Gee, no one knew about this before last week? Give me a break.The country elected a predator as President.
One down, how untold many more to go?
Thank Dog sexual exploitation is finally over in the film business. 
Well, maybe there will be a tiny sliver of accountability that might cause a couple of folks to think twice about what they’re about to do. But just as likely, it’ll spur their efforts to cover their tracks better. Like Dotard’s secrecy clauses…
God bye and good riddance. Hope you like living in Europe and they can stomach you.
One step for Woman; one giant leap for Mankind. Like the 13 Amendment, you take what progress you can and build on it no matter how long it takes. It’s time to press for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment again. Why did we let the Republicans stop us?
Today’s women (and the men who work, live and protest together with them) are ready for the call. Is there a young Democratic leader in the making willing to hoist the banner and make the commitment to not stop till we succeed this time? I’m sick of our older leadership conceding instead of insisting. Why didn’t Hillary do this? What was she afraid of?
The ERA has been around for just about my entire life and I am 60 years old. I’d like to see it ratified too. To be clear, I’ve experienced sexual harassment, abuse, manipulation and molestation on just about every damned job I ever held – some by famous men in the entertainment and art worlds – and by loser creeps in the lowliest job I had as a teenager. I have very personal reasons for wanting to see this obnoxious behavior become unacceptable in our society – and very personal reasons for not making a big stink about what happened to me at the time. So what I see happening now is alarming me. I see a salacious and opportunistic blame game of every one – including other women for not responding sufficiently to some other people’s standards – and I think this needs to stop. Harvey Weinstein is responsible for his own goddamned conduct. HRC doesn’t deserve to be shamed because she associated with him politically nor is she responsible for Bill Clinton’s behavior – nor is she guilty of not making the ERA the centerpiece of her candidacy. She’s dealt enough with misogyny directed at her and it should not come from other women now – or from sympathetic men who think they are supporting the cause of women by blaming her or other women in positions of perceived power. Blaming women is the right wing’s ugly game - we don’t need to join the pile on. And further, we do not need to purge our culture of significant artworks because “bad” men made them. People are more complicated than that and being a great artist or an effective politician is not always in alignment with being a great person. (I see articles now trashing Hitchcock. Sure he was a pervert – was that not already evident from the content of his films? I still love them and I also appreciate Lolita. Doesn’t mean I support pedophilia.) Going after every tangental person Weinstein had an association with, both men and women does not demonstrate superior morality — it starts to reek of puritanism and vigilantism. I do not support people’s personal vendettas playing out in the public sphere. I do not have to make it my own cause that Ronan Farrow is disappointed he was scooped by the NYT, nor that due to the trauma of his own dysfunctional family, he feels the need to trash every actress who dares work with Woody Allen. We have enough monstrous things happening in our country that should occupy our concerns and having this one issue – one that is like it or not rooted in biology – become the centerpiece of democrat’s campaigns. I think it would backfire royally on us.
If you read or listen to the typical “both sides” / “but what about” reporting on the Weinstein scandal, you would get the impression that Republicans care about (hetero) sexual harassment and assault. They don’t.
There seems to be some sort of naive belief that the right-wing is genuinely outraged about Weinstein’s sexual assaults and harassment of women. They aren’t.
The only reason that the right wing feigns outrage is using so-called “libtard hypocrisy” as a political cudgel.
Democrats & true Independents - for the most part - are appalled by sexual harassment & assault and typically have the urge to do something to eliminate that sort of behavior. Republicans have no such impulse and fight ferociously to protect that behavior.
But never mind. Donald Trump is a Republican sexual predator. Harvey Weinstein (by all accounts) is a Democrat sexual predator – so both sides and all that.
Meanwhile, the Education Department has rolled back campus sexual assault guidance & regulations… the DOJ is arguing that women have limited rights to pursue justice for workplace harassment and LGBT people are not subject to equal treatment with regards to employment… HHS is working diligently to limit access to reproductive health care… and an admitted sexual predator is President with the full-throated affirmation of so-called “evangelical christians”.
Pssst! This blog is not about the Equal Rights Amendment! It’s about Donald Trump! Off topic!
A public flogging right on his fat behind by every victim that feels the urge would be a good start.
This predator has done more damage over the years and skated than is truly imaginable. Its almost as sickening to watch all of the enablers pop up and feign concern after all their years of watching it happen and enabling the lifestyle as if it was all good.
I couldn’t be happier than to see the others be outed along with Weinstein; Ben Affleck, Steven Segal, Oliver Stone etc.
May they all get their due.
Quick! Let’s appear to do something about How Awful this is! Before it hurts our profits!
But will anything change in Hollywood come Monday morning?
Nope. Not a thing. Because the people who foster the culture of the couch will still have all those corner offices.
This sordid stuff (and far worse) has gone on since Chaplin was a household name. Anyone Pollyanna enough to think that it will change anytime soon is making their own private fantasy film. Hollywood will put up with anyone who brings them two commodities, Money and Talent. As long as they don’t make the machine look as bad as it is just under the polished gold plating.
As rotten and twisted to the core as Weinstein apparently is, this is all a bit like that line from Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
In a brief statement, the Academy said it sends a message that “sexually predatory behavior” in the film industry is over.
Sadly, I very much doubt that it’s “over.”
But maybe, hopefully, we might be “over” the part where it’s been kind of accepted or condoned or hushed up or glossed over or ignored.
That would be a step forward.
Another big step forward would be not having a President who is a sexual predator. Unfortunately the Motion Picture Academy can’t do that for us. We have to do that part for ourselves.
Pssst – this is about Harvey. He’s a sexist pig like Trump, so I can see why you are confused. The poster was responding to the GOP “best defense is an offense” blame game. It was a good post
I don’t think it’s fair to roll your eyes here at the Academy’s statement. Granted, misogyny in the film business did not die today. But business as usual did. Do NOT underestimate the courage of all these women who were willing to come forward, or the power of their public testimony. Their willingness to go on the record and reveal their abuse in hideous detail is a game changer. The dam has cracked.
On the other hand, the Republican Party is just getting started.
By all accounts Weinstein is a mega-toxic despicable pig - and has been for a long long time -
But this action by the Academy - after ignoring the whispers for years - seems hollow and shabby and a desperate face saving action
“The decision was reached Saturday in an emergency session. It comes after recent reports by The New York Times and The New Yorker that revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against Weinstein going back decades”.
So - now - because these scandalous stories appear in print in the New Yorker and the New York Times - the Board of the Academy scrambles a meeting together and boom! expels the pig.