To the genuine victims of Harvey Weinstein, let me start off by saing: "It wasn't your fault."

Everyone does disgraceful things to advance their careers. ("Art is good. Artists tend to be scumbags. But art is good!" as I like to tell myself.) So much of show business is based on personal relationships, fluid work hours/locations and a great deal of nudity. These things lead to nepotism and lax professional work environments. When President Bill Clinton was caught receiving oral sex in the Oval Office, it was so many in Hollywood who said "so what?" In show business, it is not uncommon for men to have sex with female--and sometimes male--subordinates. What Clinton participated in was not just a morality issue but also a sex crime. Hollywood has never really addressed that, rather changing the subject to illustrate Republican/conservative hypocrisies on sex.


The question of why this is all coming out now can be condensed to: Weinstein is an old lion. Past his prime, he's now too weak to defend himself against his adversaries. He is the last of the Hollywood gatekeepers, the old time studioheads who decided which movies would get made and who would have careers in filmmaking. Kids can now create their own passion projects, independent of Project Greenlight. The technologically modern idea of public shaming on a global scale has taken hold, and three decades of bad karma and masturbating into potted plants have come back to haunt him. It could not have happened to a nicer guy. So what was once an open secret became a public scandal, as countless women (and some men) must now disclose what they know and when they knew it. Not in 2000 years have so many Jews publically denied knowing one of their champions. Weinstein is like Jesus if Jesus had asked women to watch him shower. In a few months, Hollywood liberals will discover Roman Polanski raped a girl.


Donald Trump is being blamed for the issue of toxic male culture. (Why couldn't Hillary have become President? She would've stepped into her time machine and stopped that sex offender from sex offending and making her political career possible, thus triggering a paradox that...would've destroyed the observable universe!) The difference is that Weinstein paid millions to make these charges go away while Trump often refused to settle, refusing to acknowledge his sex crimes ever happened. The difference is there's audio of Trump joking about grabbing women by the pussy and audio of Weinstein attempting to do it. Weinstein's accusers outnumber Trump's by at least a factor of ten, many of whom are wealty and famous in their own right--and not all accusers are equals.




Let's not mince words: Weinstein was able to do what he did because he was making money. Money for Miramax. Money for Disney. Money for the Weinstein Company. If these companies paid out a million to settle claims in a given year, he would've made fifty times that for these companies.


The problem should be that Weinstein was using Miramax and later the Weinstein Company as a slush to pay off his inappropriate behavior. Art is a business here, and there is still some decorum in conducting one's self in a business setting. It should not be about how attractive he is or was.




It is my understanding that Weinstein was never exactly a ladies' man. (His pick-up move involved asking women if they wanted to watch him shower; far from ingenious, this was pathetic. Weinstein's MO was pathetic.) Like Bill Clinton, Weinstein was not popular with girls in school. Whereas Clinton had intelligence and charisma, Weinstein had intelligence and  bluster. Cruelty got him to the top. So many of them behind the scenes of Hollywood--whether directors or producers or unemployed screenwriters--were weird kids growing up. They weren't the popular boys surrounded by legions of friends. This leaves a void in an older man's life, as he is guided by the same raw instincts but previously had no ability to satisfy them. You "use what you got" in this world, and Weinstein had power as a producer and a studio head.


At the root of these claims are typically Weinstein's attempts to get laid. Kate Beckinsale recounts her coming into the exec's hotel room (when she was 17!) and he clumsily attempted to seduce her. The actress recalled that it “did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him.” Since Beckinsale opened this door, let's all agree that more women would've watched him shower if he looked like Brad Pitt. (By the way, how weird was it that Weinstein kept trying to bang Pitt's girlfriends?) So much of it having been harassment was not an issue of female professionalism--many of these women have had sex with their costars or coworkers--but the issue was that Weinstein wasn't hot. If he had been, it wouldn't have been sexual harassment so much as sexual fulfillment. Hollywood has long fought for the private sex lives of consenting adults--often while employing the most liberal uses of the terms "consenting" and "adult." The ladies wouldn't have been complaining if they were attracted to him; the scandal would be much smaller. Instead we have the image of real-world Jabba the Hut trying to find a girl to put on the gold bikini.




In defense of Harvey Weinstein, he probably didn't ruin that many careers. These women told him to go fuck himself--or stop fucking himself in front of them--and he moved on to the next woman. That he had Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow blacklisted in the 90s stretches credibility. The work dried up for Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette because they turned 30. They got old. Too old for teenage boys to whack off to them without thinking about their mothers. Megan Fox will soon be her generation's Mira Sorvino. Not Weinstein's fault, specifically. More of an issue of how time works.




Hollywood and Weinstein specifically contributed to a series of anti-Christian movies, espousing the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church and Christianity in general (Dogma, Doubt, Priest, Bob Roberts). Hollywood calls Trump a Nazi, while giving an Oscar to an actual Nazi. (I'm not kidding. Google Leni Riefenstahl.) The real perverts are Christian men, especially white Republicans. Gay men aren't freaks who like to touch boys; Catholic priests are freaks who like to touch boys. "SEE!?! LOOK AT THE HYPOCRISY!!! Vote for gay marriage." Vice-President and conservative Christian Mike Pence gets mocked for not wanting to be alone with a female, and Weinstein gets mocked for enjoying his private meetings with female coworkers. Hollywood can't have it both ways. Hollywood, like all of the American workforce, has to choose at what point do things appear inappropriate.




 Meanwhile, so many mainstream artists have been living elbow deep in sexual perversion. They gave an Oscar to Roman Polanski, a well-known child rapist. Weinstein bundled millions to popular liberal candidates, including the Clintons and Obama. Donald Trump can breath a sigh of relief.

Turns out Hollywood has been sexually exploiting young women...

There has been a lot of discussion of ageism in Hollywood, especially after Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rose McGowan made statements that supposedly laid bare the sexism surrounding roles and aging. Maggie, age 37, has complained that she was considered too old to play the love interest for a man in his fifties. McGowan had a row with her agent after he sent her a note expecting her to dress in a sexy fashion to audition for an Adam Sandler movie. Both women make legitimate points; unfortunately, their accusations are biased and ego-centric, ignoring the realities of the business of filmmaking.

We really don't know much of the project Maggie lost. The CHARACTER might have been in his mid-50s or the ACTOR might be in his mid-50s. Some men in their fifties are still relatively "boyish": They can pass for a decade younger if they do something as simple as dying their hair. Maggie, however, is an old mid-30s. It feels like she's been making movies as an adult for as long as we've all been alive. Her and Jake's parents were directors and producers; they never pounded the pavement looking for work, having doors slammed in their faces because they didn't have the connections necessary to find work. Maggie never paid her dues and played the ditzy girl or dead hooker or stripper #7. (When Maggie lost a role, she lost it because she sucked, not because someone wondered who she was.) She started at the middle and stayed at the middle, finding success as a substitute for Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight. Cameron Diaz and Amy Adams are about her age, too, and both started out as ditzy girls, before becoming movie stars in their own right. They came from nothing, in the Hollywood sense: They started their careers attractive, yes, and they used their physical gifts with grit, never resting on their laurels. The hottest fires form the strongest steel, and Maggie was never exposed to such flames. Their parents didn't get them jobs.

Hollywood movies are so often made for teenage boys because they watch a lot of movies, especially the bad ones, and the female leads must appeal to this demographic. Maggie could now easily be a teen boy's mom. Maggie could have an adult child--right now. So, yeah, she's old. By which I mean, she's Hollywood-old. Has she met Kristen Stewart? Because Kristen Stewart is her. Kristen Stewart is playing the roles that Maggie played a decade ago. (Pretty but not stunning. Moody brunette. Very pasty lady--never had a tan. Does nudity.) She's at one of those points in her career where she has to question what she's doing. She was never that great an actress--unlike Meryl Streep. She was never a great writer--unlike Tina Fey. She was never a box office star--unlike Julia Roberts. Never a child prodigy--unlike Jodie Foster--we could go on like this....

Let me clarify one point: Communal property laws make perfect sense when they recognize the importance of being a homemaker in the spouse achieving success. Historically women--especially housewives, not career women--have been screwed out of their contributions to the households' successes. A housewife's contributions to the household cannot be easily quantified--so now we just give the broad half.

However, a wife can also be a mean woman who steals half of everything you earned. When you reach a certain degree of material success, a housewife is no longer a woman who cooks and cleans but one who yells at the illegal immigrants whom she'd hired to do the cooking and cleaning. Your wife is no longer an important part of the household, but a middleman between the lord and the servants. She is not an overworked housewife, but just a rich-bitch. Your wife might end up torpedoing your brilliant idea for movies or businesses or inventions, thus preventing a man from achieving his full potential. Countless brilliant ideas have undoubtedly been lost because the wife didn't approve...and that's why we don't have hoverboards.

Hollywood movies are so often shaped by Hollywood insiders'--studio heads, producers, directors--view of reality, and in the entertainment community, having a second or third wife is not so unusual. There being a generational difference is not so unusual. The young woman gives the older man a second chance at love. To start anew with another mate--except now he has the money and experience to do it right. (Of course this second marriage might go south too. The third one will be the right marriage.)

A few months ago, '90s teen crush Rose McGowan revealed that she decided not to audition for an Adam Sandler film after receiving a note from her agent regarding her costuming requirement to augment her cleavage. Getting fired from an Adam Sandler project has to be like getting fired from a fart contest. With the fart contest, you probably won't get the entrance fee back, though. (His movies so frequently make money--but, c'mon, we know they're not good.)

McGowan's exhaustion with being treated as a piece of meat reeks of hypocrisy. "Sexy" has been the only role that she'd ever played throughout her entire career, and it was a role that she continued to play as recently as last year, when she did a nude photo spread. I'm not making this up: McGowan posed naked just last year. But now she's fed up with being objectified by Hollywood. She draws the line at being cast as the sexpot...in 2015, she means. Hollywood is an industry that exploits young women, it turns out. She's growing older, and she's asking herself what her career is going. Because, despite her beauty, the wrinkles are encroaching. So now she's a feminist icon.