For the benefit of those like a commentor to today's earlier post who are puzzled and/or annoyed about the Weinstein casting couch cause celebre, let me fill in some background.
Who is the guy, and who cares?
Because until a week or two ago, you never heard of him?
No slam on the commentor who asked the question, but it deserves a full answer.
And typically, if one guy brings it up, there's ten more who feel the same way, and didn't say anything.
Never heard of him? Go read his Wikipedia bio.The co-founder of one of the leading production companies in Hollywood, with a Best Picture Oscar for Shakespeare In Love, and 35 years of producing some of the biggest Hollywood movies?
A guy who, until two weeks ago, everyone in Hollywood and the Democrat Party would not only return his phone calls, but deem it a privilege to speak with?
You've been living under a rock then. It's anyone's prerogative to ignore the movers and shakers in both Hollywood and politics, but that says more about you than about the magnitude of the loathsome object of the current tizzy.
Rumors are one thing, but three dozen (and counting) substantiated and corroborated accounts are another.
Second, it's not "young starlets", it's a Who's Who of A-list Hollywood talent that he's bagged, molested, or tried to do both.
Third, it isn't just that a producer did it, but the list of other producers, ancillary people, and other A-list stars who knew about him, and covered for him.
Fourth, this is a guy who's given millions to the DNC, and hung out with presidents.
Fifth, this undoes completely the Leftist narrative about the "War On Women", from both Washington DC, and Hollywood. Some of the loudest whiners have turned out to be his victims, and their fellow celebutards, who all kept their mouths shut about Weinstein's predations, while decrying imaginary GOP assaults. The hypocrisy factor is registering on the Richter Scale.
It's like watching a bus drive by the red carpet and throw buckets of mud on everybody in the front twenty rows at the Oscars, in their gowns and tuxes, on live TV.
It's yuuuuuuuuuuge.
And it just keeps getting bigger.
The only way you could generate more ink than this would be if Disney turned out to be running a child prostitution ring under Disneyland, or if Trump kicked the UN out of NYFC and gave them 24 hours to evacuate, or somebody popped a nuke in anger somewhere in the world.
This thing has legs, and you're going to be hearing about it for months.
Allegations of possible underage talent being involved have the FBI and NYPD (and probably LAPD and INTERPOL, quietly) investigating him for potential criminal charges.
The list of prosecutors who would cuff and stuff someone like Weinstein to make their career and assure their rise to superstardom and potentially all the way to even the White House, would only be a line from Hollywood to DC, via NYFC.
And for bonus ink, the story was about to break in New Yorker magazine, and at the same time James O'Keefe and Project Veritas were unveiling their expose of duplicity at the NYTimes, and so rather than being scooped, while simultaneously crippled by Veritas' undercover videos, the Grey Lady went pro-active, which exposed half a dozen Big Media outlets that had squelched earlier Weinstein expose' stories. Had they known the Vegas shooting was about to happen, they might have hung back, but life is full of surprises, and unlike Vegas, this is a story where everyone knows the motive, the perpetrator is still available to kick around, and the information available, rather than shrinking, is growing exponentially day after day after day.
Ask a reporter or an editor how they feel about selling copy, for an answer to why this just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny.
You have the publicity trifecta: Big Hollywood, Big Media, and Big Politics, all simultaneously exploding with guilt on this, and no end in sight as the ripples spread outward. Name anyone in those three worlds, and this touches them. It's literally just about the entire Left Wing of the country, outside academia. And anybody in media will leap at a chance to tar their competition for errors of this magnitude.
This isn't a food fight at a supermarket, it's a simultaneous food fight at every supermarket.
When anyone this mighty falls, buy stock in companies that sell newspaper ink.
You don't think it'll get covered up just like Slick Willy's indiscretions did?
ReplyDeleteMark D
Aesop: I suppose in some ways I have been living under a rock, by choice. I have pretty much tuned out anything to do with hollywood for a very long time now. I rarely go to movies, and I have not actually even owned a television since 2005. Upon seeing the headlines about Weinstein on Drudge, and asking 'Who the hell is Weinstein', I did exactly what you said. I googled him, read his bio, and said "Oh, THAT'S who Weinstein is". I have actually seen a number of his films over the years and enjoyed most of them. I just had not known by name the producer of those films until now.
ReplyDeleteAs for the question of why he is now under the microscope, I get it now. (Occasionally somebody has to paint me a picture.) Yes, he has been a big time donor to the Dems for a long time, he is one of their own, and leftist politicians and media have been receiving his money and covering for him for a long time. A quid pro quo of sorts, especially considering Weinstein's lamentation that the NYT was breaking the 'deal' they had with him.
So I now get the idea that this majorly showcases the hipocracy of the left media and lefty politicos who preach the false narrative of the right's 'war on women' while simultaneously being in bed with and on the payroll of a big kahuna who embodies a one man war on women. And since they were about to be outed, the commie party and their commie media arm are throwing him under the bus in an attempt to limit the damage to themselves. Weinstein is now radioactive, and they have to try and get as far away from the fallout zone as they can. There is great entertainment value in watching that, and a good deal of schadenfreude as well.
One can only hope that this will cause some lasting damage to the commies and their potemkin media in the form of large numbers of viewers beginning to get red-pilled.
@Mark D:
ReplyDelete1) Way past that point.
2) Press ink is liquid gold. No one's turning that spigot off now.
3) Weinstein has none of the charisma of Fat Bill, and 10X the enemies. Not least of which because A-list actresses aren't convention bimbos.
It's good to be king, but not so good to be Daniel Dravot in The Man Who Would Be King, as Peachy would confirm. Especially once the peasants see you bleed.
@George:
Schadenfrude is a foreign word.
The one you're looking for in English is epicaricacy. ;)
This is the Titanic for the Left. They need their noses rubbed in it pretty much for the next ten years.
OT. Aesop. Let me know if you don't want me to keep tying up your blog with links I think you will find interesting. I am not as eloquent as you with your prose but I find this whole Las Vegas tragedy to be something that we as the outsiders of the MSM are keeping going.
ReplyDeleteAll the best. Irish
Check it out
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-tactical-view-mysteries-of-las-vegas.html?m=1
I've been half following the whole story and I have to say I enjoy watching the left and Hollywood turning on one of their own especially one of the slimier ones. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the sleaze in Hollywood though. Anyone who's had even secondhand contact with the industry has probably heard tales that pale in comparison to what Harvey is accused of and was widely known for over the years. One wonders who he crossed or what machinations went on behind the scenes that got Harvey booted out of the circle of sleazeballs and thrown to the mob? Were the rumors about him and Obama's daughter true?
ReplyDeleteI was listening to a group of women talking about this today and they're just enthralled by the whole thing. Rose McGowan took quite the shiv from the group though. Commenting on her tweet where McGowan proclaimed that she was a victim raped by Weinstein, one of the ladies responded that "If you go to the police after you're raped that makes you a victim dear. If after your "rape" you go to the bank and cash a 100,000 dollar check from the "rapist" that just makes you a high end prostitute.". Dayum girls ARE mean.
@Irish,
ReplyDeleteGo ahead on. Something may come of it.
I plan to address the whole thing later this weekend.
This came out because someone got the goods on him, and The New Yorker was going to publish, so the NYSlimes got wind of it and burped it out first. Everything since is just gravity, working.
ReplyDeleteAlready half a dozen big names have been slimed for sitting on the story, or trying to downplay it until the tsunami of accusers over-topped the dam.
And the Weinsteins (brother Bob, unslimed, is still as ever the same mogul Harvey was until last week) have friends as well as enemies, so this is an industry-wide real-life version of Avengers: Civil War.
As accusations and recriminations fly back and forth, the Biz (fueled and populated by people for whom giant egos and poor impulse control aren't flaws but rather core values) will see the hailstorm of butthurt, tears, anger, and self-serving venom spewed both ways keep coming down by the metric fuckton.
The commonsense that would impel any other industry to swallow their feelings, STFU, and let this blow over, is precisely what's universally lacking in everyone touched by the scandal, top to bottom.
For the ET/Inside Edition/TMZ crowd, this is Christmas in October, and I suspect it's going to keep going all the way to the Oscars next spring, at minimum.
Coming to a worldwide multi-billion-dollar industry that's having a quarter-century low-point record crap year, and with the December-March award season coming up, this is the only 800-pound gorilla story in town, with "town" being only NYFC, L.A., and Washington D.C., arguably the three most influential venues in the entire country, for media, celebrity, finance, and politics. And, lest we forget, sex is involved, which is the cake frosting of media since forever. And it appeals to people who love and hate the media/Hollyweird, and those who love and hate the political Left, so in Nielsen terms this is a four-corner item: the story that appeals to every demographic viewer there is, period.
In fact, I'll cover all bets at 10:1 that some, if not fourteen, competing studio(s) already has a movie-of-the-week script in pre-production right this minute, and that a baker's dozen of A-list directors have already phoned in and copyrighted two or three potential script titles apiece for feature films covering this whole sordid saga with the Writer's Guilds East and West offices. Ditto for the foreign film industries. If anything, I'm low-balling that estimate. If you told me Harvey's own brother Bob had a team getting a story out right now, that Miramax would produce themselves, I wouldn't be surprised. "Never let a crisis go to waste" isn't just a political axiom: Tinseltown, eats its own with a legendary appetite, and its favorite subject, going back forever, is itself.
All you've seen so far, boys and girls, is just the opening credits.
Aesop, I'm afraid I must disagree with you:
ReplyDelete"... and so rather than being scooped...."
-- That just won't do, because it assumes that our 21st century 5th column socialist propaganda ministry operates on 1920s yellow journalism profit motives rather than each and every one being a tentacle-sucker on the same octopus, each operating in lockstep with all the others to promote an overriding narrative that no one can escape.
For example, you don't see a single one of them breaking ranks in the Vegas shooting story (e.g., where's the belt-fed .30 caliber machinegun? who was shooting the second gun while both it and the M60 were firing simultaneously? *crickets chirp*), or breaking ranks in pushing global warming hysteria, and you certainly won't see any of them bringing up Mr. "You better put some ice on that!" even though his totally loyal cuntwife opened her insufferable cakehole on the Weinstein subject.
So why Weinstein now on the hate-list?
Easy: he broke "The Code" that all enjoying-positions-of-power leftists must abide by. What was his infraction? Who knows. -- But it certainly wasn't for grabbing women by the pussy. Following the rules is why The Lying Bastard of the Ozark Long March is still "made", and having broke them is now why Weinstein will be pilloried, fined, defrocked, and possibly incarcerated.
He is to serve as an object example, to everyone within the structure of the Left, of what happens when you disobey. "We can make you..." (point to the Clintons) "...and we can break you."
If Weinstein had remained "made", the FBI would be all out of fucks to give, and no media entity above tabloid-grade would give James O'Keefe and Project Veritas the time of day.
Who is Weinstein? -- He's the party member that Comrade Stalin has ordered airbrushed out of the photographs today.
And it's been going on a long time. As Marilyn Monroe said after making it big.
ReplyDelete"Now I don't have to suck another (national purgative) cock". Not that I'm all that worked up about it. As you said, high priced whores.
I do think this whole thing will be buried under piles of bullshit to be anything other than what it truly is. There's a whole nother world out there on either coast that's completely foreign to the rest of us.
Aesop, followup to Irish:
ReplyDeleteGuard has indeed disappeared, prior to planned Hannity interview.
What is with the creep with the 1000 yard stare always behind the sheriff in press calls? He looks ready to pounce if the sheriff goes off script. I read that he is an FBI agent named Aaron C Rouse recently promoted by Comey to counterintelligence. Still trying to verify.
Media seems to be attempting to paint a picture of a young guy; he was actually in his 60s, and rather feeble looking, and all the px they print are in his 30s.
He's a Jew, isn't he? Hollywood is owned and managed by Jews. One of the clan had to be sacrificed to hide the despicable and detestable others. Anti-Semite?, Me? If telling the truth about this depraved notion of a race is racist, then yeah, I'm an Anti-Semite just like I'm an anti-pedophile, an anti-queer, an anti-Marxist. Yeah, I'm about as racist as a man can get who has seen all that we have been warned about turn into a horrible reality. White people are the target and the end game is extermination either by murder or inter-breeding to the point of non-existence. Why? Because white Christian Europeans have created the nearest thing to Republican utopia ever in history and it must be destroyed.
ReplyDeleteAs long as America remains good She will be great. When She is no longer good She will no longer be great. If man replaces God then man becomes his own god. Vile consequences follow.
It's a shame you never got to know any other Jews than the 8 year-old girl that beat you up in front of your friends. I understand that's traumatizing, but it's kinda your fault as a grown man for letting that happen. Leave that in the past and expand your horizons.
DeleteVery nice post
ReplyDelete@ Anonymous12:27A
ReplyDeleteNope.
The NYTimes was about to eat it with the Project Veritas expose.
Weinstein was about to eat it with a New Yorker mag story.
If you're the NYT, and you can take a bonme out of the New Yorker's mouth, and simultaneously outshine the hit you're about to suffer, Weinstein's going under the bus either way, so why not use him to absorb a body blow to you?
It's like the scene in Saving Private Ryan on Normandy Beach: the Germans are shooting at you; there's a dead guy laying there doing nobody any good; so you grab him, use him for cover, and let him soak up the machinegun bullets on your behalf. He can't get any deader, but you can still use him to save yourself and not get shot.
Weinstein was already radioactive, beyond saving, so NYT used him to soak up the bullets that were going to come their way when Veritas blew their doors in.
And that's exactly how it's worked out.
Weinstein (and the Vegas shooting) pushed Veritas' expose to everybody's Page 23.
Instead of doing to the NYT what they did to CNN and a yuuuuuge expose of their Russian "nothingburger" attacks, Veritas' story is totally eclipsed, and barely mentioned.
And as long as there's an internet and Fox News, Veritas' stories will always get out, especially when they shoot the NYT in the pants. But Weinstein is going to be soaking up bullets for months, and the NYT ducks one. (And the Left can make another Weinstein overnight. But the NYT is mother's milk, and a pillar of their side, which they can't afford to have humbled.)
QED
Don't you think this whole Weinstein story rather convenient? We have a mass shooting that would have otherwise occupied front page for weeks if not months, and yet 5 days later it wasn't even page two. The whole juxtaposition just feels too much like sleight of hand.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I concur with the guy who lived under a rock: I spent most of my life without TV, and could honestly care less about this guy. Yeah, he's slime, but aren't they all? Why pillory him but give slick willie or any number of congresscritters a pass? The outrage just feels too pearl-clutching staged.
I agree that it points out the hypocrisy of the left's accusation of a republican 'war on women,' (projection anyone?) but I suspect that that angle will be completely buried by the media.
Reasons
ReplyDelete1-10): Sex scandals sell papers.
11) People watch celebrities.
11a) People love when celebutards foul up; makes 'em feel better about themselves.
12) Everybody loves some aspect of this story: old/young, male/female, Left/Right,
13-20) Sex scandals sell papers.