"What explains Weinstein’s identification with progressive causes?"

Asks Thomas Frank (at the Guardian). (Frank is the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and a book that particularly on point here and that I read and liked a lot, "Listen, Liberal.")

Perhaps it was all about moral absolution, in the same way that lists of corporations-that-care always turn out to be led by outfits like Walmart, Goldman Sachs and Exxon-Mobil. In the world of the wealthy, liberalism is something you do to offset your rapacious behavior in other spheres. It’s no coincidence that, in Weinstein’s desperate first response to the accusations against him, he thought to promise war against the National Rifle Association and to support scholarships for women.

I don't think that's the reason. I think it's the culture of artists and quasi-artists to embrace liberalism. You'll look bad within your set if you don't. If you don't really believe in or care about politics, the easiest thing to do is to outwardly pose as liberal and throw some of your money at liberal causes. Hollywood is about exteriors. It's a visual medium about beautiful people. It's surprising that anyone there does anything other than espouse liberalism. Certainly, an ugly man seeking access to beautiful women would act out liberalism.

This makes me think of a scene in the movie "The Front" (script here), a 1976 movie about a blacklisted Hollywood writer. The character Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel) is accused of being a communist:

The question is, Mr. Brown, what have you done?

Nothing. I'm an actor.

Nothing?

Six years ago, I marched in the May Day Parade. I bought a Daily Worker subscription. But I never read it, not one word. Right from the mailbox to the garbage can. I was only trying to get laid. This communist girl, she had a big ass...

I am not interested in your sex life, Mr. Brown.

I was just telling you that girl was the reason.

Back to Thomas Frank. He says there's "something deeper" than expiating the sin of greed. This is something like what I said about, but again, it depends on these people having a conscience and needing to "rationalize" to deal with guilt:

Most people on the left think of themselves as resisters of authority, but for certain of their leaders, modern-day liberalism is a way of rationalizing and exercising class power. Specifically, the power of what some like to call the “creative class”, by which they mean well-heeled executives in industries like Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

I think vanity and self-interest explain more than guilt and conscientiousness — especially in the case of Weinstein! Frank must realize he's got a coherence problem here because he shifts from talking about moral absolution to hypocrisy:

That this strain of liberalism also attracts hypocrites like Harvey Weinstein.... This is a form of liberalism that routinely blends self-righteousness with upper-class entitlement.....

Vanity and self-interest.