered to move the Las Vegas shooter inquiries off the front page /spotlight and closer to the memory hole…
Kind of? Because that would mean that the NYT prefers talking about a Hollywood sex scandal (that implicates just about everybody in covering up systemic abuse) over talking about how guns are evil.
The NY Times is the “Billionaire blog” for Carlos Slim.
The thing about the billionaire blogs — and the Washington Post is Jeff Bezos’ blog — are that they are acting in the narrow interests of the Billionaire’s over that of the Left’s as a whole.
Cutting off the Clinton and Obama faction’s of the Democratic Party from Hollywood money may be far more important to Slim than the power of Hollywood to help elect a President.
And while Trump’s election show’s Hollywood’s power in the General election is limited. The same is not true in the Democratic Presidential primaries. Please see California’s attempt to move up it’s primary.
I think that the long term damage of the ‘Harvey the Hutt’ sex scandal to Hollywood’s cultural power will outweigh the benefits any short term oriented Leftie faction or interest, but the Leftie Billionaire’s are operating in a different reality than you or I.
My prediction: Saturday Night Live will indeed feature Harvey Weinstein in a skit tonight. The “joke” point of the skit will be that he is just like Donald Trump. It will focus on them comparing notes or something similarly ridiculous, given it would all be infinitely more applicable to the Clintons.
But wouldn’t the Las Vegas tale have moved on to the subject of how lame the investigation is? They didn’t even safeguard the shooter’s house from intruders, for heaven’s sake. They have changed their “timeline” (twice?). They still seem to know nothing about the man or how he made his living. The security guard who was shot has disappeared. Witnesses argue that they have evidence of a second shooter. A remarkable proportion of the casualties has already been released from hospital; none of the wounded has died.
The whole thing is rather odd.
Update: someone is trying to persuade us that the lack of the wounded dying is because of …. tourniquets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lasvegas-shooting-tourniquet/tourniquets-once-out-of-favor-helped-save-lives-in-vegas-shootings-idUSKBN1CI16I
You gotta laugh.
So some women complained, years afterwards, that they were raped.
They didn’t get the part?
College girls have been been claiming false rapes under Obama’s rules on campus. The big difference here is that this guy has deep pockets; college boys seldom do.
If you’re truly raped, you go to the police. They didn’t, in almost all the cases.
BTW, grabbing some titty at a party shouldn’t be a felony – a serious slap on the face is the proportionate response, or a slug from a boyfriend.
Frankly, the Right is blowing this up a bit too much. Serious stuff and a creep, true. But I don’t see many aspiring starlets as paragon of virginity either. Why not focus on Shakespearian theater if you really wanted to act instead?
The casting couch takes two participants.
And I think Trent is on to something. Blue-on-Blue for a reason. This is no high-minded moral crusade and the Right is playing along.
I don’t see any reason to blame The Right for what’s going on. We’re just eating popcorn and laughing at the feeble But Trump attempts at deflection.
“She’s just bitter because she didn’t get the part” is the nonsense that keeps the system going. It’s basically how Brian Singer fought off his lawsuit a couple years back.
We do have a problem in how we talk about sex crimes, in that everything from caddish talks to come-ons to propositioning to assault is referred to as “harassment” and we need to better differentiate.
Its not just The Billionaires at work here.
The Alt-Right is having one hell of a time whooping it up over ‘Harvey the Hutt. ”
See:
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2017/10/12/trump-was-right-women-will-let-you-grab-them-if-youre-a-rich-and-famous-alpha-male/
The break down of P.C. Norms helps them more than anyone else.
Anon.
No, it is not “nonsense”
A woman will offer herself for a part and a man will offer a part for sex with the woman. It can and will work both ways.
I suspect some (but not all) complaints are due to the man getting some action from the woman but not delivering on the part.
And Trent, I find Heartise to be pretty realistic about m/f relationships.
Whitehall,
Heartise’s observations on women confirm what I saw in the 1990’s and 2000’s dating market. I have no issues with his stuff regards that.
The problem with his site is that his comment section is over run with Russian trolls and yahoo’s peddling anti-Semetic conspiracy theories complete with Reddit memes.
The sad thing in all that is that his and his commentators calls on Hollywood Leftism as a public ‘put on’ so they can safely sexually exploit the talent, including the classic patriarchal-misogynist Jewish male interaction with “Shiska” starlets, seem to be spot on.
It is a “Red Pill” I’ve been gagging on since the “Harvey the Hutt” scandal broke out.
FYI All,
One of the reasons I see the “Harvey the Hutt” as a ‘cultural inflection point’ is that it empowers “Heritage American” audiences to very vocally and especially monetarily push back on Hollywood “Lefty Bubble Talk” moralizing.
It is going to send the Alt-Right media looking for Hollywood and other Leftist institutions looking for sex scandals for clicks and most especially it will cause _LOTS_ of Sexual Harassment lawyers to try for a REALLY BIG PAYDAY from Disney and other media companies whose management knew what that pig Weinstein was doing to women.
Litigation from this story is going to be the front and center of the entertainment and business sections of newspapers for a decade — about as long as it takes for newspapers to expire in major cities — and it will be very much a part of American culture wars push back by the Grass Roots Right. Come 2020 and 2024, there may not be anywhere near as much discretionary cash available from Hollywood to give to deserving Democratic candidates.
The NFL is one instance of such push back ‘catalytized’ by Pres Trump’s statements on Kneeling during the National Anthem. The reduced ticket sales revenue to the NFL owners is a direct result.
Lefty Hispanic comic George Lopez just ran into another. As he was booed of a stage from Trump jokes, and insulting the audience, when he was politely asked to stop before the boos.
See below:
https://pagesix.com/2017/10/14/george-lopez-booed-off-stage-after-trump-jokes-flop-at-gala/?_ga=2.197902831.1309439289.1508022609-618291135.1502737412
“A woman will offer herself for a part and a man will offer a part for sex with the woman.”
It’s so unfair: the girl pays income tax on her earnings and he pays no income tax on the sex. Bloody patriarchy.
Back in the late 60’s, the more politicized a guy’s talk was the more they expected a cheap & easy lay. The merging of the Rat Pack chic with hippie anti-bougeois bullshit with the kind of phony feminism that sees acting sexually like a guy – forward, not all that particular about partners, etc. – was fueled by Hugh Hefner and Rolling Stone and James Bond and Ingmar Bergman movies. They all kind of collided and merged and produced something Byron, Shelley and Rousseau would have recognized. And one of those threads – from Mary Wollstonecraft to Gloria Steinem was the theory that women needed freedom from bourgeois constraints. It didn’t do us much good but thinking in those early years – and I suspect still in Hollywood – wasn’t something we spent much time on.
As I wrote on this very theme:-
As well as many others, I wish to add my fourpenny’s worth to the mounting scandal roaring around the head, as well as other body parts; of the rapist and sexual predator Harvey Weinstein: but not to add scorn on to the predator; but instead to roundly rebuke the literal dozens of young or now mid-aged stars and starlets for not speaking up! How dare they stay silent? How dare they allow this predator to continue his sexual ambushes of all and sundry, just because he was ‘powerful’? Just because his word could damn their careers? How dare they stay silent, when one word, one strong statement would have brought this grinning moron down upon his very knees, begging forgiveness from his victims?
All my long life, I have lived with one frame of mind when dealing with the outside world; and that frame can be compressed into a single statement: ALL BULLIES ARE COWARDS! I have stood up against threats of physical duress, I have faced down so-called important men because I knew I was in the right; I have gone to bat for my eldest son when he was bullied to the point where he was so scared he was refusing to go to school; I even took on the might of a Council because actions and delays to implementation of certain aids which involved my wife’s well-being were being threatened by the bullying beliefs of a minor Council official: that particular clown was fired within days of my first and second e-mails to very senior Council officials.
Some may well argue that I can think like that because I am a man. Rubbish, you stand up for your beliefs, your principles and you never, ever, stay silent because, well, its easier and there is comfort in silence. No, the likes of the Obamas, of Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, of Rose McGowan and of many, many more who, by either by their silence of the knowledge of this predator’s activities, or the many unsaid rumours complacently overlooked, betrayed the women who were later, over some three decades, attacked, assaulted and demeaned by this bullying bastard.
What’s remarkable to me is that Hollywood women, wholly atheistic and agnostic, seems to have found belief in the “immaculate conception.”