Sanctimony Bites Weinstein Democrats
Maybe Hollywood progressives will tone down their self-righteousness.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Oct. 10, 2017 6:44 p.m. ET
One of the few successes of John McCain’s 2008 campaign was a 30-second ad called “Celeb.” It interspersed images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with Barack Obama and his adoring crowds. A narrator said: “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world but is he ready to lead?”
Pundits and political pros dismissed the spot as off-target and unconvincing. Mr. McCain seemed almost embarrassed by it, claiming his campaign was just having “fun.”
Yet the implication that Mr. Obama was a glitzy Hollywood-style confection resonated with voters. Mr. Obama, just coming off his ecstatic appearance in Berlin, saw his poll numbers drop noticeably. His advisers were quoted in the press acknowledging the ad’s power.
Which brings us to Harvey Weinstein. If Hollywood people are anything like normal people, they should be nearly as offended by Mr. Weinstein’s presumptions about them as they are by his alleged bullying of women for sex. Where does he get off assuming his colleagues can be so easily manipulated, will so readily fall in line, just because he cites, as he did in his recent self-defense, their shared liberal politics?
How can somebody with his smarts be so heavy-handed and obvious as to think he can mint an instant pass for his transgressions merely by alluding to his opposition to the National Rifle Association and President Trump?
Then again, maybe we’re missing the real point. Mr. Weinstein was reminding liberal elites that his trouble is their trouble, because they tolerated him for so long. That’s why this scandal may have legs.
He was a guest at the Obama White House 13 times. He gave hundreds of thousands to the Clintons. In 2016,
he hosted or headlined multiple fundraisers for Mrs. Clinton with people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker.
He was coached by Team Clinton for a campaign appearance on CBS. In turn, he coached campaign chief Robby Mook on how to answer the Bernie Sanders threat.
He’s also a man who the Los Angeles Times now tells us was “generally loathed” in Hollywood. His sexual predations were so well known that they were the subject of a joke on “30 Rock.” His behavior, we now learn, has been the subject of ongoing reporting projects at the New Yorker, New York magazine and the New York Times, which finally blew Mr. Weinstein out of the water with its 3,500-word account last week.
His offenses were the “biggest mess” Disney had to deal with during its 12-year partnership with Mr. Weinstein, a former executive now tells the Times. Actresses Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan, who related their stories to the paper, as well as Lena Dunham, creator of HBO’s “Girls,” have been outspoken in the aftermath about Tinsel Town’s history of covering up for Mr. Weinstein.
Then there is Meryl Streep, who worked closely with Mr. Weinstein, who sang his praises at the Oscars. She claims never to have heard the unsavory stories. Her denunciation of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged sins this week came not when the Times story broke, not when Mr. Weinstein took a leave of absence from the company he created—but only when his board (led by his brother) stuck a final fork in him by announcing his firing.
OK, hypocrisy is a price we pay for civilization. Politicians and Hollywood types especially are in the business of faking sincerity.
Yet there is one thing about which the Hollywood-progressive nexus has been perfectly sincere: its conviction that its choice of political party is a testament to its own shining personal virtue. The Democrats’ celebrity enablers played a key role in fostering the inordinate self-righteousness of the modern progressive movement, which has reached ad absurdum proportions lately with the violent bullies of the Antifa movement.
The McCain “Celeb” ad, in retrospect, was a signpost. Last year the Democrats finally offloaded a big chunk of working-class and middle-class America, many of whose residents had been Obama voters. The Democrats became the concentrated party of urban blue America, with urban blue America’s special susceptibility to the self-celebritizing aspects of social media.
Republicans and conservatives were understandably delighted by Mr. Weinstein’s ludicrous appeal to partisan solidarity in the midst of his sexual harassment extremis.
Maybe progressives would like to come up and watch him shower later?
Donald Trump, of course, has been guilty of offenses against feminism too, though apparently not like Mr. Weinstein’s. Rather, the real connection is this:
Liberal hypocrites like Mr. Weinstein were a big reason 63 million Americans voted for a conservative hypocrite like Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has his faults, but an excess of sanctimony isn’t one. Just maybe when the Weinstein scandal has run its course, progressives will discover the virtue of toning down their own excessive claims to righteousness.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sanctim...ats-1507675466
