Photo by www.GlynLowe.com | CC by 2.0
The only surprise concerning the exposure of Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein as a serial abuser of women is that anybody could possibly be surprised. We are after all talking about a town, industry and culture which not only produces monsters it goes out of its way to cultivate and worship them.
Sympathy for Mr Weinstein is notably in exceedingly short supply among family members, former friends, associates, and fellow studio execs in Hollywood – not to mention high profile political figures within the US liberal political community whose ‘loyalty’ and friendship he’d cultivated over the years with the judicious use of campaign donations. All of them have scrambled for cover, treating a man they once revered as a veritable sun king as something akin to radioactive waste overnight. Even his wife and brother have thrown him under the bus.
It describes an astounding and vertiginous fall from grace to befall a man who for decades was so synonymous with Hollywood and the movie industry he was considered infallible, one of the very few movie executives with the ability to make and ruin careers with a phone call.
But lost in what has now become a feeding frenzy of condemnation – to the point where it is hard to escape the whiff of opportunism on the part of those who’ve jumped on a bandwagon that has reached warp speed – is that Weinstein’s contemptible abuse of women, far from the exception or an aberration has long…