Harvey Weinstein and the Hypocrisy of the Left

The double standard that conservatives claim exists among those on the left was brought into glaring focus this week with the New Yorker’s expose on the many sexual exploits of Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein.

Conservatives have spent years watching as entertainers and celebrity journalists moralized about social causes. Most recently it was in their feigned shocking claim that candidate Trump had sullied the morals of America with his off-color remarks. Ironically, Ashley Judd was the loudest voice at an anti-Trump rally last fall. Judd was silent for nearly 30 years about her own personal experience with Weinstein’s sexual harassment.

“Hollywood stood by and did nothing and continued to award this person, work with him and glorify him,” said Alex Marlow, editor in chief of Breitbart News. Marlow added, “While he was allegedly preying on vulnerable people, the whole town that virtue-signals about women’s rights and female empowerment stood silent.”

The article in the New Yorker reported that rumors and more than rumors of sexual harassment and assault have trailed Weinstein for at least two decades. According to the left-leaning periodical, this has been an open secret in Hollywood and among progressive elites for over twenty years but it had never published the story because the story “fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence.”

Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway didn’t buy the New Yorker’s defense for non-reporting tweeting, “Waiting on the professional ‘pro-women’ outrage machine…Sexual Harassment Accusations Against Harvey Weinstein.

So why was Harvey Weinstein given a pass for so long? One would expect Hollywood to be reluctant to shine the light on itself but why the pass from supposed champions of the oppressed like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? To coin a phrase from Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire – “Show us the money.”

Weinstein had been a major supporter of both Democratic political candidates and Planned Parenthood. The Times editorialized:

“Mr. Weinstein is also a years-long friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, for whose 2016 presidential campaign he was a major contributor and driving force, holding a fund-raiser in his home at one point. He’s raised money for Planned Parenthood, helped endow a faculty chair at Rutgers University in Gloria Steinem’s name and distributed a film, ‘’The Hunting Ground,’ about campus sexual assault.”

“For years, Harvey Weinstein, a film and television producer at the apex of the American entertainment industry, has lavished money and attention on the Democratic Party’s biggest names and causes…

“Among his biggest beneficiaries are President Barack Obama, whose daughter was an intern with Mr. Weinstein’s company this year. At a career workshop for high schoolers at the White House, where Mr. Weinstein was a guest several times, Michelle Obama called him ‘a wonderful human being, a good friend and just a powerhouse.’

This “wonderful person” sexually harassed and threatened dozens of young women. Some claim sexual assault accompanied by threats of being cut off from future employment.

A complaint to the Weinstein Company’s office of human resources, filed on behalf of a temporary front-desk assistant named Emily Nestor in December 2014. Her account of Weinstein’s conduct has been made public here for the first time. Nestor was twenty-five when she started the job, and, after finishing law school and starting business school, was considering a career in the movie industry.

“Textbook sexual harassment” was how Nestor described Weinstein’s behavior to me. “It’s a pretty clear case of sexual harassment when your superior, the C.E.O., asks one of their inferiors, a temp, to have sex with them, essentially in exchange for mentorship.” She recalled refusing his advances at least a dozen times. “ ‘No’ did not mean ‘no’ to him,” she said. “I was very aware of how inappropriate it was. But I felt trapped.”

Weinstein’s own company fired him after last weeks’ revelations.

Even after the events of last week, the late night circuit has been all but silent. Saturday Night Live which delivers an almost weekly dose of Alec Baldwin playing President Trump as a lecherous buffoon couldn’t come up even one of its usually timely skits about Weinstein.

Criticism from conservatives was hardly alleviated by remarks made by Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of S.N.L. Speaking of the omission, he told a reporter for The Daily Mail, “It’s a New York thing.”

Donald Trump Jr. suggested in a Twitter post that “S.N.L.” had one standard for people like his father, and another for people like Mr. Weinstein.

~ American Liberty Report


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