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The Weinstein octopus: what did they know and when did they know it? — 39 Comments

  1. If Harvey would have been a conservative (impossible), he would have been destroyed years ago. More tribalism by the Left. The little people must serve their masters.

  2. “In other words, you don’t go to the police, or publicly accuse someone, if all you’ve heard is rumors. ” — Neo.

    One should, of course, be able to go to some investigative journalist, who isn’t so shackled legally, and has the resources to find out if the rumors are based on fact.

    “Insert high-minded quote from Woodward and Bernstein about the importance of exposing Nixon’s crimes in the Watergate conspiracy.”

    However, as the stories make clear, no one in the biznez of “speaking truth to power” was willing to sacrifice themselves. In fact, you answered your own question.

    “Those arms reach out in many directions, not just into Hollywood, but into the press, politics, and even companies such as Amazon.” — Neo.

    “Insert quote from authorities in Rotherham England exculpating themselves because they didn’t want to lose their jobs by accusing Muslims of a crime everyone knew was happening.”

    This isn’t a bug of our society, it’s a feature.

  3. And yet much of Hollywood has defended Polanski for years

    Asia Argento, who figures so prominently in Farrow’s New Yorker piece, signed the 2009 petition to release Polanski.

  4. The other night I started watching “The Monuments Men” (2014) — a sort of “Ocean’s 11” except George Clooney, Matt Damon and their merry band aren’t robbing a casino, but saving European art treasures from the Nazis.

    I hear it’s a good enough movie, but I couldn’t help but read it as part of the self-serving Hollywood narrative that woke folk like Clooney and Damon are saving Western culture from the Tea Party barbarians.

    Couldn’t finish the movie. I just couldn’t take those big earnest smiles from Clooney and Damon in the midst of the Weinstein scandal.

  5. The actual monuments men were heroes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments,_Fine_Arts,_and_Archives_program

    General Dwight D. Eisenhower facilitated the work of the MFAA by forbidding looting, destruction, and billeting in structures of cultural significance. He also repeatedly ordered his forces to assist the MFAA as much as possible. This was the first time in history an army attempted to fight a war and at the same time reduce damage to cultural monuments and property.
    “Prior to this war, no army had thought of protecting the monuments of the country in which and with which it was at war, and there were no precedents to follow…. All this was changed by a general order issued by Supreme Commander-in-Chief [General Eisenhower] just before he left Algiers, an order accompanied by a personal letter to all Commanders…the good name of the Army depended in great measure on the respect which it showed to the art heritage of the modern world.”[2]
    –Lt. Col. Sir Leonard Woolley, Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Officer

    * * *
    Recall that one of the charges against GWB, among others, was a failure to make the same kind of protection available in Iraq. I think that might have been asking too much in the context, but the Left used it as a hammer incessantly (while ignoring the destruction of historical artifacts by Muslims in Israel and other areas, of course; not to mention the Taliban and ISIS).

    Maybe this movie is just another, somewhat subtle, dig at the Right? I haven’t seen it; just sayin’.

  6. The press is getting off easy in this. The NYT had the story on 2004 and did nothing. NBC, up to the highest level of the corporation, tried to quash it as it came out in the last week. My wife had NPR on a few moments ago, and there was some reporter whining about being disrespected and called fake news. I wonder why. The press is totally oblivious to how their reporting is perceived and have swallowed their own self generated press releases.

  7. Fox News and conservatives claim no moral high ground on Harvey Weinstein, all they were doing was claiming that progressives have no claim to the moral high ground either. Democrats and people Alec Baldwin are doing their spin again.

  8. Well, maybe the next time those actors receive their Oscars they will cease their moral preening and stop lecturing us.

  9. The typical Tu quoque argument will not do this time. Democrats have been enjoying an advantage over the republicans by claiming the moral high ground under a notion that democrats are more virtuous people embolden by the media and Hollywood. Their policies don’t create jobs or strengthen the economy or balance the budget or help the poor, all they try to achieve are granting rights to irresponsible mother to kill their babies, gay people getting married in churches, transgenders sharing a bathroom with girls or illegal intruders getting citizenship. Things most legitimate voters don’t really care about were brought into the conversation during elections only because these meaningless social issues the party that operates on a high horse. When you take the left off the high horse, what else do they have?

  10. Ray:

    I am afraid you are being too optimistic, there is a saying in Cantonese: those with no shame are invincible, they will continue to lecture us like nothing happened in no time

  11. “The members of the board, including myself, did not know the extent of my brother’s actions.” Bob Weinstein

    “Weinstein Co. Board Has Known About Payoffs To Women Since 2015: Report”

    “Co-chairman Bob Weinstein and chief operating officer David Glasser, who has been expected to move into the CEO role as the company confronts a post-Harvey future, told employees in a video conference that they were completely blindsided by the waves of reports documented by the Times and the New Yorker.

    But a report overnight in the New York Times, based on an interview with longtime company attorney David Boies and internal company documents, charges that the board has been aware of the payments since at least 2015. Boies, who represented Harvey Weinstein when his contract came up for renewal in 2015, told the Times the board and the company were made aware then of three or four confidential settlements with women.”

    But Wait! There’s MORE!

    “HARVEY WEINSTEIN Contract with TWC ALLOWED FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT

    I’m shocked! Shocked to discover that Bob Weinstein is a liar…

    “I’m not sure, though, why Harvey Weinstein’s offenses–and Hollywood’s winking at them–has become a bigger story than Roman Polanski’s offenses and Hollywood’s winking at them.” neo

    Unlike Weinstein’s preying on young women, Polanski’s offense is a mortal threat to Hollywood because it involves children.

    “In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, [Corey] Feldman discusses how he was repeatedly molested by adult males in the industry, saying these men would pass many young stars ‘back and forth to each other.’”

    Calling it a ‘cesspool of filth’ trivializes the depravity. It’s literally monstrous.

  12. “In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, [Corey] Feldman discusses how he was repeatedly molested by adult males in the industry, saying these men would pass many young stars ‘back and forth to each other.’”

    Hmmm.

    https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/03/spotlight-abuse-boston

    Upon winning best picture at the Oscars on Sunday (2016), Spotlight producer Michael Sugar used the stage to send a message to the Vatican. Speaking about the drama, which chronicles The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize—winning investigation into the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse cover-up, Sugar said, “This film gave a voice to survivors and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican.” Appealing to the church’s leader, he added, “Pope Francis, it’s time to protect the children and restore the faith.”

  13. How deep will anyone want to go? Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson in the 1980s were notorious for their cocaine-fueled casting couch. But Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun among others generated huge profits. Other, now-forgotten films didn’t matter. Simpson’s cocaine addiction became out of control and led to his death.

    Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel smoked crack and had starlets smoking crack and taking off their clothes as part of the drawn-out auditions for Bad Lieutenant. Ferrara was at one time Madonna’s favorite director, exactly because of the “bad boy” image he had, which she saw as hip and “punk-rock.”

    Paul Verhoeven as director and Joe Eszerhas as screenwriter made Basic Instinct, Showgirls and other half-famous half-infamous films… and Eszterhas in his memoir boasted about all the beautiful young aspiring actresses he’d sampled because they hoped this might help their careers.

    How did Elizabeth Berkley as an unknown get the lead in Showgirls? She was much ridiculed for her performance but it could’ve made her a big star. And people still watch that film.

    Harvey Weinstein was by no means unusual. This is how Hollywood has always worked.

  14. The other side of things of course is that as producer or director you’re often faced with casting any out of 5-10 young pretty aspiring actresses for a part in which acting talent really doesn’t matter very much. Maybe you’re happily married but maybe you’re not. Who do you pick?

    The decision is just going to be arbitrary, whimsical — any of them will look good in a bikini running down the beach, and her one line can be finessed. Which one do you pick?

    They all really, really, really want the part. There’s going to be a nude scene, so you have to see them nude. Photographers often offer models something to help them relax, lose some inhibition.

    So there you are.

  15. the more garden-variety modus operandi of propositioning these women and and promising them a quid pro quo. That’s not good and it’s not right

    Up to a point Lord Copper. If a casting couch producer cast someone who is going to do a bad job, and the movie isn’t being made with his money, then sure that’s not good and not right. But as miklos says, in many cases it’s a case of casting one of seventeen identical bimbos and so choosing one over another isn’t ripping off your investors.

    Nor is it abusing the starlet – if she’s a volunteer. Consenting adults and all that. As someone wittily said the other day, we read about the “casting couch” – we don’t read about the “insurance adjuster” couch. If you’re not a child and you go into the movie world, you can hardly be surprised if you meet lecherous balding fat guys with money and power. Thomas More said to Richard Rich “a man should go where he will not be tempted.” Lots of men don’t believe in that advice. They go where the hunting is good.

  16. I am struck most by this comment by Harvey’s brother.

    “For me, I thought he was literally just going out there cheating in a pervasive way. It wasn’t like he even had a mistress. It was one after another and that I was aware of. But as far as being in a room and hearing the description in The New York Times? No way. No F-in way was I aware that that was the type of predator that he was. And the way he convinced people to do things? I thought they were all consensual situations.”

    Shorter form,

    ‘yeah, my brother is fat, ugly, and a bully but somehow he convinced all these women to sleep with him. All this time I thought they were using him to get ahead. Why it never ever occurred to me that it wasn’t consensual.’

  17. miklos000rosza: Quite right. Weinstein did not invent his brand of depravity. Far from it.

    But Weinstein was such a highly-placed, blatant-to-any-insider predator AND mega-rich donor to Democrat causes that it undercuts just about all the big-mouth Hollywood stars who have been attacking Trump and conservatives on the basis of the imagined Hollywood moral high ground.

    I am fascinated by the way progressive elites are repeatedly being caught hanging in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote for their various hypocrisies and incompetencies.

    It hasn’t sunk in for them yet. They know the old bamboozle isn’t working but they don’t know why.

    Because something is happening here
    but you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Mr. Jones?

    –Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”

  18. And the way he convinced people to do things? I thought they were all consensual situations.

    “I’ll tell you what I did know. Harvey was a bully, Harvey was arrogant, he treated people like shit all the time. That I knew…

    I think Bob Weinstein knew that his brother was a monster, he just didn’t know how depraved he was. Still, the statement betrays either cognitive dissonance or deluding himself.

    He thought the sex was all consensual but he knew that his brother was a bully. He had to know, at least on some level, that Harvey was bullying the women into sex.

    My thumbnail psychoanalysis is that Harvey has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. People with NPD leave a wake of damaged associates. They have no conscience and a lack of empathy for others.

    Aha!: “Weinstein’s alleged acts are more likely rooted in a personality disorder, such as narcissism or anti-social personality disorder, Bradford posits. The mogul’s alleged psychological, if not physical coercion of women, “sounds to be much more personality disordered than hypersexuality, or even, in theory, sexual addiction,” Bradford says.”

  19. Without actually seeing Weinstein’s 2015 employment contract there’s no way to know if the TMZ report about its provisions is true — but if the report is accurate, there’s no way Bob Weinstein didn’t know exactly what his brother was doing. For that matter, the entire board had to have known, not to mention the company attorney who drafted those provisions about reimbursing TWC for any judgments or payments for improper conduct, PLUS the sliding scale “fine” Harvey would have to pay the company for each separate offense. If the contract actually says what TMZ says it does, every single one of the body lice involved in it had a very clear idea of what Harvey was up to, and it is damning evidence against them.

  20. Don Surber had an interesting theory last week. I will link it here. I also think this may be laying the ground to go after Trump as well. I am going to admit here that Trump’s “Locker room” talk makes me squirm a bit. I say this as someone who has worked in a male dominated industry my entire career and have experienced Trump like advances during my young years – in the 1980’s. It was not every guy in the office, just 3 or so, but they spoke to me suggestively, told me lewd, lewd dirty jokes and slapped or cupped my buttocks many times. Each time I was always alone with them in an elevator or the xerox room. I thought nothing of it, really, back then. It was the Dinosaur angle. I aged out of all of this and when sexual harassment became something you trained employees not to do, one of these men who had done these things to me tried it on a young lady in about 1999 and was reported and warned and a letter went in his file. Anyway, I fear they will go for Trump, but read this Don Surber piece, it is a good theory and may just be a twofer with Trump as an ultimate target as well.

    http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2017/10/weinstein-was-warning-to-hillary.html

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  22. miklos000rosza,

    Nonsense. If the industry wanted to address the issue with young actresses, it would simply set up a system where the date they joined the Screen Actors Guild gave them precedence over any other available actress auditioning for the part. Then, the actresses would be in a queue and the producer and director’s ‘conundrum’ is solved…

  23. The most important column you need to read on the “Harvey the Hutt’s” sex scandal is this one by Don Surber on Disney’s legal “Deep Pockets” liability under Federal and California sexual harassment law.

    See:

    http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2017/10/disney-is-weinstein-espn-mess.html

    Under sexual harassment law, management has a positive responsibility to act upon the first instance of reported sexual harassment or they are co-conspirators, and by extension, they have ratified that the entire company is liable in terms of assets for civil and criminal settlements.

    That makes Weinstwein’s sexual harassment settlement clause in his employment contract absolutely deadly.

    Everyone in entertainment management touched by that contract clause through ownership or contractual work with Harvey’s various companies has legal liability for every act of sexual harassment Harvey ever did.

    This is a political earthquake in a number of senses as the amount of discretionary income Hollywood Leftists will have for Democratic politics will be reduced — at a guess — 50% in the next five years and far more than that by 2024. Given that we are talking about potentially tens of billions in terms of Sexual Harassment pay outs and settlements over Harvey’s acts covering 30 years.

    That employment clause is why “Harvey the Hutt” is far more important the Polanski ever was.

    That clause is a ‘culture war’ gift that will keep on giving to both President Trump and the Alt-Right media, neither of which were ever involved in the Weinstein’s cover ups and pay outs.

    Breitbart is going to develop one heck of a internet entertainment section following, because their “Big Hollywood” section will be reporting on sex scandal developments that the corporate big media is dirty on thanks to “Harvey the Hutt’s” employment contracts and book deal pay offs to corporate media talent.

  24. And they all knew, via instapundit —

    VIDEO: COURTNEY LOVE WARNED ACTRESSES IN 2005 STAY CLEAR OF HARVEY WEINSTEIN — and was banned by her agency for her trouble.

    I suspect this Washington Post video, uploaded on Thursday on Hollywood’s inside jokes about Weinstein, will need to be updated more than a few times.

    Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

    https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/278343/

    IMO, Ms. Love is going to get quite a payday when Harvey’s Sexual Harassment class action law suit with RICO clause is finally litigated.

  25. Will anyone go after the pimps and madams supplying HW?

    The pimps were the people in HW’s company knowingly calling the actresses and actresses’ agents to set up the meetings and the actresses’ agents that knowingly helped set up the meetings.

    The madams were the women and men that knowingly sent the actresses from the lobby to his room and the women and men in HW’s room that were there to set the actresses at ease then knowingly left the actress to be abused or raped.

    Last question: how many agents intentionally sent an actress to HW so HW could break her down and make the actress easier to manage for the agent?

  26. Megaera:

    Except for one thing—an out–of-court settlement is not an admission of guilt. In fact, sometimes corporations settle even when someone is innocent, because it costs less that way. People in power sometimes are falsely accused. If brother Bob knew about the settlements, he may have told himself that this is what was going on.

  27. Why does Hollywood still have its WW2 tax exemptions?

    Are Evangelists and conservatives so poor, or so stupid, that they can’t buy some Republicans in DC to get rid of this tax exemption?

    It would produce a lot more funding for social security and welfare… oh wait, I forgot, Leftists don’t pay out of their own pocket for those programs. They take it out of yours.

  28. This is a political earthquake in a number of senses as the amount of discretionary income Hollywood Leftists will have for Democratic politics will be reduced – at a guess – 50% in the next five years and far more than that by 2024. Given that we are talking about potentially tens of billions in terms of Sexual Harassment pay outs and settlements over Harvey’s acts covering 30 years.

    Andrew Breitbart probably already knew or suspected it about Hollywood. People like me would have already informed him out of it, and of course Breitbart was originally connected to Democrat organs so he had wind of it there.

    As for your point, it is close, but the conclusion won’t happen so easily.

    All those billions will mostly go to the lawyers, not the victims. Which means the Lawyer Unions, what they call the bar associations, will funnel the money back into the Left via money laundering.

  29. Calling it a ‘cesspool of filth’ trivializes the depravity. It’s literally monstrous.

    Some of us have been waiting decades if not longer, for Americans to “wake up” to the true nature of the Left.

    They still think it is some kind of political problem that can be solved with elections due to political disagreements that they will fight for.

  30. Dave Says:
    October 14th, 2017 at 6:02 pm

    They are only unbeatable until a god (or sennen) kills them.

  31. I’ve been investigating Hollywood for some time now. For example, things like Polanski and Harvey are no surprise to me, even in 2009.

    Hollywood is much worse than what people imagine. The Left is much more evil than people want to imagine or accept.

    Combine Polanski with Harvey, the Left can’t get any worse right? Oh, yea it can, it already did.

  32. This thread evidences that few are able to address the actual fact that Lenin was bat-chit crazy with syphilis during the accounts from Russell and others.

    The fact tha Moscow has flatly admitted that Lenin died of syphilis counts for naught.

    By the time that Russell met Lenin — he was FAR GONE.

    Deal with THAT.

    That’s reality.

    Like late-war Adolf’s ‘logic’ this is the brain of a totally diseased critter.

    By the late teens, Lenin was in Fourth stage Syphilis.

    EVERYTHING he ever said must be considered in that light.

    His health condition is beyond dispute, BTW.

    As is Adolf’s.

    Hitler, like Lenin, had the Number One physician knowledgeable in syphilis in his direct (final) employ.

    WHAT a coincidence.

    Other famous syphlitics: Napoleon and Churchill’s father.

    It rots the brain.

    So STOP talking about how ‘reasoned’ Lenin was.

    My cat could do better.

  33. Humans often times put the bottom 25% of human trash potential at the top, such as Lenin or Stalin.

    It is perhaps unremarkable that a people that can’t survive alone, does this out of fear and dependence.

    A health organization is led by strong and wise alphas. But sooner or later, the people become crazy and weak enough to put up a trash king, which requires some hero to replace.

  34. blert:

    I think your comment is on the wrong thread; should be on the Bertrand Russell thread.

    At any rate, you are quite incorrect that it’s been established that Lenin had syphilis. Not at all (see this, and there are many other articles saying similar things as to why it was unlikely Lenin had syphilis).

    When Russell saw Lenin it was 1920, and Russell seemed to think he quite lucid and not compromised at all in the cognitive sense. Lenin had not yet had the strokes that debilitated him and ultimately killed him; he suffered the first one in 1922

    Lenin’s father had died of stroke at about the same age. In addition “there was no evidence of [syphilis] on autopsy, and Lenin’s syphilis test was said to have been negative.” There’s also an unconfirmed theory that Stalin poisoned him.

    But syphilis is not only not a certainty, it’s not even likely.

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