Harvey Weinstein and the protected class

by | Oct 11, 2017 | Editor's Blog | 20 comments

Watching the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse story play out shows what’s wrong with our society. It’s a story of power and corruption to be sure, but it’s also about privilege and elitism. The coverage illustrates an out of touch corporate media and the rush to politicize every aspect of our culture. No wonder so many Americans have lost faith in our institutions from the press to justice system.

Almost as soon as the scandal broke, the political class decided to turn it into a political story. Chris Cillizza of CNN wrote a piece titled, “Harvey Weinstein is now a big problem for Democrats” because Weinstein was a big Democratic donor. Conservative pundits immediately started asking why Democrats weren’t condemning Weinstein, despite years of overlooking the culture of sexual abuse at Fox News. Framing the problem through a Democrat verses Republican lens makes people more skeptical of politics and obscures the far more important matters in this disturbing saga.

The story also illustrates why so many people are disgusted with the elites in society. Weinstein’s behavior was apparently known for years, maybe even decades, but nobody called him out. On the contrary, he was feted and honored by Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Had a working stiff behaved like Weinstein, he would have been fired and likely prosecuted.

Nobody seems to be seriously considering charges against Weinstein. He’s headed to Europe for in-patient therapy for sex addiction and hopes to make a comeback when he’s done. He should be headed to court and, if found guilty, heading to prison. That won’t happen, though. The rich and powerful seldom pay the same price or are held to the same standards as poor people who make up the bulk of the people moving through our criminal justice system.

The press also failed. Journalists who almost certainly heard rumors didn’t follow up on the story and when they finally did, they pointed fingers at the victims, at politicians who took donations, at the industry, at any story angle except to ask why their industry didn’t expose Weinstein years ago. Maybe it’s because we’ve turned journalists into network and cable stars, knocking down multi-million dollar contracts while beat reporters are getting laid off in record numbers.

Weinstein lived a protected life. He was enabled by an industry that tolerated the intolerable from one of its powerhouses. The press and almost everyone else looked the other way. Money and status clearly mattered more than morals and standards.

It’s no wonder so many people are cynical about our institutions and leaders. The Weinstein debacle epitomizes what’s wrong with our system. We have a class of people who are above scrutiny and seldom held accountable. We saw it in 2007, when Wall Street bankers crashed the economy and nobody was punished. Instead, when they got bailed out, they gave themselves big bonuses when they should have been drawing unemployment or going to prison. Now, we’re seeing it in the entertainment industry.

If politicians want to see an end to the angry electorate, they need to side with people who work hard and play by the rules, not the ones ignore the rule book and buy their way out of trouble. If the press wants to regain trust, stop viewing everything through a political lens and start hiring reporters more interested in the story than their careers. If the justice system wants more respect, treat suspected criminals equally without giving preference to those who can hire powerful lawyers. Otherwise, let’s just admit that we’re now an oligarchy with a protected class and do away with pretensions of justice and equality.

20 Comments

  1. MyTurnNC

    Harvey Weinstein’s illegal, immoral and utterly disgusting acts have implications even beyond the life altering effects they had on the women involved directly. How many others, many employees of his own company, did he corrupt? How many did he turn into accomplices? Even his own Board of Directors were certainly enablers if not accomplices. Even those in the media and others who looked the other way or made a joke of his despicable beahvior.
    Our culture is degraded and our civil life is poisoned if knowledgeable people do not speak out and unveil those who spread this corruption.

  2. Christopher Lizak

    A myth? What are you saying, that the D.A., etc. decided not to prosecute because they were greedy? What do you mean? Harvey was paying them off and they didn’t want to lose that?

    Or were there larger considerations? Larger “consequences and repercussions” that needed to be considered before prosecuting such a man? Like maybe that he is part of a self-protecting group of insiders that has influence within law enforcement itself?

    • Christopher Lizak

      Mr. Weinstein will not go to jail, as would a male from the lower castes who committed even one Harvey-like act.

      That is because of who he is, not because of the actual circumstances of the crime(s).

  3. Jay Ligon

    The news that Harvey Weinstein has been a sexual predator for decades is a huge disappointment to me. As a producer and owner of Miramax and The Weinstein Company, Harvey has been a perennial risk-taker, gambling on edgy projects that thread the needle between artistic merit and commercial success. Every year I look forward to Weinstein releases because there are usually some awards contenders in the mix.

    More than anyone else in Hollywood, he was able to find the magic formula which brought drama and box office together. Along the way, he has accumulated a treasure chest full of Oscars, Golden Globes, Spirit Awards, BAFTAs and Palm D’Ors.
    From the violent excesses of Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained) to the sweetness of Lion, Chocolat or Silver Linings Playbook, his projects have run the gamut.

    Caricatured on Entourage as a crude, bull in a China shop, Harvey’s gruff demeanor stands in contrast to the kinds of sensitive projects he underwrites, projects like The Hours, The Artist, Sling Blade, Lion, Moonlight, and Life is Beautiful.

    His accomplishments cannot excuse his repulsive and egregious actions. Sexual predators must be stopped. Since the disclosure of his sex crimes a few days ago, political pundits have attempted to make his crimes somehow political. Harvey was a Democrat and a donor to Democrats. His donations did not make other Democrats sexual predators. The gist of the criticism against him is that anyone who received money from him must have known about his private conduct.

    I know a lot of people and no knowledge of their sex lives, and I have no interest in their sex lives. If they wanted to share that information with me, I would ask them to please stop. Tell someone else. I now know more about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual adventures than I ever wanted to know.

    There were few better than Harvey in film-making, but he is a seriously flawed man.

    Harvey, a private individual, has begun to pay a high price for his transgressions. He is shamed and shunned. His life will change dramatically.

    Trump, about whose disgusting sexual predilections I have way more knowledge than I want or need, seems to be able to rape, molest and grab to his heart’s content without any consequence whatsoever. Take every rapist and string him up by his offending eminence. Frog march the rapist in chief down Pennsylvania Avenue. Either we abhor sexual violence or we condone it. Trump should be held to account for his rapes and his assaults.

    • Leake Little

      Harvey is much more than an individual in this episode – as the CEO of a company that enabled and supported his illicit behavior he is arguably the leader of a criminal organization in which RICO and vast civil liabilities may be discovered/apply.

      • Jay Ligon

        When you speculate that RICO applies to The Weinstein Company, you must be referring to “The Nanny Diaries.”

  4. Leake Little

    True. One of his direct quotes in the recording the police gathered was “I am famous.” What a declaration! I agree with the unsettling dynamic presented as a learned deference to ‘famous’ people but accepting this wholly as a sucker-play is not accurate. The choice of a ‘famous’ person to exert that advantage is simply another tool to enhance their own selfishness, and in these cases a naked use of power in which there are clear victims (in the truest sense of the word). We’re not talking about rock groupies or other adulation – these cases illustrate the use of raw coercion. Don’t get me wrong – ‘a sucker is born everyday’ but this is so much more than ‘caveat emptor’.

  5. Leake Little

    Touches too close to Bill’s former behavior and Hillary’s tolerance of it to not be politicized. The fact that Hillary benefited from the system in money and political promotion negates her moral high ground and makes great political fodder. News orgs would be remiss not to notice this, or the moral equivalency with Trump. Both candidates were tainted in this regard. But yes Thomas we are a divided legal society where elites get special treatment and everyone else wants to be like them. We call that aspiration, not oligarchy.

    • Christopher Lizak

      It is called Oligarchy when social mobility is so poor that nearly all of the elites were born into that caste.

      The US is one of the most immobile of the advanced democracies – even worse than “upstairs-downstairs” UK. Aspiration is in vain for all but an exceptional few in this country.

      I believe the term in vogue is “hereditary meritocracy”.

      • Leake Little

        @Christopher – data and evidence please. I call bullshit.

        • Christopher Lizak
          • Leake Little

            First example – father-son class mobility comparison. Old data (2011 publish date) and a single generation comparison. Most economists would agree that 3 generations is the minimum bar for comparing these data.

            Second example – poverty dynamics and policy implications. Old data (2009 publish date). “Cross-country comparisons of inter-generational income mobility are difficult because they are sensitive to many assumptions about measurement that the researcher must make.14 ” My point exactly.

            Third example – labor economics and class mobility. Old data (1980-2001). Stiglitz is correct about the correlation of class mobility with historical parental income and educational attainment for the bottom fifth of income earners. That’s a limited definition of individual mobility and ignores the advantage of US citizens (vs others) to own private property. His analysis also focuses on education opportunity as a class predictor, not individual outcomes.

            Fourth example – relative income inequality. Rattner (2013) uses the Lorentz curve to point out that income inequality is greater in the US vs other countries. Lorentz curve is not a predictor of income mobility, in fact it is only correlated with a country’s overall rate of economic development under the assumption that a rising tide raises all ships. It is not predictive. In this way the view expressed is “Mostly True” and historical (not predictive of individual or class mobility).

            Fifth example – 404 error, page does not exist.

            Sixth example – Critique of “American Dream”. Friedman blog from 2012 to promote a book. No primary data or research analysis presented. Limited focus on income of fathers vs income of sons (flawed by lack of an independent variable to predict outcomes, only documents correlation). Freakonomics authors Levitt and Dubner run exhaustive statistics analysis to determine that the only independent variable predictive of the next generation’s success is the educational attainment of the mother before the child is born, not income or wealth.

            Nice try. I might recommend an outcomes-based analysis – such as the income growth/success rate of individuals in the third generation of immigrant families as a better comparison.

    • Leake Little

      Oligarchy is typically characterized by an extreme concentration of wealth at the top tier of income earners, not the lower tiers or by income mobility (up or down), and may be present due to social factors (such as religion, military, etc). There are no absolute measures of this condition. I would suggest it is not dominant in the US until our political democracy fails. By way of comparison Mexico is an oligarchy that still holds elections. What evidence do we have that US elections don’t matter?

      • Christopher Lizak

        Because over the last thirty years of elections, no matter which Party won, the only real beneficiaries have been the 1% and its Wall Street machine. Whether you’re talking about Obamacare, the shift to 401(k)s, Bankruptcy law reform right before the housing crash, or Republican tax cuts, it benefits the same crew of speculators, who just so happen to dominate the field of big money political donors.

        And the biggest predictor of electoral success below the top of the ticket is who spends the most money.

        When is the last time a non-millionaire won a Senate seat of Executive office around here?

        • Leake Little

          That is correlation, not causation. The presence of fair and free elections, the fact that each citizen still holds one vote, and the lack of coercion in choice are potent counterweights to the argument that money, in and of itself, determines electoral outcomes. Moreover, the fact that we have an active judiciary (many of whom serve for life) insulates the electorate from corrupt and illegal practices. Many of us may prefer different election outcomes but blaming non-causal factors diminishes our representative democracy and the electoral process we all wish to protect. The present party structure may actually be a greater retardant than the money it generates for instance. Elites are present in every government on the planet – are our elites any worse than the others? Do parties counter the influence of elites or have they become a more potent obstacle to progress? Money can be used to change or control – in any absolute sense it is morally neutral.

          • Christopher Lizak

            And this correlation is a non-factor in determining what form of government we actually have, as opposed to what it says on paper?

            The Roman Emperors kept the Senate around – but anyone who believes that the Roman Republic actually existed after Julius Caesar is a fool.

            The US is in a very comparable situation. We have the trappings, but not the actual functioning, of a representative democracy. We are not even allowed to look in the little black boxes, let alone put in place a system that guarantees that we know whether or not they were accurately counted. Because, you know, the Russians did it.

  6. Christopher Lizak

    I wonder what Harvey did to get “kicked out of the club” and lose his protection?

  7. Joanne Campbell

    One doesn’t have to go too far for other predatory offenders. Look who people elected as President of the United States. What punishment has he received for his offenses against women? Will justice ever be served for the women he grabbed by the p…?

    • Norma Munn

      Could not agree more.

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