Weinstein and Our Culture of Enablers...(Rabbis, Grand Rabbis, Pastors, Priests, Bishops, Cardinals, Popes, Yeshiva School Owners, Jewish Advocacy Organizations (Except for Kids) Ad Infinitum....
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| Harvey Weinstein at a Time magazine party celebrating its publication of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” |
Of all of the dismaying and disgusting details of the Harvey Weinstein saga, none is more depressing than this: It has so few heroes.
There
is a storybook villain, Mr. Weinstein, whose repulsive face turns out
to be the spitting image of his putrescent soul. There are victims, so
many of them, typically up-and-comers in an industry where he had the
power to make or wreck their careers, or bully or buy their silence, or,
if some allegations are to be believed, rape them.
But mostly there are enablers, both those who facilitated his predations and those who found it expedient to look the other way.
The enablers were of all sorts. Corporate board members who declined to investigate allegations of his sexual behavior and now claim the news comes as “an utter surprise.”
Assistants who acted as “honeypots,” joining meetings between Mr.
Weinstein and his intended victims to give them a sense of security —
and then leaving the predator to his prey. Reporters who paid him
tribute with awards, did his bidding with fawning coverage, or went after his enemies with hit pieces.
A lavishly paid Italian studio executive whose real job, according to former Times reporter Sharon Waxman, was “to take care of Weinstein’s women needs.” (A lawyer for the executive reportedly denies the allegation.)
A lavishly paid Italian studio executive whose real job, according to former Times reporter Sharon Waxman, was “to take care of Weinstein’s women needs.” (A lawyer for the executive reportedly denies the allegation.)
And then there was the rest of Hollywood.
Mr.
Weinstein’s depredations were an open film industry secret, the subject
of an onstage joke by Seth MacFarlane at the 2013 Oscar nomination
announcement. Everyone laughed because everyone got it. Some of his
victims, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, became Hollywood powers in their own
right but never publicly rang an alarm until this week. The actor Ben Affleck,
who owes his start to Mr. Weinstein, is an overnight laughingstock
because he acts surprised by the producer’s behavior. He won’t be the
only celebrity doing his best Claude Rains “shocked, shocked”
impression.
Even
some of the ostensibly good guys in this saga cannot be let off
lightly. In The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow reports that Irwin Reiter, a
top Weinstein Company executive, sought to console one of the office
assistants harassed by Mr. Weinstein by saying the “mistreatment of
women” was a longstanding company issue and that “if you were my
daughter he would not have made out so well.”
But Reiter never went public.
But Reiter never went public.
Perhaps
it should come as no surprise that an industry built around pretended
characters and scenarios could have pretended for so long that nothing
was amiss. Perhaps it should be no surprise, either, that its concept of
ethics is every bit as ersatz and inconstant as most everything else in
Tinseltown.
The outrage over Mr. Weinstein also has a whiff of opportunism. In recent years, notes
New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister, Weinstein has “lost power in the
movie industry” and is no longer “the indie mogul who could make or
break an actor’s Oscar chances.” Lame horses get shot.
It’s
in this context that one can mount a defense of sorts for Mr.
Weinstein, who inhabited a moral universe that did nothing but cheer his
golden touch and wink at (or look away from) his transgressions — right
until the moment that it became politically inconvenient to do so.
Conservatives are trying to make hay of the fact that Mr. Weinstein
donated lavishly to Democratic politicians, backed progressive causes
and distributed films such as “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary about
campus sexual assault.
But
the important truth about Mr. Weinstein isn’t his moral hypocrisy: In
movies as in politics, hypocrisy isn’t just an accepted fact of life but
also an essential part of the job.
The
important truth is that he was just another libidinous cad in a
libertine culture that long ago dispensed with most notions of personal
restraint and gentlemanly behavior. “I came of age in the ’60s and ’70s,
when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different,”
Weinstein wrote in his mea culpa to The Times last week. “That was the culture then.”
That
line was roundly mocked, but it contains its truth. Like those other
libidinous cads — Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — Weinstein benefited
from a culture that often celebrated, constantly depicted, sometimes
enabled, seldom confronted, and all-too frequently forgave the behavior
they so often indulged in.
Hyenas
cannot help their own nature. But the work of a morally sentient
society is to prevent them from taking over the savannah. Our society,
by contrast, festooned Weinstein with honors, endowed him with riches,
and enabled him to feast on his victims without serious consequence for
the better part of 30 years. The old saw that all that is needed for
evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing was never truer than it
was in Weinstein’s case.
It
may be that Weinstein’s epic downfall will scare straight other sexual
miscreants, or at least those who tolerate their behavior and are liable
for its consequences. Don’t count on it. Our belated indictment of him
now does too much to acquit his many accomplices, and too little to
transform a culture that never gave him a reason to change.
