The tale of notorious douchebag Harvey Weinstein is a sordid but all-too-familiar one. Weinstein has been infamous for decades for his volatile temper, screaming at and physically threatening anyone who dares to publish anything he's not happy with. It's sort of ironic that what brings him down is his disgusting behavior with women.
I mean, seriously. You're one of the most successful movie producers in Hollywood -- you should have women throwing themselves at you, successful women and starlet wannabes. There should never be an instance where you have to coerce or use leverage to get sex, and frankly, a few of Weinstein's deeds sound like flat-out rape.
Maybe if Weinstein had played his cards right, he could have been elected to high office. I keed, I keed. But really, what is the qualitative difference between Weinstein and Clownstick, or Bill O'Reilly, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes? The last two would be the worst of that particular group, but the salient fact is that none of them will ever face any real repercussions for their behavior. The careers of Weinstein and Cosby are over now, and Weinstein is now facing what will likely be an expensive divorce, but that's about it.
But you can bet the story gives the Clownstick administration a serious orange old-man chub. For one, it serves as a distraction from the daily failures. Puerto Rico seems to have dropped off the mediot radar. Much easier for the chat shows to just sit and talk to each other about how awful Weinstein is (which, don't get me wrong, is 100% true, but it's been true for a very long time) than to send reporters to PR and get a look for themselves, talk to some residents, write an actual news story.
This lets one side, who elected a dirty old man who has bragged multiple times about accosting women and barging into dressing rooms, play some weird "hypocrisy" card, as if it wasn't the failing New York Times that broke the Weinstein story. And it lets the other side virtue-signal that they're willing to excoriate one of "their own" for such behavior, as if the example would resonate one millimeter beyond their own ideological borders.
Conservatives only care about sexual misbehavior when it's Harvey Weinstein or Anthony Weiner. When it's one of their own, they vacillate between didn't happen and fuck you. Liberals are consistent about punishing their own transgressors, but then seem surprised to find that it doesn't really change anything. This isn't about sex, it's about power, more specifically about powerful people using and abusing powerless people, which is a constant of the human condition.
Pretty sure it was in a Playboy 20 Questions interview in the early '90s, where Joe Pesci said, "Show business turns men into fags and women into whores." However that phrasing may put some people off, he's not wrong. One of the sicknesses of our culture is how badly some people allow themselves to be conditioned to seeking fame for its own sake. The promise of fame -- or even just being in close proximity to it -- gets some people to do things they ordinarily wouldn't.
Even a heaving fat sweaty tub of shit like Harvey Weinstein could get laid. This wasn't about getting laid. This was about a tubby schlemiel who never got a decent piece of ass until he was a wealthy Hollywood weasel trying to seduce Ashley Judd or Asia Argento or someone people had actually heard of. I produced her goddamned movie and got her an Oscar, the least Gwyneth Paltrow can do is give me a fucking handjob! That sort of thing.
And like Pesci, Weinstein wouldn't be entirely wrong in that assumption. It's one of the oldest what would you do for.... questions around. If giving a fat guy a handjob would make you a rich movie star and get you an Academy Award, would you do it? Probably most average people would say no, but a much higher percentage of people in the entertainment industry would say break out that dick. And that's the world guys like Weinstein and the rest of them live in.
Don't get me wrong; I find Gwyneth Paltrow to be insufferable, but I do not think she gave Harvey Weinstein a handjob, although I really don't care if she did. It's just an example to illustrate where the brains of people who function at Weinstein's level can easily be, if they have that kind of personality and temperament.
Despite the usual "casting couch" clichés that abound, I suspect that is the exception these days, rather than the rule it probably was back in the day. These are corporations with HR departments and risk-management protocols, and that sort of shit is bad for business. But if you put a dysfunctional person in that sort of position, of course he's going to exploit the opportunity and go after all the ass he can get. Dysfunction+Power=Bad Shit Happening. Who knew?
But again, the fact that a good chunk of the 'murkin media have gone off after this particular squirrel, while 3 million Americans continue to suffer without food or electricity or gasoline, and the turd stinking up the Oval Office continues to rage-tweet the voices in his head, speaks volumes.
I mean, seriously. You're one of the most successful movie producers in Hollywood -- you should have women throwing themselves at you, successful women and starlet wannabes. There should never be an instance where you have to coerce or use leverage to get sex, and frankly, a few of Weinstein's deeds sound like flat-out rape.
Maybe if Weinstein had played his cards right, he could have been elected to high office. I keed, I keed. But really, what is the qualitative difference between Weinstein and Clownstick, or Bill O'Reilly, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes? The last two would be the worst of that particular group, but the salient fact is that none of them will ever face any real repercussions for their behavior. The careers of Weinstein and Cosby are over now, and Weinstein is now facing what will likely be an expensive divorce, but that's about it.
But you can bet the story gives the Clownstick administration a serious orange old-man chub. For one, it serves as a distraction from the daily failures. Puerto Rico seems to have dropped off the mediot radar. Much easier for the chat shows to just sit and talk to each other about how awful Weinstein is (which, don't get me wrong, is 100% true, but it's been true for a very long time) than to send reporters to PR and get a look for themselves, talk to some residents, write an actual news story.
This lets one side, who elected a dirty old man who has bragged multiple times about accosting women and barging into dressing rooms, play some weird "hypocrisy" card, as if it wasn't the failing New York Times that broke the Weinstein story. And it lets the other side virtue-signal that they're willing to excoriate one of "their own" for such behavior, as if the example would resonate one millimeter beyond their own ideological borders.
Conservatives only care about sexual misbehavior when it's Harvey Weinstein or Anthony Weiner. When it's one of their own, they vacillate between didn't happen and fuck you. Liberals are consistent about punishing their own transgressors, but then seem surprised to find that it doesn't really change anything. This isn't about sex, it's about power, more specifically about powerful people using and abusing powerless people, which is a constant of the human condition.
Pretty sure it was in a Playboy 20 Questions interview in the early '90s, where Joe Pesci said, "Show business turns men into fags and women into whores." However that phrasing may put some people off, he's not wrong. One of the sicknesses of our culture is how badly some people allow themselves to be conditioned to seeking fame for its own sake. The promise of fame -- or even just being in close proximity to it -- gets some people to do things they ordinarily wouldn't.
Even a heaving fat sweaty tub of shit like Harvey Weinstein could get laid. This wasn't about getting laid. This was about a tubby schlemiel who never got a decent piece of ass until he was a wealthy Hollywood weasel trying to seduce Ashley Judd or Asia Argento or someone people had actually heard of. I produced her goddamned movie and got her an Oscar, the least Gwyneth Paltrow can do is give me a fucking handjob! That sort of thing.
And like Pesci, Weinstein wouldn't be entirely wrong in that assumption. It's one of the oldest what would you do for.... questions around. If giving a fat guy a handjob would make you a rich movie star and get you an Academy Award, would you do it? Probably most average people would say no, but a much higher percentage of people in the entertainment industry would say break out that dick. And that's the world guys like Weinstein and the rest of them live in.
Don't get me wrong; I find Gwyneth Paltrow to be insufferable, but I do not think she gave Harvey Weinstein a handjob, although I really don't care if she did. It's just an example to illustrate where the brains of people who function at Weinstein's level can easily be, if they have that kind of personality and temperament.
Despite the usual "casting couch" clichés that abound, I suspect that is the exception these days, rather than the rule it probably was back in the day. These are corporations with HR departments and risk-management protocols, and that sort of shit is bad for business. But if you put a dysfunctional person in that sort of position, of course he's going to exploit the opportunity and go after all the ass he can get. Dysfunction+Power=Bad Shit Happening. Who knew?
But again, the fact that a good chunk of the 'murkin media have gone off after this particular squirrel, while 3 million Americans continue to suffer without food or electricity or gasoline, and the turd stinking up the Oval Office continues to rage-tweet the voices in his head, speaks volumes.
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