There was a good article recently with a heinous clickbait title (Why I Admire Anthony Weiner or some stupid shit like that) that made the helpful point that it’s understandable for people to have these disorders, but the responsibility is to use moments of clarity to prevent yourself from failing again in the future. Like Anthony Weiner should have switched to a dumbphone or asked his wife to monitor his texts, for example. If you let yourself get into a challenging situation, you’ve already lost.
Weiner was a whole different situation. He got caught, was publicly vilified and humbled, and he still did it again. Weiner is also a very smart man and fully understood what he was doing to himself. That truly was compulsive self-destructive behavior.
If we hear about Weinstein beating off into a potted fig tree next month, then he’ll be on the same level. Until then I assume he’s just a scumbag who leveraged his power over women, as opposed to a mentally ill scumbag who leveraged his power over women.
Also, remember that all of Weiner’s interactions were completely consensual. Inappropriate for most, and illegal with the underage girl, but consensual.
If you haven’t watched it yet, the documentary Weiner is, well, amazing. You watch this man disintegrate before your eyes on video. It’s astonishing that they let it be documented. Never seen anything like it. Unfortunately it doesn’t cover hitting rock bottom, having been produced between the second and third scandal.
And now three rape accusations.
I think I would’ve realized I had a problem after the first million dollar hush money payout.
Not at all. That’s getting away with it.
Dam breaks. NYT with an article to buttress that utterly damning New Yorker story, this time with some Hollywood power players saying they were harassed: Paltrow and Jolie among them.
Is it weird the attention being paid to who is and who isn’t making statements? I mean, statements that aren’t actually bringing anything new to light. I don’t think I really get the outcry that so and so isn’t saying something, or the reasons that other people are.
I don’t want to be insensitive or get hung up on something that isn’t really the point, but I don’t understand people, or the media, or both.
He was a major democratic donor himself and sponsored/produced large events where donor money was bundled together to be handed to democratic candidates. Since that fiscal relation exists, alongside a friendly personal relationship, Clinton or Obama failing to repudiate him is seen as tacit approval.
This. There’s been quite the outcry on the Alex Jones fringe related to Democrats talking the talk but not walking the walk on sexual harassment, so it’s exactly as stusser says.
And to take it further, I’m seeing more and more Democrats and also the DNC as a body returning Weinstein donations, or donating in kind to charities related to helping abused women and victims of sexual assault.
Yes they’re donating them to charities primarily. Problem is that much of the money came in bundles as I said, and it’s impossible to separate that out, and he’s been a major donor and fund raiser for years so most of the money has been spent. It’s a real mess.
Here’s audio from a NYPD sting operation. You hear him beg the girl to come to his room, and admit to feeling her up previously.
The weirdest objections I’ve seen are people saying that the Democratic politicians donating Weinstein’s funds to stuff like Planned Parenthood or charities for abuse survivors is that by doing so, “they’re still using the money to fund their agenda anyway.”
Yes, dickwhistle, women’s shelters are only for Democrats. They should’ve donated the money to the KKK, right?
Based on that New Yorker story, and combining that with the revelation that NY County DA Cy Vance Jr backed off on fraud charges on Jared and Ivanka, starting to wonder if he’s going to face a write-in campaign for his office.
They had him on tape admitting some level of assault, but the defense had an unlimited budget and was a skilled media manipulator, and Gutierrez’s past ensured it would have been a real shitshow that could well have ended with a payoff rather than a conviction.
I imagine their reasoning was that the resources spent to proscecute Weinstein could have been used to catch 20 other less connected abusers. It’s a pragmatic view, and not one that reads well in newspapers, that’s for sure. And I don’t agree myself. But then I’m not in the DA’s office.
I guess I also didn’t get Meryl Streep’s statement, which was weird. “Hey, what he did was awful, but we didn’t all know about it!”
Maybe I’m underestimating the extent to which people want to politicize it and use a Weinstein connection of any kind to go after any and everyone they can associate with him; were people asking for a statement from her though?
Streep very famously referred to Weinstein as “God” when accepting a 2012 Oscar or Golden Globe. She was one of the first people called out by numerous publications for potentially being a hypocrite, and her name and that quote cited frequently in news stories framing and explaining Weinstein’s power in show business.
Ah, thanks, that’s the context I was missing.
People are scrambling to distance themselves from him, that’s for sure.
I read somewhere that ‘if you worked in the movie industry’ you knew Weinstein was a sexual abuser. Well, I ‘worked in the movie industry’ from 1997-2007 (albeit in a pretty minor capacity) and never heard a single rumor to the effect. His reputation as I understood it was similar to individuals like Joel Silver and Scott Rudin: hard-charging asshole, in the standard ‘movie producer’ way.
It’s amazing how many people are coming forward now, including top stars. Weinstein’s getting to Cosby territory (or beyond?) in record time.
Way beyond. He’ll probably be the most infamous creep of all time, and if the sexual assault allegations are persued, the most famous criminal.
At least Cos can claim dementia or whatever. Weinstein is almost at the peak of his power, or was.
Can he really? As far as I can recall many of the allegations against Cosby dated back decades.