December 6, 2017

"Harvey Weinstein built his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in between."

"He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his power to intimidate."

So begins "Weinstein’s Complicity Machine/The producer Harvey Weinstein relied on powerful relationships across industries to provide him with cover as accusations of sexual misconduct piled up for decades," by Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantnor, Susan Dominos, Jim Gutenberg, and Steve Eder (in the NYT).

I haven't read it yet, but I just want to say that, predisposed as I am to think of Weinstein as an evil power-abuser, I don't accept the portrayal of all of his facilitators as machine parts. He couldn't have built a machine out of people. They had to make themselves complicit. An individual can go wrong in many ways (including through mental illness or substance abuse as well as through evil), and those who form relationships and do business are morally responsible for noticing such a person in their midst and not becoming part of his "machine." I'm going to be tough on the unwitting as well as the witting. If this really is The Reckoning, let's look at the whole picture.

I'll just home in on the section about Hillary Clinton:
[Weinstein] acquired famous friends through his other activities, including in the Democratic politics that dominate Hollywood.

Chief among them were Bill and Hillary Clinton. Over the years, Mr. Weinstein provided them with campaign cash and Hollywood star power, inviting Mrs. Clinton to glittery premieres and offering to send her films. After Mr. Clinton faced impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he donated $10,000 to Mr. Clinton’s legal defense fund. Mr. Weinstein was a fund-raiser and informal adviser during Mrs. Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, a guest in her hotel suite when she won and a host of an A-list victory party. He was an early backer of both her presidential bids....

[T]wo prominent women said they warned Mrs. Clinton’s team. In 2016, Lena Dunham, the writer and actress, said [to Kristina Schake, the campaign’s deputy communications director,] “I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point.... I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”

Earlier, during the 2008 presidential race, Tina Brown, the magazine editor, said she cautioned a member of Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle about him. “I was hearing that Harvey’s sleaziness with women had escalated since I left Talk in 2002 and she was unwise to be so closely associated with him,” Ms. Brown said in an email....

Weeks before Election Day [in 2016, Weinstein] helped organize a star-packed fund-raiser: an evening on Broadway with Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway and others....

Nick Merrill, the communications director, said in a statement: “We were shocked when we learned what he’d done."... Mrs. Clinton herself said in a statement in October that she was “shocked and appalled by the revelations,”
The expression is, "shocked, shocked." You have to say it twice.


80 comments:

Bad Lieutenant said...

Ah, Li'l Lena! A. K. A. "Pebbles."

I know you've missed her, Emerita, but talk about your unreliable narrators. Did this "Harvey" have a mustache and cowboy boots, too?

P. S. Conflicting edits, zzz...

Unknown said...

When Lena Dunham knows better than you then you really should self-evaluate.

Of course, topics for Lena's warning:

Would she have stayed so quiet if Weinstein was not liberal?*

Did Hillary continuing to associate with the rapist ever give her misgivings about Hillary?

If she knew he was a rapist could she have done more about it?

Did she stay quiet because she is just a 'girl'? There is a self-identity question in that one.

*I don't think the answer to this one is as obvious as it first seems. Hollywood Power might trump Politics, which might trump Personal Ethics.

Yes, I am using the word 'trump' there.

- james james

David Begley said...

And at least by 2008, as reported by Fox News, everyone knew about Matt Lauer. Public roast. Katie Couric did a Letterman top 10 bit and one item was, “Eating Curry,”

Lauer was dicking them all.

Coastal Liberal Elites are our betters in every way. So smart. So clever. So rich. So beautiful.

TML said...

I'll only say that I'm still confused when I see "home in" because I'm so conditioned to see "hone in." Curiously, some usage guides now accept the latter. Like "begs the question" for "raises the question," it would appear it is 'acceptable" only because it's barged its way in so often we're choosing to ignore it and move on. Not because there's an etymologically-valid reason.

rhhardin said...

Non-crimes are just deals. There's nothing to be complicit in.

You can't organize the law on womens' feelings.

On the contrary, deals can only be worked out individually.

Owen said...

That film clip never gets old.

Agree with your pushback on the machine/parts metaphor. Each of us has agency and awareness. We run those functions on our own behavior, on that of others with whom we deal one-on-one, and indirectly through social and group participation (networks at work and in community, gossip, etc). No way can we pull the Sergeant Schultz excuse in some categorical way: especially when the pathology is as flagrant and persistent as Weinstein's was. Hollywood knew, actually or constructively.

I wonder if this will lead to lenders and investors in the movie and entertainment business feeling the need to conduct deeper due diligence on their borrowers' personal foibles. Will candidates for board seats or senior jobs be scrutinized more closely? Will they condition their acceptance of such positions, on everybody else passing scrutiny?

Pass the popcorn. Also? Invest in investigative agencies...

Ann Althouse said...

Lena Dunham is part of the complicity machine. She knew something but not more, she did some warnings but not more. It's not enough. It's corruption.

Bob Boyd said...

Harvey sent his splooge to rain on the witting and the unwitting alike.

Michael K said...

The left long ago lost interest in "Bourgeois culture."

Gramsci knew that the bourgeois culture must be destroyed for Marxism to replace it.

Hollywood, about 1970, got on the Marxist bandwagon. They flirted with it in the 1930s and 40s but then the Cold War discouraged all but the true believers, like Trumbo.

Ann Althouse said...

It was Hillary's slogan: "Stronger together."

MayBee said...

So is Obama just completely left out of this version of the story?

Did Lena tell the Obamas, whose daughter went to work for Harvey, that Harvey was a rapist? Were the Obamas the least observant people around?
Why is this all about Bill and Hillary? Where are Barack and Michelle? (I grant you I have not read this, but the blurbs I've seen don't mention them)

Bob Boyd said...

Weinstein's complicity machine was a toy compared to the Clinton's.

MayBee said...

I would add that for Harvey to continue to do what he did, he also needed some number of women who were fine giving him what he wanted in exchange for what he could give them.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Modeled after the Clinton-Carville-Clinton way.

Larry J said...

Well, that's the second time a long post has been eaten by the web hosting service. "Conflicting edits" my ass.

Ann Althouse said...

"The left long ago lost interest in "Bourgeois culture." Gramsci knew that the bourgeois culture must be destroyed for Marxism to replace it."

Are you implying that The Reckoning gets us closer to communism?

David Begley said...

Dunham, “he has a problem with sexual assault.” “he is a rapist.”

The thing normal people do in that case is call the police.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

And once again we have a comment essentially stating that this is all bullshit. That Weinstein was engaging in an act of commerce, exchanging access to acting roles for sexual favors and that is OK because both sides profited from the exchange. And that is why Libertarianism is never going to be more than a fringe movement. Sex is not a mere bodily craving akin to hunger and thirst. Evolution would see to that if nothing else. Sex is for procreation and women with children need protection and support. Hunter gatherers in bands of a couple of dozen with no real privacy would know pretty quickly if people were sleeping around. Fights would break out, group cohesiveness would be threatened and someone would be expelled from the group, which would be a death sentence. Sexual mores evolved when there was no birth control or antibiotics. We have had those for less than 100 years. Much less. Human nature shaped by 100,000 or more years of evolution is not going to change to accommodate the porn fueled sexual fantasies of emotionally disconnected purely recreational sex. Hugh Hefner's conception of sex was inhuman and destructive.

MayBee said...

Larry J- if you get the conflicting edits screen, you can hit the back button and be back at what you've written prior to hitting the publish button. You can then hit the button again.

rhhardin said...

Are you implying that The Reckoning gets us closer to communism?

State control of everything, by making individual deals into public problems.

Take ownership of the problems.

Political control is given to the group that owns it.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

You can't organize the law on womens' feelings.

Actually, yeah you can. And it is.

Martha said...

Malia interned for Lena Dunham on the set of Firls during the summer of 2015.
So Lena Dunham knew Malia fairly well but did not warn her to avoid Weinstein and Company where she did her 2016 internship

Martha said...

set of Girls!

Michael K said...

Are you implying that The Reckoning gets us closer to communism?

I think the left has a love affair with Socialism.

They are all about Utopia. What was the most prominent feature of "Brave New World?"

Casual sex without consequences. Huxley missed out on the birth control pill and contraception was clumsy in his description but birth and pregnancy were diverted to technology.

Marxism usually leads to communism because Socialism cannot work without compulsion and compulsion becomes communism.

AllenS said...

I'm Shocked About What Happened -- by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Michael K said...

"you can hit the back button and be back at what you've written prior to hitting the publish button. "

Not always. I now copy my comment before hitting "Publish."

AllenS said...

That comment took 4 attempts.

Sebastian said...

"They had to make themselves complicit." Correct. Looks like the NYT is slowly slouching toward an honest Reckoning. To get there, they'll have to itemize the forms of complicity:

the traditional sucking up of the lowly toward the ruling elite
the deliberate sexual deals by actresses sleeping their way to greater fame and fortune
the competition among women that overrode the demands of sisterhood
the feminist charade of claiming equality while enacting weakness
the progressive favoring of power over principle
and the cool pro-Polanski approval of sexual transgression as a strike against bourgeois morality.

In their pursuit of power, progs are always prepared to bring out the kneepads. What they have to Reckon with is who they are.

Owen said...

Of course Hollywood loves socialism. Because socialism is a fantasy that can only prosper in the fertile ground of the narcissist, who believes himself (herself, itself, etc) to be the axis of the turning universe and to be able to do anything from reshaping gender to rewriting history. That perverse form of self-actualization is the engine inside almost every narrative Hollywood now produces, and has produced for decades.

The wonder is not that Hollywood leans socialist; the wonder is that anyone in Hollywood has not succumbed.

Bob Boyd said...

"That comment took 4 attempts."

It was worth it.

MadisonMan said...

If they're getting the money, the Clintons don't care where it comes from, or who has been damaged in that money's generation.

William said...

I wonder what dark machinations Roman Polanski used to get a standing ovation during the Academy Awards?

ga6 said...

She also forgot the"dismayed", according to the Jesse Jackson Sr. style book one must be "shocked. appalled, and dismayed"..

Amadeus 48 said...

"Are you implying that The Reckoning gets us closer to communism?"

Am I missing something? Doesn't The Reckoning cause us to revert towards the bourgeois repression that was denounced so heartily when we Baby Boomers were young? Isn't Harvey Weinstein a twisted manifestation of the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll attitudes celebrated by Rolling Stone and the Rolling Stones? The NYT just told us that sex was better under Communism.

If you are going to let it all hang out, someone is probably going to get it out.

In short, I don't think that The Reckoning is anything more than a quasi-feminist ripple in the great tide of secularization that has swept the West. It doesn't mean much, and it won't last; it is temporary score-settling. How that secularization will fare against cultures with more robust and confident views of deity, the relative roles of men and women, and the necessity of submission remains to be seen.

Virtue doesn't have a strong lobby in the West, compared to convenience, envy, and power.

William said...

I keep my comments pithy. There is no nuance under the oppressive rule of conflicting edits. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a metaphor for something, but it's not an idea you can explore against the arbitrary and capricious reckonings of conflicting edits.

Bob Boyd said...

This kind of corruption and complicity leads to decline in the institutions it infects.
For example the Weinstein company couldn't make talent it's first consideration in hiring writers, directors, actors, etc. The first consideration needed be a willingness to be complicit. The product suffers. Is this one of the reasons why so many movies suck now?

I think we're seeing a similar phenomenon in government. At the top we end up not with the best people, but with people who are, first and foremost, willing to be complicit. Competence is a secondary consideration. And then the need to cover for that incompetence leads to more complicity. And it snowballs.

William said...

If you're rich and important and go to the Playboy Mansion to hook up with a star struck nineteen year old, then this falls under the rubric of sexual liberation. If you're a major motion picture star, i.e. rIch and important, and Harvey Weinstein yanks off in your presence, then this is sexual harassment. Who, whom.

Unknown said...

"he was a guest in her hotel suite..."
so he was on the receiving end of having to perform for the powerful in a hotel room setting. No wonder he was so aware of the benefits of it...

rhhardin said...

Watch complicity unfold.

MadTownGuy said...

Are you implying that The Reckoning gets us closer to communism?

The endgame is control.
In short, sexual ideologues have created a new political theology, replete with a politicized, government-approved definition of sin. Or in other words, they eliminated religious sin and replaced it with political crime. Rather than removing the shame and stigma of the “fornicator” and “adulterer” as they promised, they have simply replaced it with that of the “abuser” and “harasser.” In the process they have replaced morality with ideology, and community standards with themselves as the sole arbiters of innocence and guilt.

rhhardin said...

Indifference is a limbo eruption.

Kevin said...

In the interest of focusing on language the way this blog so often does, I really thought the phrase was "hone in," not "home in." The internet tells me I'm wrong though, that hone in is a relatively minor US-based variant.

Anonymous said...

Ron Winkleheimer: And once again we have a comment essentially stating that this is all bullshit. That Weinstein was engaging in an act of commerce, exchanging access to acting roles for sexual favors and that is OK because both sides profited from the exchange. And that is why Libertarianism is never going to be more than a fringe movement. Sex is not a mere bodily craving akin to hunger and thirst.

But I'll give our resident über spergitarian points for consistency, even if his view of human relations, from micro- to macro-scale, are based on all-pervading incomprehension.

Lots of non-libertarian liberals also like to pretend that well-functioning societies are an a-cultural "just there" default state, which can be dicked around with as one's fancy dictates, and built entirely on nothing but the "free choice" of atomized individuals...when the concept of "free choice" gets them what they want. Of course, they start squawking about and appealing to all those other factors that are required for high trust and high quality of life in a society -- culturally-bound, culturally-specific factors -- that must limit on the scope of "choice", when somebody else's "free choice" may prevent them from getting everything they want.

Neither of the above are the ideologies of an adult, and both are annoying, but the former arises from a kind of invincible childlike innocence, while the latter is the viewpoint of the spoiled-rotten child.

Infinite Monkeys said...

Did Lena tell the Obamas, whose daughter went to work for Harvey, that Harvey was a rapist? Were the Obamas the least observant people around?

It seems to me that the women who were in danger from Weinstein were ones that needed something from him. I read that he used Malia's internship to sell another intern position for $15,000 because that intern might just possibly run into the former first daughter during work. He needed her for the cachet of having an Obama and for making a few extra bucks on the side.

The Obamas probably just wondered why the price was set so low.

rhhardin said...

@madtownguy that's a good article

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/sexual-revolution-turns-ugly

except it dogmatizes God a little.

There's ethics and there's ethics. The one that's built in is the right one.

Darrell said...

The Harassed women are TIME's Person of the Year for 2017. They said on NBC that they had no one to tell--"What was I supposed to call the Attorney General?" Well, the police would have been a good start.

Anonymous said...

MadTownGuy quoting somebody: "Rather than removing the shame and stigma of the “fornicator” and “adulterer” as they promised, they have simply replaced it with that of the “abuser” and “harasser.” In the process they have replaced morality with ideology, and community standards with themselves as the sole arbiters of innocence and guilt."

"When virtue is lost, laws proliferate." Tao Te Ching.

Or something like that. And however Tao is transliterated these days. I'd substitute "coherent culture" for "virtue", since virtue is always in short supply everywhere and in all times.

Birkel said...

Angel-Dyne

You should do more to understand why rhhardin is typing what he is typing. Your dismissive comments do you no service.

rhhardin implies that the balance of society would be improved if the government interfered less and the private sphere were expanded. Would increased freedom be a bad thing? Show your work.

My take: Increased freedom is messy and terrible but better than any available option.

Anonymous said...

Amadeus 48: I don't think that The Reckoning is anything more than a quasi-feminist ripple in the great tide of secularization that has swept the West. It doesn't mean much, and it won't last; it is temporary score-settling.

I concur.

Ray - SoCal said...

Weinstein built an amazing machine to perpetuate his excuse and cover it up.

Ray - SoCal said...

I’m having the same issue with commenting as Michael K. And when I go back now, the comment is gone.

I did not copy the error message so hard to research.

Gut feeling it’s a google issue for althouse only, just needs a few minutes for a googler to fix...

Larry J said...

MayBee said...

Larry J- if you get the conflicting edits screen, you can hit the back button and be back at what you've written prior to hitting the publish button. You can then hit the button again.


It didn't happen this time. When I hit the back button, the comment block was blank.

Big Mike said...

Interesting to juxtapose the number of people who claim to have been shocked with the number of people who claim that "everybody knew."

MayBee said...

Larry J- wow, Google really does hate us.

Allen S- hahahahaha!

MayBee said...

Robert Cook- ha!

It's true that Weinstein surely didn't come on to Malia. But did Dunham not tell them? Did someone else not mention them?

IDK, the lack of the Obamas and the inclusion of Hillary in all of these stories make me think Obama people are helping feed the stories part to hurt Hillary.

Anonymous said...

Birkel: You should do more to understand why rhhardin is typing what he is typing. Your dismissive comments do you no service.

rhhardin implies that the balance of society would be improved if the government interfered less and the private sphere were expanded.


Butthurt libertarian on deck. Tl;dr: thinks anyone who dismisses their simplistic proposals must not understand them...

You should do more to understand why I typed what I typed. I am pointing out the inherent contradiction in wanting less "state" while at the same time believing that a society can be run on an entirely individualist, contract-based model with no "bottom" of implicit, evolved, shared cultural understanding. Where do societies of limited government and a robust, "expanded private sphere" come from? Why has legalism invaded the sphere of sexual relations (and other private spheres which are best regulated by "private rules" and "understandings between individuals")? Hint: it's not just because of "statists" and "feminists", and it can't be fixed just by voting and legislating in favor of "the private sphere".

"...[S]ociety would be improved if the government interfered less and the private sphere were expanded"? Well, no shit, Sherlock. Glad you and rh have that one figured out. Now, for the hard part - how to get there from where we are now. Which might involve thinking about how we got here in the first place.

I will continue to be dismissive of people who substitute libertarian sloganeering for thinking.

carrie said...

It takes a village to help someone keep something a secret when that person is as prominent as Weinstein, Rose, Lauer, etc.

n.n said...

A culture of "friendship with benefits" (e.g. "casting couch" relationships).

Feminism sacrificed a lot for social, political, and financial progress.

rhhardin said...

@Angel-Dyne Epstein on Rule of Law

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/06/epstein_on_the.html

is perhaps the best podcast ever, on what the law is for. Roughly, to make gains from trade possible, you need state infrastructure.

The state decides the rules that make agreements possible to rely on, or expands the opportunities for agreements.

No fraud, no force.

There's libertarian and there's libertarian.

Owen said...

Libertarianism is too often slandered by its apparent association with libertinism. The Founders knew the importance of character, both for individuals and for society. Character at bottom is about honesty, which is about living up to one's promises over time. Now? We have mostly given ourselves permission to redefine ourselves whenever convenient, that is, skipping out when the rent comes due.

Big Mike said...

Mrs. Clinton herself said in a statement in October that she was “shocked and appalled by the revelations”

I wonder if there isn't anything the Clintons wouldn't overlook if you gave them enough money.

rhhardin said...

Epstein would be guilty of mansplaining however.

Amadeus 48 said...

A wacky prediction: a significant percentage of millennials in the West will embrace Islam, responding to its self-confidence and clear path to virtue. All others will be pressed to submit.

Robert Ferrigno,call your office.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rhhardin said...

Angel-Dyne all you need it that you come out ahead, not some deep ethical devotion.

There are other systems, where only certain classes come out ahead, and that's an obstacle to expanding the rule of law. That's what we have now.

Seriously, try the podcast. It's about the densest coverage of surprising insights you'll ever find.

Anonymous said...

rhhardin: ...is perhaps the best podcast ever, on what the law is for...

The point isn't what law is for -- nobody's missing that point.

The point is, what does it take to have a society where you can have rule of law, and formal law keeping its nose out of places it doesn't belong, in the first place.

Just knowing what law is for, and why rule of law and limited government are good things, doesn't get you there.


[Re-posted because...stupid blogger.]

rhhardin said...

Angel-Dyne No, the basis of the law relies only on self-interest. You come out ahead with it. No deep ethical character is necessary.

The bad ethics is in trying to expand the law into stuff that leaves you behind.

Bay Area Guy said...

Good article, not as good as Ronan Farrow's though.

Let the Great Unraveling in Hollywood continue!

Anonymous said...

rhhardin: Angel-Dyne all you need it that you come out ahead, not some deep ethical devotion.

This is uncomprehending (N.B., not incomprehensible) bullshit.

There are other systems, where only certain classes come out ahead, and that's an obstacle to expanding the rule of law. That's what we have now.

I live in a city where the rule of law still prevails. (Nice place to live and do business.)

I've lived in countries where it didn't.

My children live in American cities where, they tell me, they are witnessing increasing corruption and accelerating failure of rule of law.

I guess the difference between the first place and the other two is that the people in the former have listened to Epstein's podcasts, and the people in the latter two haven't.

rhhardin said...

What ruins rule of law is outrage that favors your own side with moral-like but entertaining feelings.

What makes something actually moral is it calls you out to watch out for the other guy and thus makes you non-interchangeable and irreplaceable. It defines who you are regardless of who you think you are.

Its opposite is moralizing.

Dealmakers have no trouble watching out for the other guy. Look at Trump even.

You don't see Althouse watching out for men, which at the moment is a moral failure.

(10th consecutive conflicting edits)

Larry J said...

Ever wonder how a dictator stays in power? It isn't as if one man can run (and ruin) a country by himself. What he does is to install his family and cronies in all positions of power. Those cronies have at least as much to lose as the dictator should he get deposed, so they'll be very aggressive against dissidents.

The same thing applies to guys like Harvey Weinstein. He established a network of lawyers, private investigators, politicians, and assorted other lowlife around him for protection. They, and people in the entertainment industry, had a lot to lose should something happen to Weinstein, so they were willing to do all sorts of things to protect him.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Angel-Dyne said...Hint: it's not just because of "statists" and "feminists", and it can't be fixed just by voting and legislating in favor of "the private sphere".

Counterpoint: it may in fact be mostly because of "statists" and "feminists" but you're still entirely correct that it can't be fixed just by voting in favor of "the private sphere."
Your point (which rests on the fact that both the law and politics are downstream of culture--despite there being feedback channels both ways) is a good one and I agree that libertarian-leaning people like me have historically based too many of our "practical" arguments on Step 1 = assume widespread/society-wide agreement on core libertarian and/or classical liberal premises...with the rest of the steps logically following. Since that reality doesn't exist the rest of the argument is largely irrelevant.

My turn towards cynicism started with the realization that not only did most people/Americans not share my libertarian-leaning beliefs, but also that they were not likely to ever be persuaded or convinced to share them in the future using any tool or method I could think of. The nice centrist folks who weep at the idea of people putting a love of liberty over concern for the feelings of others will never be persuaded by any (logical/logic-based) argument I could ever think up. There are (many) more of them than there are of me, and while Americans have historically been outliers in terms of libertarian-leaning beliefs we're seemingly reverting back to the world norm (which is more socialist/Leftist/Progresssive) with each generation.

rhhardin: I second your recommendation of that EconTalk podcast with Prof. Epstein discussing the rule of law; here is a clickable link:

EconTalk : Epstein on Rule of Law

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Society is more than the sum total of its laws. Real people have interests that are not economic in nature. People are not blank slates but are born with some hard wiring that has to be accommodated for by society or that society will not survive.

I'm all for reducing government scope, but Libertarian doctrine is just as much based on fantasy as Marxism.

By the way, elimination of bourgeoisie values, especially sexual values, is a Marxian project meant to further atomize the masses in order to rule them.

"Actually, the Wersgor domain was like nothing at home. Most wealthy, important persons dwelt on their vast estates with a retinue of blueface hirelings. They communicated on the far-speaker and visited in swift aircraft of spaceships. Then there were other classes I have mentioned elsewhere, such as warriors, merchants, and politicians. But no one was born to his place in life. Under the law, all were equal, all free to strive as best they might for money or position. Indeed, they had even abandoned the idea of families. Each Wersgor lacked a surname, being identified by a number instead in a central registry. Male and female seldom lived together more than a few years. Children were sent at an early age to schools, where they dwelt until mature, for their parents oftener thought them an encumbrance than a blessing.

Yet this realm, in theory a republic of freemen, was in practice a worse tyranny than than mankind has known, even in Nero’s infamous day.
The Wersgorix had no special affection for their birthplace; they acknowledged no immediate ties of kinship or duty. As a result, each individual had no one to stand between him and the all-powerful central government. In England, when King John grew overweening, he clashed both with ancient law and with vested local interests; so the barons curbed him and thereby wrote another word or two of liberty for all Englishmen. The Wersgor were a lickspittle race, unable to protest any arbitrary decree of a superior. “Promotion according to merit” meant only “promotion according to one’s usefulness to the imperial ministers.”

The High Crusade - Poul Anderson

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Angel-Dyne said...I guess the difference between the first place and the other two is that the people in the former have listened to Epstein's podcasts, and the people in the latter two haven't.

Well I for one will happily contribute towards a fund to buy Blues Brother-style cars w/giant bullhorns/speakers to drive around broadcasting that audio. Hell, I'd vote to use taxpayer money to do that, just for the irony!

HoodlumDoodlum said...

dda6ga dda6ga said...She also forgot the"dismayed", according to the Jesse Jackson Sr. style book one must be "shocked. appalled, and dismayed"..

I can't find the clip but I remember a great SNL sketch where Darrel Hammond did Jesse Jackson just reacting to a bunch of different things with "I'm outraged!" I can still hear it in my head all these years later.

DKWalser said...

I think it is more than merely possible to work closely with someone without knowing that the individual in question is acting badly in private. Unless someone openly harasses others, you might work with them for years without seeing anything that causes you to suspect that they're acting badly.

Martin said...

So, Lena Dunham told a close retainer of the Clintons, “I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point.... I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”

ROFLMAO!!

To whom did she think she was addressing that?

JackOfClubs said...

"I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist..."

That doesn't sound like something you say in a memo. It sounds like something you make up after the fact to cover your own complicity/inaction. If you are trying to warn someone about someone else on your team you talk about the danger in euphemistic terms. Tina Brown's quote about "sleaziness" rings more true to form.

SDN said...

In fairness to Dunham, she probably looked at Malia the same way that Harvey did: Malia has Secret Service on call and usually in physical proximity 24/7/365. No way. NO ONE'S vajayjay is that tempting when you're 90%+ certain to be caught.

Bad Lieutenant said...

That doesn't sound like something you say in a memo. It sounds like LIBEL

FIFY

Poor Li'l Lena! The only woman in Hollywood that Harvey Weinstein WOULDN'T molest.