“Here’s the tennis game, Donald Trump kissed a woman in a bathing suit. Trump hits back: Tell me about the president’s relationship with a guy named Jeffrey Epstein. That’s your tennis match.”
I’d take their apparent umbrage more seriously had they covered the story with this much energy any time from, say, 2009 to last Friday.
This highlights a truth that a lot of people on the left know but are unlikely to say. It is this:
If Hillary Clinton was elected President of the United States in 2016 not a person in the media would have dared to write or say a word against Jeffrey Epstein him and the state of New York, run by Democrats would certainly not not have touched him because they would have known that Jeffrey Epstein was under the protection of the President of the United States.
just like Harvey Weinstein was.
I have a question for the left that is essentially same one I posed at the time of the Weinstein revelations (which were only revelations to the public, not to the leftists in the know) and it’s this.
How many of you would gladly and without hesitation deny justice to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein (and Harvey Weinstein) if it meant reversing the results of last presidential election?
Given what we’ve seen I suspect that the answer is practically all of them.
Director Lee Daniels, Oprah Winfrey and Harvey Weinstein at The Los Angeles Premiere of ‘The Butler’ after party, on Monday, August 12, 2013 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Alexandra Wyman/Invision/AP Images.) (via PJ Media)
A few minutes ago I watched Oprah’s speech at the golden globes talking about empowering
women that has the left all a twitter (pun intended) about the possibility of an Oprah run for the presidency.
As nothing is impossible I won’t discount this completely but I want to remind all of you of something.
Oprah has been one of the most richest powerful women in the entertainment world for a very long time. She is a person who can make or break a book or a film or a career. All of Hollywood has paid homage to her for many many years. The entire media complex hangs on her words, and as demonstrated this weekend when she talks about the plight of women, people listen.
And yet during all the years that Harvey Weinstein et/all were on the prowl she never bothered to speak out against him or give a platform for his victims to do so!
If anyone had the power to speak out and break this open it was Oprah. Her power and influence was enough that Weinstein and the others would not be able to bring her down for talking, and if they had tried the public would have rallied behind her. All she had to do was speak out and proclaim “Enough!”
She did not.
Oprah speech wasn’t brave, it wasn’t grand, it was designed to change the conversation away from a single basic fact that Glenn Reynolds put very well.
Remember, they’re not making a big deal because they found out what was going on in Hollywood. They always knew. They’re making a big deal because you found out what was going on in Hollywood. https://t.co/fV8YlV5gMk
These guys were a huge source of cash and power for the left, and to expose them and to protect those women would expose the Hollywood left for what they were.
If Oprah really cared about all these things she talked about in her speech at the golden globes as opposed to being a member of the Harvey Weinstein left, she would have given that speech last year, or the year before or the year before that.
ROSE McGowan has lashed out at the stars who wore black to the Golden Globes, accusing them of “Hollywood fakery” for failing to take a stand against the sex abuse claims sooner.
The Charmed star claims the famous females who united against the scandal “wouldn’t have lifted a finger” to help if she hadn’t gone public with allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
Peripetchikoff: Look my young friend, I don’t want to be name dropper but what do you think Khrushchev did to Malenkov? What do you think Stalin did to Trotsky
Now we can see why lefty media folks think America is a “rape culture:” The part of America they inhabit is.
I make the over/under for the number of new liberals losing jobs or being suspended for sexual issues before the end of the year at six. I’ll play the over.
I’ve been thinking of the long terms results of the Harvey Weinstein situation and the more I do so the more I conclude that it demonstrates Andrew Breitbart’s argument that politics is downstream from culture
The culture of Hollywood, actors or as they were once called “players” has historically been a libertine one in contrast to the prevailing judeo Christian culture. It existed in two extremes low brow entertainment for rowdy masses as portrayed in this clip from the hilarious picture the Great Race
or high brow entertainment for the elites as hilariously lampooned by the Marx Brothers.
Actors being a small clique were an insignificant influence on said culture and had little influence to change it. However in the 20th century with the advent of movies and entertainment both cheap enough to be affordable to the masses and a distribution method to reach millions (film and radio) theater in general and Hollywood in particular became not only A giant cash cow for those at the top but A huge source of employment for masses of ordinary and technical people involved in the maintenance, operation distribution of same.
That was big but the most significant change was the fact that it suddenly gave “players” exposure, wealth social status and power far beyond their normal utility, not only in terms of performance, but in terms of endorsements from companies wanting to use said celebrity to promote their products and causes.
There were times when this power was put to noble purposes by good people
However said wealth and power didn’t change the nature of players in general, it only empowered them beyond their actual utility to culture, 3rd Rock from the sun Alum Joseph Gordon Levett summed it up perfectly in this quote about Hollywood and actors fame being a bad thing for a culture:
“Actors didn’t use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels. Actors were poor. Celebrities used to be kings and queens. Then the United States abolished monarchy, and now there’s this coming together of show business and celebrity. I don’t think it’s healthy. I don’t want to sound self-important, but all these celebrity shows and magazines–it comes from us, from Hollywood, from our country. We’re the ones creating it. And I think it works in close step with a lot of other bad things that are happening in the world. It promotes greed, it promotes being selfish and it promotes this ladder, where you’re a better person if you have more money. It’s not at all about the work itself. Don’t get me wrong. I love movies. But this myth of celebrity has nothing to do with movies.”
Thus you have a group of people whose primary ability is make believe and whose moral compass were diametrically opposed to the prevailing judeo christian morality suddenly calling the shots.
Now in the early days the studio system curtailed this power in the sense that it hid the worst of these influences from the public This allowed the libertine nature and depravities of those who wanted to indulge them to only flourish in private with the occasional scandal (from Fatty Arbuckle to Errol Flynn) leaking out. But once that system broke down the cat was out of the bag and said folks were free to use their influence to change the culture to openly live and celebrate what they did and to use film to advance the culture that they wished to celebrate and embrace:
Thus Hugh Hefner’s are celebrated and the concepts of marriage, family and morality were torn down and remade in the images of the “players” culture while the film becomes a weapon to be used against those who might push back to wit
Streep has since denounced Weinstein and protested that she was shocked, shocked, to find out that there was gambling going on in Casablanca. Streep’s protest struck me as curious in light of her lead role in the 2008 film Doubt, for which she earned an Oscar nomination. Streep’s character, a Catholic nun, is determined to prove that the priest in her parish is molesting a young boy. She encounters disapproval from the clergy, skepticism from her own fellow sisters, and opposition from the boy’s own mother. But she is indefatigable. It is perhaps the best film treatment of the complexity of sexual abuse. Somehow, after portraying day after day a character with a keen nose for impropriety on the set, Streep, like so many others, apparently could not detect the foul stench around Weinstein.
That’s from Fr. Raymond J De Sousa at the National Post noting the irony of Meryl Streep being one of many in Hollywood to use the Church’s Scandal to pummel it…
…all the while keeping their own mouths shut for the sake of their employment.
And it was not only the hollywood left that kept silence, journalist and media who gained wealth and influence by their association with Hollywood power brokers and shared their political views dived right in:
Addressing a controversy that has been percolating for the past several days in the media ecosystem since The New York Times published its own Weinstein exposé—including questions about whether NBC executives caved to the well-connected Weinstein and his formidable lawyers, Charles Harder, Lisa Bloom, and David Boies—Maddow brought it to a boiling point by telling Farrow: “NBC says that the story wasn’t publishable, that it wasn’t ready to go at the time that you brought it to them.”
Farrow fired back: “I walked into the door at The New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier. And immediately, obviously, The New Yorker recognized that. And it is not accurate to say that it was not reportable. In fact, there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC.”
In fairness to NBC the New Yorker recognized that once the story was already out in the public
Given the confluence of money and celebrity it was natural that Hollywood would become a political influence and boy did it.
The New York Times ran its first exposé on the disgraced Hollywood mogul at the end of a $2.2 million run of personal and bundled political donations, which made Weinstein a very familiar and popular figure among Democrats. Weinstein backed Democrats with significant national profiles, who rushed to embrace his wealth and star power. He put his mark on the DNC with over $300,000 in donations over a quarter-century, hoping to shape the party’s leadership. Weinstein put a special emphasis on the Senate, providing over $193,000 in funds to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) benefited most, with over $36,000 in overall donations, but Weinstein also gave more than $25,000 each to the two current senators from New York: Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Weinstein paid even more special attention to the very top. He donated to both Bill and Hillary Clinton repeatedly during the Clinton presidency, helping to launch the first lady’s political career in her first run for office.
That’s old friend Ed Morrissey noting the money that has gone to Democrats from Weinstein alone and more importantly where it has gone”
These facts are inescapable. Weinstein was a very real part of the political life of the two families most identified with Democratic Party leadership. The Clintons held social events and fundraisers with the Hollywood executive for years; one bash in June 2016 raised more than $1.8 million for her presidential run. The Obamas sent their daughter Malia to intern for Weinstein’s company last year.
Weinstein had indisputably ingratiated himself into the highest levels of Democratic power.
Or in other words during the period when the Democrat Party embraced the redefinition of marriage, gay culture, transgenderism, radical feminism and extreme libertine culture while rejecting traditional culture, God, the Church and traditional morality, they were being financed heavily by an industry known for its libertine culture in general and by an individual in particularly who used that political power and wealth to enable him to prey on the same women who they claimed to champion.
And the Journalist who have invested completely in said party are also feeling the heat
“Journalistic integrity is dead,” he declared. “There is no such thing anymore. So everything is about weaponization of information.” Standing behind a mahogany podium in a baggy dark suit, Boyle preached with the confidence of a true believer. In a stuttering staccato, he condemned the nation’s preeminent news outlets as “corrupted institutions,” “built on a lie,” and a criminal “syndicate that needs to be dismantled.” Boyle and his compatriots were laboring to usher in an imminent—and glorious—journalistic apocalypse. “We envision a day when CNN is no longer in business. We envision a day when The New York Timescloses its doors. I think that day is possible.”
This is a defeat in the culture wars for the left on the scale of a Midway or a Stalingrad and worst of all for the left in general and the Democrat / MSM party in particular the Weinstein revelations are coming at the nadir of Democrat and media power and influence and the rise of a populist Donald Trump who is intimately familiar with how the Hollywood, celebrity culture works which is why at least some in the MSM see the coming apocalypse.
The only question left is this, will conservatives be wise enough to “Keep up the Skeer” and prevent them from recovering
Update: Weinstein isn’t going down without a fight and Allahpundit wins the internet today with a line that is both funny and kinda sad at the same time.
The most darkly funny part of this is Weinstein thinking he still has a career to return to. The idea that Hollywood would welcome back a man who’s been credibly accused of abject degeneracy seems … totally plausible, now that I think of it.
Boy do I miss the days of Jimmy Stewart
Update 2: Sometimes I swear Donald Trump’s enemies are secretly working for him
Porn King Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine is offering $10 million for information leading to the impeachment of Donald J. Trump as president.
Because if I was the Democrat/Never Trump team trying to distance myself from Hollywood and guys going after women in the post Weinstein era is a porn king offering millions leading the anti Trump charge is not the image I want out there.
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