Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

At first glance it’s looks like the Harvey Weinstein story, from a journalistic standpoint  seems more and more like the John Edwards Story, where liberal journalists were uninterested in telling a story that might harm their allies

An explosive scandal had been kept out of the press for months at a time when the man at the center of it was an important player in national politics. Why? Young thought it was because the Edwards camp so tightly controlled information that journalists weren’t able to find sources to corroborate the Enquirer’s reporting. Perhaps that was part of it. But the fact was, many editors and reporters just didn’t want to tell the story. They admired Elizabeth Edwards. They saw no good in exposing John Edwards’ sordid acts.

Journalists saw no good in exposing the sordid acts of a former, senator, vice presidential and presidential candidate.

And while there is certainly a bit of that in the Weinstein story the more I think about it the more it seems that this was all about capitalism in the Tina Brown vein.

About five years ago I did a series of piece of Tina Brown at Newsweek and Salon and her ability to coax millions out of liberals for magazine empires that never seemed to make a buck:

Unless I’m missing something all that happened is an attractive blond managed to convince some man into spending a lot of money to stake her in a business, she used said business to enhance her reputation and when she proved unable to succeed in it dumped it on the first sucker willing to take it off her hands.

It looked a lot like liberal were willing to throw away money to advance liberalism 

Alas, there’s only one Tina and probably lots of would-be media moguls out there with millions of dollars to throw away on glitzy media operations. Send me an e-mail and we’ll do lunch.

But if you decide instead to hit Vegas and blow your millions on blackjack and hookers, I’ll understand.

A while back a few of us thought that if liberals were willing to play angels to advance liberalism conservatives should think about it too:

Jimmie has calculated — and I agree with his calculations — that you could run a pretty spiffy little conservative New Media operation for $500,000 a year if you knew what you were doing. But the problem is connecting (a) people with $500,000 to (b) people who know what they’re doing in terms of online news.

If you grant that Jimmie and I are correct about this estimate, do the math yourself: For the $4 million that the permatanned RINO Charlie Crist collected during that single three-month span of 2009, you could fund eight spiffy little New Media operations for a year (or four such operations for two years). And FEC contribution limits do not apply to people making “investments” in news operations, so that the rich Republicans would not be restricted in their generosity toward New Media, as they are toward political candidates.

Soros has figured this out. Rich Republicans have not.

…figuring it would be a better investment than say 15-30 mil on  Luther Strange

But all the arguments that folks like us were a better investment than a Tina Brown presumed that the motive for such investments were to advance ideas rather than sheer capitalism.  For the establishment a guy like Strange was an investment in keeping the gravy train, a very capitalistic motive and as Stacy McCain noted yesterday the whole “liberal angel” thing with Weinstein seems to be all about capitalism too. (emphasis mine)

Rebecca Traister of New York magazine recounts her own confrontation with Weinstein’s violent abusive behavior — her called her an epithet and shoved her boyfriend down the steps at a party in 2000. She tries to explain why Weinstein’s behavior was never previously reported, including the fact that “there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or screenwriters, or for his magazine.” Talk magazine, with Tina Brown as editor, was published 1999-2002: “The cover story of the debut issue was an interview with Hillary Clinton.” In less than three years, Talk lost an estimated $50 million. This was simply another aspect of Weinstein’s power. He was willing to throw away money on a slick magazine with a big-name editor in order to buy influence among journalists. And guess what? It worked. Contrary to their own smug opinions of themselves, the journalistic elite aren’t the most ethical people on the planet.

That fifty million makes a whole lot more sense now.  Apparently this wasn’t a question of spending money as a “liberal angel” helping the cause of women, gays  and the left, it was paying the price for being a “lecherous devil” buying off journalists who readily decided their silence  was worth it for the job, the office, the prestige, the access , the parties etc etc etc all the while telling themselves they were fighting to save the world from the evil conservatives who were trying to oppress women et/al.

This was sheer unadulterated Capitalism and apparently Mr. Weinstein got his money’s worth for decades.

Update: accidently put a gallery from a previous post at the bottom and fixed two sentences with redundant words.

---

As I have no sexual secrets of rich liberals to keep for a price I have to make my buck by going places and doing interviews all the time hoping people like it enough to pay for it.

If you like the idea of new media on the scene at for these time of things and want to support independent journalism please hit DaTipJar