The Real Disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein Case

The Real Disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein Case
The View from the Middle

The levels of disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein scandal are as numerous and disturbing as the circles in Dante’s inferno. First, there is Harvey himself. His actions, over decades, are as disgusting and disturbing and deranged as they can be. Harvey has been a serial rapist, a chronic abuser and a regular insulter of women. And when I say “insulter” I’m trying to describe how a woman might feel as Harvey masturbated in front of her. I’m insulted that I even have to write that sentence.
The second layer of disgrace comes compliments of the slime ball, scumbag politicians that took Mr. Weinstein’s money in the name of social justice and women’s rights. This would be the equivalent of B’nai B’rith taking money from Hitler. It would be like the NAACP taking money from David Duke. It would be like the International Union of Chickens taking money from Colonel Sanders.
And the people who took millions of dollars from Harvey Weinstein read like a “who’s who” from the Democrat party. Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Richard Blumenthal, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are just a few of the hypocrites that gladly took Harvey’s contributions while knowing FULL WELL what he was doing. And if there is a Republican who took money from this jerk, I condemn you too!!
Most of these politically correct narcissists are now saying that they will give his money back. Might I just suggest that the press should keep an eye on these people and make sure that they actually return these funds. I think that these people are no more likely to return Harvey’s money than those Hollywood stars who promised to leave the country if Trump got elected made good on those vows.
But I have to give it to Hillary Clinton who basically said that she’s going to keep the money. Now, we all have to read between her muddy and murky lines to get to that truth, but that’s what she said. When asked what she was going to do with his money, her actually words were, “There’s nowhere to give it back to!” Besides being a very poor example of the English language, that is factually incorrect. She CAN give it back to Harvey himself, or she could give it to his company. There are no laws that prevent her from doing that. So basically she is either lying or terribly misinformed.
Then, when reporters suggested that she could give it to charity, she said, “I give 10% of my income every year, so this will be part of that.” In other words, she is going to deduct Mr. Weinstein’s contributions from her normal giving and thus reduce the amount of her own money that she gives to charity. Wow, how cheap can she be?
The acceptance of Mr. Weinstein’s money also serves as a soft endorsement of his activities. This gives a green light to his minions, like Ben Affleck, that his kind of behavior will be tolerated, as long as they support the right people financially.
But the final and deepest and darkest disgrace in this whole story is that these people knew what Harvey Weinstein was doing for decades. He has been publicly outed multiple times by the likes of Seth MacFarlane. He even had a clause in his contract with his company that allowed this behavior as long as Harvey paid off litigants to keep the stench down to an acceptable level.
Yes, they all knew what Harvey was doing for decades, but here’s the big sin. They did nothing about it. This allowed him to rape and abuse women for years and blackmail women with threats to their careers to gain their silence. How many of these women could have been saved the humiliation if Mr. Weinstein’s practices had been exposed at the very beginning. At least Jane Fonda (and believe me, I’m not a fan) had the decency to admit that she was “ashamed” of her silence.
The saddest note of all is that this simply exposes the absolute depth of hypocrisy that exists in Washington and Hollywood. When will we learn that these people do not serve the public that pays their salaries through their taxes and box office support? They serve only themselves and their unquenchable thirst for power, money and an unlimited need for self-adulation.
There are two small things we can do. We can create a constitutional amendment that will limit the terms of our congressmen and women and we can stay home and play charades instead of going to the movies. We might actually get to know each other better.