Hollywood Harvey Weinstein's sex fiend rep no longer secret

Thursday’s New York Times bombshell, which has effectively ended Oscar-winning producer and Democrat super-donor Harvey Weinstein’s career, contains two equally disturbing pieces of news, only one of which the national media will report and explore.
The first, of course, involves three decades of sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein, who has released a broad statement accepting “responsibility” for his behavior coupled with the claim that the Times got some things wrong.

The second bombshell, the one our national media is already sweeping under the rug, is that for twenty-plus years, many in Hollywood believed Weinstein was abusing his power to procure, harass, and manipulate young women, and no one said anything — not even the powerful.

The Times’ story opens with an allegation from former-movie star and strident leftwing feminist Ashley Judd:

Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview.

[…]

Mr. Weinstein soon issued invitation after invitation, she said. Could he give her a massage? When she refused, he suggested a shoulder rub. She rejected that too, she recalled. He steered her toward a closet, asking her to help pick out his clothing for the day, and then toward the bathroom. Would she watch him take a shower? she remembered him saying.

“I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask,” Ms. Judd said. “It was all this bargaining, this coercive bargaining.”

According to Judd, this disturbing incident occurred in 1997 while she was shooting Kiss the Girls, the movie that, for a short while, would make her a major star. Then comes her most damning admission:

In speaking out about her hotel episode, Ms. Judd said in a recent interview, “Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time, and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly.”

In other words, in Judd’s own mind, Weinstein had not only harassed her, but did so to numerous women. And she said nothing. Even at the peak of her Hollywood powers, she remained silent.

If the Times’ article proves accurate, Judd is far from alone. Over the course of a three-decade career, Weinstein reportedly settled eight sexual harassment complaints, including one with actress Rose McGowan, who presents herself today as the wokest of wokened feminists.

The Times claims that McGowan’s silence was purchased for a mere $100,000.

Silence, silence, silence… And all of this indefensible silence reportedly allowed Weinstein to use and abuse his company and staff as a sort of sexual harassment perpetual motion machine:

[A former employee] suspected that she and other female Weinstein employees, she wrote, were being used to facilitate liaisons with “vulnerable women who hope he will get them work.”

This pattern of alleged harassment went well beyond a leer, an indecent proposal, or ham-handed pass from a clumsy fat guy. It was downright creepy:

In interviews, eight women described varying behavior by Mr. Weinstein: appearing nearly or fully naked in front of them, requiring them to be present while he bathed or repeatedly asking for a massage or initiating one himself. The women, typically in their early or mid-20s and hoping to get a toehold in the film industry, said he could switch course quickly — meetings and clipboards one moment, intimate comments the next. One woman advised a peer to wear a parka when summoned for duty as a layer of protection against unwelcome advances.

Worse still, there are also allegations of outright sexual assault. In March of 2015, Italian model Ambra Battilana told police, “Weinstein had grabbed her breasts after asking if they were real and put his hands up her skirt.” Another settlement followed. More silence.

All these powerful people, all of these alleged victims, and no one went public.

So what about the entertainment media? Where the hell were they?

Variety’s editor-in-chief Claudia Eller told CNN Thursday that this was “the story we all tried to get for decades.” She added, “We knew there were settlements, but there was no paper trail. And unfortunately, alleged victims contacted refused to go on the record.”

But here is the thing; according to Peter Biskind’s 2004 non-fiction book Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, Weinstein manipulated and pocketed the entertainment media in extraordinary ways. He hired countless “journalists” to work for his company in various capacities, offered them glamorous opportunities, and oftentimes threatened to pull advertising from publications working on negative stories. An entertainment media starved for Oscar campaign dollars simply could not afford to lose Hollywood’s most prolific Oscar-winner and advertiser.

Finally, there is just the simple truth that Weinstein’s appalling behavior was no secret in Hollywood. Whether it was his explosive temper, his bullying of anyone he could bully, or the alleged sexual harassment and assault, everyone knew, and no one did anything to stop it.

No one expects a vulnerable, fresh-off-the-bus-from-Ohio wannabe actress to drop a dime on a Harvey Weinstein. And we will probably never know just how many insecure and desperate Ohio girls he procured over the decades. But silence is complicity and a whole lot of powerful people, by their own admission, remained silent, even though they believed these Ohio girl-victims were piling up like cord wood.

And now we come to the part the national media will never-ever-ever go near…

You can bet the house that Bill and Hillary Clinton knew all about the rumors surrounding Weinstein’s indefensible behavior, and so did Barack and Michelle Obama, and so did every single Democrat who benefitted from Weinstein’s donations and mega-fundraising.

But they still took the money, didn’t they?

Of course they did.

And even though they knew the truth, Variety still took Weinstein’s advertising money.

And even though, going all the way back to 1997, she believed Weinstein was a monstrous serial-harasser, Ashley Judd still worked with him in 2002’s Frida and 2009’s Crossing Over — still put on a pussy hat and lashed out against “sexist” President Trump before she ever went public with what she knew for a fact about Weinstein.

And even as the mainstream and entertainment media, even as Bigtime celebs called for the heads of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly over alleged behavior that pales in comparison, they kept Harvey’s dirty little secret.

So why go public now?

Weinstein is 65 years-old, his company is reportedly going broke, and he has not produced a hit in nearly five years. In other words, he is an aging, washed-up hasbeen who can no longer do anything for Hollywood’s Ashley Judds and Varietys.

Harvey Weinstein’s world did not collapse this week because oh-so progressive Hollywood suddenly grew a conscience over all of those Ohio girls.

This is about score-settling, not feminism.

This is about payback, not making the world a better place.

These are bad people who allowed a bad man to get away with doing bad things for as long as he was useful to them — as long as the price paid by the Ohio girls was made up for in campaign donations to The Cause.

Rotting left-wing Hollywood, the co-opted entertainment media, the Democrat Party and its national media enablers… a wicked and entrenched system, enablers all, who are every bit as guilty as good ole’ Harvey.

A female New York City TV journalist was cornered by Harvey Weinstein in the hallway of a restaurant as he masturbated back in 2007, according to a report Friday — the latest in series of sexual harassment allegations coming out this week against the Hollywood producer.

Lauren Sivan, who was a news anchor at the time, told the Huffington Post about the encounter at Cafe Socialista, where Weinstein was an investor.

According to Sivan, during a tour of the New York City restaurant Weinstein, stopped in a hallway and tried to kiss her. She stopped him and said she had a boyfriend, after which Weinstein told her, "Well, can you just stand there and shut up." He then exposed himself and proceeded to masturbate into a potted plant as she was stuck between him and the bathrooms. Weinstein then zipped up his pants and walked into the kitchen.

You don't need the Harvey Weinstein scandal to know that Hollywood is the world's capital of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy. You only need to be breathing.

From jetting the globe more frequently in private planes than most people go to the supermarket while inveighing against global warming to living in thirty million dollar homes and sending your kids to posh private schools while assailing school choice for the masses to, yes, making movies about sexual assault while assaulting females for decades in the privacy of their offices and swank hotel rooms, Hollywood has done it all!

And indeed it has been this way for decades and everybody who lives and works here knows it. The casting couch never went away. It just moved off the studio lot, for the most part, and went underground, sort of.

Anyone who takes seriously anything said about politics by Hollywood types -- and that includes those tedious and increasingly unfunny individuals known as late-night talk show hosts -- ought to have his/her proverbial head examined.

Which leads me to the question of Harvey and "feminism." While no one can characterize Weinstein as anything but a pig, the various women now coming out of the woodwork to report his repellent behavior (with more undoubtedly to come) are not exactly the purest people on the planet either. Unless they had IQs in the low 70s, these women knew full well in advance what they were getting into when they came to Hollywood and, specifically, when they went to work either as actresses or employees for Harvey Weinstein. Greedy and ambitious in the world's most glamorous game, many of them apparently ignored the moral "contradictions" and became Harvey's enablers, just as they were for similar notorious characters like the late Don Simpson.

Were they, at that that same time, spouting feminist rhetoric along with Harvey? Some certainly were.

Take Ashley Judd, aka the born again "Nasty Woman," who is the supposedly brave soul at the center of the supposedly sensational New York Times report. She went to have a breakfast meeting with Weinstein at the Beverly Hills Peninsula Hotel and when she arrived found Harvey wanted to have said meeting in his room. What could that possibly mean? Well, almost anybody could answer that in a moment. Did she do the sensible thing and say she preferred the hotel's lovely dining room? Clearly not. She went upstairs. Her career obviously trumped her values -- or what she chooses to tell us are her values.

It takes two to tango, as they say. Weinstein -- for all the Bill Clinton-like exploitation of power going on -- was not drugging these women á la Cosby. He was waving starring roles and cash. Many, if not most, bought into the trade. Years later they want to complain about it and cry "feminism" or something. Excuse me, if I'm not impressed. Hadn't they ever read a novel by Fitzgerald or Schulberg or at least read an issue of the National Enquirer? No one made them come to Hollywood. They could have become rural doctors treating the poor or have gone to work for the equivalent of Mother Teresa. But they wanted the Big Flash.

Now I'm not saying Hollywood should be the way it is, nor do I remotely approve of Weinstein (who gives me the creeps). I'm just trying to inject a little reality. Human life, as it's lived, is complex and often ugly.

Speaking of which, Harvey Weinstein professes to believe in liberal causes and donates wads of cash to various Democratic politicians, including, frequently, Madame Pants Suit herself. Needless to say, the Dems are quickly running to the exits:

On Thursday, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, was the first to announce he'd be giving away the money Weinstein has donated to his re-election campaign committee over the years. The total was $5,600 with $2,799 of that being put toward his 2016 bid.

"Sen. Leahy is donating Mr. Weinstein's contributions to the Women's Fund at the Vermont Community Foundation, specifically the Change the Story Initiative," his representative Carolyn Dwyer confirmed to USA TODAY.

On Friday, Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, joined Leahy, saying the $7,800 he received in campaign contributions Weinstein will be donated to a nonprofit group fighting sexual violence.
Booker's donation will go to the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Jeff Giertz, a Booker spokesperson, told The Record.

I guess we're supposed to believe these pols had no idea what Harvey Weinstein was like until these current revelations. As Moon Unit Zappa put it so succinctly years ago, "Gag me with a spoon."

Harvey Weinstein and the Death of 'Feminism'

$1:

You don't need the Harvey Weinstein scandal to know that Hollywood is the world's capital of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy. You only need to be breathing.

From jetting the globe more frequently in private planes than most people go to the supermarket while inveighing against global warming to living in thirty million dollar homes and sending your kids to posh private schools while assailing school choice for the masses to, yes, making movies about sexual assault while assaulting females for decades in the privacy of their offices and swank hotel rooms, Hollywood has done it all!

And indeed it has been this way for decades and everybody who lives and works here knows it. The casting couch never went away. It just moved off the studio lot, for the most part, and went underground, sort of.

Anyone who takes seriously anything said about politics by Hollywood types -- and that includes those tedious and increasingly unfunny individuals known as late-night talk show hosts -- ought to have his/her proverbial head examined.

Which leads me to the question of Harvey and "feminism." While no one can characterize Weinstein as anything but a pig, the various women now coming out of the woodwork to report his repellent behavior (with more undoubtedly to come) are not exactly the purest people on the planet either. Unless they had IQs in the low 70s, these women knew full well in advance what they were getting into when they came to Hollywood and, specifically, when they went to work either as actresses or employees for Harvey Weinstein. Greedy and ambitious in the world's most glamorous game, many of them apparently ignored the moral "contradictions" and became Harvey's enablers, just as they were for similar notorious characters like the late Don Simpson.

Were they, at that that same time, spouting feminist rhetoric along with Harvey? Some certainly were.

Take Ashley Judd, aka the born again "Nasty Woman," who is the supposedly brave soul at the center of the supposedly sensational New York Times report. She went to have a breakfast meeting with Weinstein at the Beverly Hills Peninsula Hotel and when she arrived found Harvey wanted to have said meeting in his room. What could that possibly mean? Well, almost anybody could answer that in a moment. Did she do the sensible thing and say she preferred the hotel's lovely dining room? Clearly not. She went upstairs. Her career obviously trumped her values -- or what she chooses to tell us are her values.

It takes two to tango, as they say. Weinstein -- for all the Bill Clinton-like exploitation of power going on -- was not drugging these women á la Cosby. He was waving starring roles and cash. Many, if not most, bought into the trade. Years later they want to complain about it and cry "feminism" or something. Excuse me, if I'm not impressed. Hadn't they ever read a novel by Fitzgerald or Schulberg or at least read an issue of the National Enquirer? No one made them come to Hollywood. They could have become rural doctors treating the poor or have gone to work for the equivalent of Mother Teresa. But they wanted the Big Flash.

Now I'm not saying Hollywood should be the way it is, nor do I remotely approve of Weinstein (who gives me the creeps). I'm just trying to inject a little reality. Human life, as it's lived, is complex and often ugly.

Speaking of which, Harvey Weinstein professes to believe in liberal causes and donates wads of cash to various Democratic politicians, including, frequently, Madame Pants Suit herself. Needless to say, the Dems are quickly running to the exits:

On Thursday, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, was the first to announce he'd be giving away the money Weinstein has donated to his re-election campaign committee over the years. The total was $5,600 with $2,799 of that being put toward his 2016 bid.

"Sen. Leahy is donating Mr. Weinstein's contributions to the Women's Fund at the Vermont Community Foundation, specifically the Change the Story Initiative," his representative Carolyn Dwyer confirmed to USA TODAY.

On Friday, Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, joined Leahy, saying the $7,800 he received in campaign contributions Weinstein will be donated to a nonprofit group fighting sexual violence.
Booker's donation will go to the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Jeff Giertz, a Booker spokesperson, told The Record.

I guess we're supposed to believe these pols had no idea what Harvey Weinstein was like until these current revelations. As Moon Unit Zappa put it so succinctly years ago, "Gag me with a spoon."

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/10 ... -feminism/

'Where's Harvey Weinstein?' SNL stays SILENT on sexual abuse allegations against movie mogul much to the anger of social media who accuse the show of liberal hypocrisy

Saturday Night Live joined the ranks of entertainment programs being called out for not attacking Harvey Weinstein
Weinstein is accused of habitually harassing women over a three decade span
Social media users skewered the decades old live sketch comedy show, with many accusing the show of hypocrisy
Saturday Night Live ditched its traditional comedic cold open on Saturday in favor of a solemn tribute to Las Vegas massacre victims
Saturday Night Live also paid tribute to the late Tom Petty, who died on Monday
Some members of Hollywood have lashed out at their peers, asking where are their voices following the Weisnstein story
Jimmy Kimmel has faced criticism along with fellow late night TV hosts Stephen Colbert, Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon
Actress Rose McGowan has slammed the women of Hollywood for their silence

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4ux5loLVK

Actress Rose McGowan has slammed the women of Hollywood for their silence.
Demanding to know where the 'ladies of Hollywood' were on this issue, McGowan - who is believed to have been paid a $100,000 settlement by Weinstein after an incident in the mid-1990s - appeared to attack the mute A-listers.
Indeed, A-list actresses like Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow who have used their fame to encourage and support women and who have worked with Weinstein have said nothing.
They are not alone in their silence either, as many other women who have sang the praises of Weinstein while speaking out against harassment also went mute as of Friday afternoon, including: Kate Hudson, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Renee Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, Toni Collette, Minnie Driver and Uma Thurman.