By David French
Sunday, October 08, 2017
So it turns out that basically everyone in Hollywood knew
that Harvey Weinstein sexually harasses women, abuses his employees, and has a
violent streak. It was one of those things we call an “open secret,” a secret
perhaps even more open than the persistent rumors about Roger Ailes’s or Bill
O’Reilly’s toxic misconduct at Fox News.
Yet Weinstein continued to enjoy the staggering perks and
privileges of a successful movie mogul. The most powerful politicians sought
his favor. The best actors wanted to work in his films. He was feted around the
world as the man who could bring home Oscar gold. And all the while he wasn’t
just a progressive in good standing, he was actively celebrated for his alleged
commitment to social justice.
How does this happen? How does it happen that Ailes and
O’Reilly could thrive for so long at a network that at least seemed to grant
Christians and social conservatives their highest and most powerful media
platforms? Aren’t prominent Christians concerned with family values? And how does
Hollywood tolerate Weinstein? Isn’t Hollywood the cultural heart of progressive
America?
The easy answer to “how” is one word — power. It’s
certainly a word that applies to each man’s victims, the people who — typically
behind closed doors — are subjected to intense pressures and confronted with
grotesque advances, and then know that if they blow the whistle on the big
man’s misconduct, they’ll immediately find themselves shamed and blamed by the
big man’s legions of fans and supporters. They know the challenges of proving
their case when it’s “he said, she said,” and so they remain silent, or (if
they fight) they fight quietly and settle quietly, often completely oblivious
to the reality that “he said, she said” is really “he said, she said, she said,
she said, and she said” — that they have friends and allies who have endured
the same nightmares, and they will not stand alone.
But there’s another word that answers how — one that
applies not to the victims but to the constellation of co-workers, journalists,
and peers who swim in the same corporate waters. That word is ambition. Harvey
Weinstein, Roger Ailes, and Bill O’Reilly weren’t powerful in the way that
dictators are powerful. They had no ability to imprison or execute any person.
They didn’t have the ability to deprive a person of their liberty or of the
ability to earn a livelihood. What they could do was rob a person of their
dreams.
For a generation Fox News has stood alone at the top of
the conservative-media food chain. It’s the great validator. It grants a person
access to power, recognition in Red America, and — most alluring to the
idealistic — the opportunity to perhaps even make a difference. To become Fox
News Famous is to be somebody in
American politics.
When it comes to Harvey Weinstein, he could conceivably
grant fame and influence far beyond the political subculture. Fox News Famous
is nothing compared to Oscar Famous. To be Oscar Famous is to be world-famous.
It’s to live beyond the span of your life. It’s to imprint upon the American
culture an enduring work of art, one that your name is forever attached to, one
that — again, this is most alluring to the idealistic — can actually change
things.
And so, what happens? Ambitious people make easy choices.
They see something wrong, but they say nothing. After all, why should they come
forward? They’re not the victim. Why does it fall upon them to risk their careers? Let someone else tell the hard truth
and accept the rage and scorn.
The cascade of choices are made. Work with him. Work for
him. Partner with him. Host him at events. Even celebrate him. It’s not that he
has power over me. It’s that he has
power to help me. By God I deserve my
success, and I will not risk it or sacrifice it for the sake of stopping
another man when I’m doing nothing
wrong.
In that way a powerful man is magnified by the collective
choices of the desperately ambitious. He feeds on their self-interest, and they
reap the considerable rewards of his favor. They fear its loss.
At The Cut,
writer Rebecca Traister tells a dreadful story about Weinstein. She was
covering a book party he hosted and asked him some questions that made him
angry. He called her a “c**t” and declared himself to be the “f***ing sheriff
of this f***ing lawless piece-of-sh*t town.” When her boyfriend — another
journalist — tried to intervene, Weinstein attacked. He threw her boyfriend
down a set of steps, then dragged him outside in a headlock. All the while
cameras flashed.
This was 17 years ago, in the year 2000.
Not one of the pictures saw the light of day. Here’s
Traister:
Such was the power of Harvey
Weinstein in 2000 that despite the dozens of camera flashes that went off on
that sidewalk that night, capturing the sight of an enormously famous film
executive trying to pound in the head of a young newspaper reporter, I have
never once seen a photo. Back then, Harvey could spin — or suppress — anything;
there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie
projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine.
I’d modify that paragraph slightly. Such was the power of
Weinstein, yes, but such was the ambition of so many around him that they would
suppress themselves.
Thus the world we live in today. People who went on
television night after night scorning Democratic and progressive misconduct
knew full well that they were working with and for harassers and scoundrels.
Progressives who launched full frontal attacks on conservatives for their
alleged “war on women” gladly basked in Weinstein’s glory, took the opportunities
he offered, and spent the money he gave.
No, neither Harvey Weinstein nor Roger Ailes was really
all that powerful. They were vulnerable. They were vulnerable to people who
were willing to support victims and tell the truth. They were vulnerable to
people who just might be willing to risk their personal ambition to seek
justice. But because ambition is so overwhelming — because self-interest is so
powerful — these paper tigers were allowed to prey on women year after year.
Why do men like Ailes and Weinstein get away with
misconduct for so long? Because in certain sectors of American society, moral
courage is in short supply.
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