When the news hit about Harvey Weinstein, my first reaction was, "who is Harvey Weinstein?"^
I wouldn't have posted here about Weinstein at all until all the "me too" stuff started to come out, and then, as a draft, I started a thread called "Harvey Weinstein's everywhere? And if so, why?". I didn't get far on that, however. Indeed, I got no further than the title itself.
From time to time thereafter I pondered a thread on it, but I never typed anything out. In part I didn't because, as "me too" type stories started coming out, it was pretty clear that this entire story is societal in nature, not a Hollywood story (at least not exclusively so). It was tempting to caste it as an example of moral decay, but I think this behavior has gone on, in perhaps somewhat different forms, for eons, so that wouldn't be accurate. So I let it sit.
Milbank's article is entitled "How Could I Have Been So Stupid?" and relates that he was a staffer at The New Republic. I was unaware of that even though I was once a loyal TNR reader (I dropped my subscription this year).* In the article Milbank notes:
It was never an “open secret” among me and my then-colleagues that Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary czar of the New Republic,
behaved inappropriately with women in the workplace. It was simply out
in the open. This week, Wieseltier’s previously forthcoming culture
magazine was suspended, and Wieseltier publicly apologized for past
misconduct. Multiple women have complained of sexual harassment they say
occurred during much of his three-decade reign at the New Republic.
Pretty harsh statements by Cottle. How does that square with Milbank's article, in which he claims he wasn't aware of anything?. Well, it likely does and that's likely part of the nature of this problem. Milbank states now that he was blind to it and didn't know it was going on, but that he should have suspected something due to Wieseltier's lewdness and bullying nature. He's probably right, but then I suspect that most men in the modern workplace would have the same failing. Maybe that's not the case now. But maybe it is. As Milbank notes:
I and many other male alumni of TNR, feminists all, are shaken by what
we’ve learned this week. We weren’t a conspiracy of silence, but we were
in a cone of ignorance. My friend Franklin Foer, a former editor,
recalls being uncomfortable with Wieseltier’s lewd comments when he
first arrived at the magazine. But “they just seemed accepted. I said
nothing — and certainly didn’t think hard enough about how those remarks
would be suggestive of private behavior or created a hostile
environment.”
This begs the question, I suppose, of how long this has gone on. And I suspect for a really, really long time. Is it better or worse than it used to be? Well, that'd be hard to gauge. I suspect the answer to that is yes on both accounts.
Actress Loretta Young. Young was one of the inspirations for the character in Hail Caesar! who adopts her own baby to cover a pregnancy. In Young's case, however, the story wasn't so charming, according to some. According to Young, she's been raped (some stories state it as "date rape") by Clark Gable resulting in the pregnancy, but the story wasn't revealed until after the death of both of them and therefore it truly isn't clear that it happened. Young and her family came up with the story of her adopting a child to cover the situation and out of fear that the studio would try to force her to have an abortion which the devoutly Catholic Young would not contemplate, although here too there's some suggestion that the studio, much like in Hail Caesar!, conspired to keep the story secret essentially in the same method depicted in the film. She kept the secret, although it was widely speculated on for years, as she didn't want to damage her career or that of Gable.
To set the stage for that it might be instructive, as odd as it may seem, to take a look at older films, particularly those from the late 1950s or the 1960s.
The Apartment or
How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying provide good examples. Both deal with a similar scenario, to a degree, young women in white collar offices who are treated as toys.^^ The real story behind the pregnant actress in
Hail Caesar! provides a grimmer example (the actress the story was based on, Loretta Young, may have been raped, or date raped, or at least forced upon, maybe, by Clark Gable and the story was made up to cover the resulting pregnancy). And anyone who knows a woman who worked in that era can find stories of men who acted like leches in the office. It was simply tolerated as part of the background. Indeed, if tales of the abuse household servants routinely took in some households are taken into account, this history goes back way before women really started to enter the modern workplace.
Indeed, if we go way way back, the Old Testament gives us the example of the unjust elders, who sought to force Susanna into a sexual relationship after they'd been ogling her for a while at the pool near her garden, only to have their treachery revealed in a trial that cost them their lives.** We can presume that
Wieseltier, whose parents were fairly Orthodox Jews (and survivors of the Holocaust), and who attended Jewish schools (and sent his kids to them) knows that, as he has related as to how he quit wearing the yarmulke, (kippah) as, even though he still is a practicing Jew, "My faith was not sufficiently strong to withstand my desire to taste
wine and kiss women.”***
We likewise can suppose that Bill O'Reilly is well aware of this passage as he's a Catholic and it shows up fairly frequently in the liturgy. O'Reilly likewise must be aware of the admonition that even looking at a women with lust is the commission of adultery.**** At least in Wieseltier's case he's on record with a statement preferring women and wine over adherence to sexual morality. No such defense can be made for O'Reilly who never hinted on a personal code of aberrant departure..
Anyhow, just as Milbank now relates, there were signs that Wieseltier was a cad way back. People just chose to ignore it. Indeed, while getting ahead of ourselves here, apparently stories of his behavior have been long known, if ignored, and indeed Vanity Fair ran an article about him years ago detailing his drug use and, in their words "unproductive" life. . chances are that similar revelations (long caddish behavior) could have been said about every single one of these guys, starting with Bill Cosby and running forward to the reveal of the day.
So, anyway, has nothing changed at all? Well. . . .I'm not so sure. But I'm not sure it has either.
Back early in the Trump administration there was a day in which women demonstrated, and indeed that was sparked by accusations of caddish behavior by Trump. One of my cousins did and in doing it, posted her recollections of her early days in working in Denver. It was pretty clear that really the sort of brutish conduct that's now being complained about was part of her early professional career down there, something I had no idea of, and that caused her and her daughter to turn out for the demonstrations. I can't blame her, and I was pretty shocked. I would never have guessed it.
I particularly would not have guessed it in this day and age, in which women working has become so common. But it seems to continue to happen fairly regularly.
As noted above, this sort of thing seems to have gone on forever, and in some fashion it certainly always has. Nonetheless it's hard not to wonder if the Playboyization of the culture has a role in this today. Maybe not, but maybe it does.
While the recently departed UberCreep Hugh Hefner liked to portray his trashy rag as progressive, in reality it was massively regressive. What had been an industry dedicated, in large degree (although World War Two had partially changed that) to portraying prostitutes as toys changed to portraying every girl next door as a buxom dimwitted eager toy. That view of women has really stuck in society in spite of all the advances in the work place that have been made. You cannot really portray women as toys for men and expect powerful men not to treat them that way, to at least some degree. Indeed, it's been interesting to note that the behavior we're now noting has no political or ideological limit, it's been perpetrated by both male figures of the left and the right.
Comedian Bill Cosby in 1966. Cosby is genuinely hugely funny, and had a long career that resulted in him ending up being called, for a period of time, "America's Dad", only to have the crushing revelations of bizarre sexual behavior break out and lead to legal action of various type. Anyway you look at it, he seems to have engaged in some really creepy behavior over a long period of time.
Indeed, I find it interesting here that the first figure to be revealed in what is now a long chain of revelations was Bill Cosby. The story is now out sufficiently long on him that, in the American short attention span news cycle, the stories of him drugging and violating women are now so old that they don't seem to be included in the current stores of newly revealed creeps. But he was the first one. And as the first one, I don't find it insignificant that he was a favorite in some ways of Hugh Hefner, attending parties regularly at the Secular Temple of Women Abuse that Heftner style a "mansion".
So maybe that what's changed is that we don't really know where the line is actually drawn in that its so far crossed that even treating women as toys doesn't work as an excuse.. Maybe the concept that this isn't wrong had changed to where the line isn't so clear.
I suspect that's the case, and that's why I also think a lot of the current analysis is off the mark. I keep reading its about power. I don't think so. I think it's just about sex.
People are odd in who they want to interpret things and prone to over interpreting them to suit their current world view. I think that's what's occurring here. Acting badly about sex is something that some men in positions of power have done for eons, but not necessarily because it's about power, so much as their power gave them the ability to act badly in this context. Men without money and power have also acted badly in these regards as well. Men with power and money are simply better able to get away with it. So their exercising their vice in this fashion isn't to demonstrate their power, it's what their power lets them get away with. The same men would probably leer at women on the factory floor, if that was their station, if they could get away with it.
Indeed, the last reveal to hit the news on this seems to demonstrate this all the more. We've gone through Bill Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, Mark Halpern, Michael Oreskes and
Leon Wieseltier, amongst others, only to arrive upon Kevin Spacey, whom another man claims Spacey made a sexual advance upon when that man was fourteen.***** Spacey, he claims, was drunk at the time and doesn't recall it, but he apologized and then came out as a homosexual. That seems to be a pretty clear explanation, not an excuse but an explanation, but now the homosexual community is in an uproar claiming that Spacey slandered them by suggesting that homosexuals are ipso facto pedophiles. In actuality, however, that's not pedophile behavior but is classed by some other name I don't recall, and I'm not going to look up, which defines people who are attracted basically to post pubescent teenagers. I.e., really young men and women. That's significant in that that behavior is illegal and most people do not and will not engage or tolerate it but it's in the area of interaction which is not outside of the historic norm. It's predatory, but its a species of sexual predation and not a power play, and is justifiably something we're really shocked about. We read of the same conduct being perpetrated by some people in charge of young people, most often teachers it seems, fairly regularly. There was a shocking example of some teacher somewhere (I don't tend to follow these stories) who perpetrated such an act upon three students in a single day just recently, which is a lot more egregious, in relative terms, than Spacey's apparently one time drunk episode. That doesn't excuse either, but what it suggests is that all of this stuff is about sex, not power. Teachers, for example, are really powerful people in real terms in our society. Nor are the other people generally accused of these sorts of acts. Maybe Cosby, O'Reilly, Weinstein, Halpern and Wiseltier are, but that power allows them the opportunity, it's not the motive.
Obituary for Mildred Harris, movie actress, who born in Cheyenne. She was a
significant actress in the silent film era, having gone from being a
child actor to a major adult actress, but had difficulty making the
transition to talking pictures. Harris married Charlie Chaplin in 1918, at which time she
was 17 years old and the couple thought, incorrectly, that she was
pregnant. In a way, although certainly not purely, this story recalls the Spacey story except that it didn't destroy Charlie Chaplin. Granted, she was older that Spacey's accuser, but not much at the time she and Chaplin met as she was 16 years old at that time. He would have been about 29. The marriage did not last long.
So what' the point?
Well, this behavior has always existed. And its always been tolerated in the upper reaches of society. Indeed, in the "me too" revelations, I'm not sure why no one is recalling the earlier reveals about John F. Kennedy, who was a terrible lech. And that brings us to another difference, I suspect.
Earlier this conduct was disapproved of widely, but it was fairly well hidden and some in power were flat out protected. Kennedy got away with stuff that's shocking really and at least, if one of his mistresses is to be believed, their first encounter could classify as rape under the loose definition given to that today (but it wouldn't have so qualified at the time). Bill Clinton didn't get away with lecherous conduct in the Oval Office, even if he did (and I don't know if he did or didn't) with earlier such encounters, although he went on to be generally forgiven for it by the public after it was revealed. None of these guys is going to get away with it.
Bill Clinton. His consensual affair while in the Oval Office nearly cost him the job. But his reputation managed to rebound, which is not quite as amazing as the situation pertaining to. . .
John F. Kennedy, whose personal morality in regards to women is truly appalling, but which hasn't seemed to diminish the "Camelot" reputation of his Presidency.
And the fact that they're not going to get away with it, probably even Spacey isn't going to get away with his, is a good thing. Maybe things have really changed.
Maybe not, however. Cokie Roberts, in being interviewed about this over the weekend, didn't think so at all. But I think she's likely wrong. I think there's been a true shift here.
But if there has been one, has there been a realization that the conduct complained of is wrong in a broader sense? I don't think so, and that's where I think we've lost ground.
At the end of the day, if there's a line that's been crossed, people have to know what the line is so that we can philosophically grasp what the nature of that line is, and where it comes from. And we're not doing that very well here when we claim its about power, but at the same time, fairly clearly, we cry out that it violates the Old Law.
And indeed, that's what we are really doing, which is good in a way, but which would be better if we grasped that we are crying out in that fashion. In this current age when the very concept of male and female is confused, what we are seeing is woman after woman complaining that one man or another violated them in some fashion. In a society in which every woman started to be implicitly violated every month with the latest issue of Playboy, and which the entertainment industry violates them with nearly ever new release, and which even magazines devoted to sports famously violate them annually, that's really something. It's cri de coeur that goes all the way back.
And because it does, maybe we need to think of the nature of that. Maybe not only these creeps are wrong, but maybe a society that tolerates this conduct and recognizes no standards at all in regards to sex, men and women, needs to consider what it has become. Toleration of this sort isn't just in the board room or the Hollywood office ought not to tolerate it on the cover of Sports Illustrated or in the student hallways.
In other words, it's great that this behavior is being exposed now. But in a society in which hookup relationships, in which the demand is that women put out, and in which women who don't meet some Playboy centerfold model standard of beauty must undergo plastic surgery, and in which everything from advertising to Sports Illustrated is graced with photographs of nearly naked women, how serious are we, really?
And if we are serious, what standard are we actually recalling, and where does it come from?
Finally, something that shouldn't be missed from Milbank's observations is that apparently at least
Wieseltier was a bully. The relationship between disrespectful and mean behavior, and even arrogant behavior, and truly awful behavior is a lot shorter than we might suppose. I think one sort of leads right to another. If you feel you have the right to bully your co-workers, at some point you think you have the right to screw them too, or if not that, take other liberties with them. Bullying is wrong not so much because its mean, which it is, but also because the bully is taking a position of authority he's not entitled to and it needs to be checked. Workplace bullies might be checking themselves just at that, but often, I suspect, they don't.
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^When I posted this topic, one of the things I tried to find was a public domain photograph of Harvey Weinstein. I couldn't find one, and the ones that are available on Wikipedia are of doubtful free license nature. Anyhow, I note this as there's something I would have noted in a caption but now will just footnote here.
In every single photograph of Weinstein he appears unshaven with face of stubble. I'm sick of that look, but it shows to a degree how powerful he really is. Overweight and unshaven, he looks freakin' pathetic. Somehow our standards have fallen so far that a look that at one time would have drawn comments and would have deterred most women from getting anywhere near you are now, well, apparently thought of as cool. Maybe Weinstein's fall will end the Yassir Arafat beard stage the nation is going through.
*Part of the reason that I dropped my subscription is that under the long ownership of Martin Peretz the magazine began to decline. Now, that's quite a statement as I started reading TNR in 1986 or so, at which time he'd owned it for over a decade. But at that time it was excellent. By 2011 it was much less so. This also was the period in which
Leon Wieseltier had increasing influence. The magazine became less original and interesting. It was of course subsequently sold, quit becoming a monthly, and just slid into irrelevance. I let my subscription lapse this year.
^^Indeed, one of the "cute" songs from
How To Succeed is "A
Secretary Is Not a Toy", making light of the entire topic. Recently
this play was performed locally by one of the schools and I was stunned
as I would have thought this musical so out of date that nobody could
possibly relate to it now. Apparently I was wrong, as they presented it.
**Susanna.
In Babylon there lived a man named Joakim, who married a very beautiful and God-fearing woman, Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah; her parents were righteous and had trained their daughter according to the law of Moses. Joakim was very rich
and he had a garden near his house. The Jews had recourse to him often
because he was the most respected of them all.
That year, two elders
of the people were appointed judges, of whom the Lord said, “Lawlessness
has come out of Babylon, that is, from the elders who were to govern
the people as judges.”
These men, to whom all brought their cases, frequented the house of Joakim.
When the people left at noon, Susanna used to enter her husband’s garden for a walk.
When the elders saw her enter every day for her walk, they began to lust for her.
They perverted their thinking; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments.
Though both were enamored of her, they did not tell each other their trouble,
for they were ashamed to reveal their lustful desire to have her.
Day by day they watched eagerly for her.
One day they said to each other, “Let us be off for home, it is time for the noon meal.” So they went their separate ways.
But both turned back
and arrived at the same spot. When they asked each other the reason,
they admitted their lust, and then they agreed to look for an occasion
when they could find her alone.
One day, while they
were waiting for the right moment, she entered as usual, with two maids
only, wanting to bathe in the garden, for the weather was warm. Nobody else was there except the two elders, who had hidden themselves and were watching her. “Bring me oil and soap,” she said to the maids, “and shut the garden gates while I bathe.” They did as she said;
they shut the garden gates and left by the side gate to fetch what she
had ordered, unaware that the elders were hidden inside.
As soon as the maids had left, the two old men got up and ran to her.
“Look,” they said, “the garden doors are shut, no one can see us, and we want you. So give in to our desire, and lie with us.
If you refuse, we will testify against you that a young man was here with you and that is why you sent your maids away.”
“I am completely trapped,” Susanna groaned. “If I yield, it will be my death; if I refuse, I cannot escape your power. Yet it is better for me not to do it and to fall into your power than to sin before the Lord.” Then Susanna screamed, and the two old men also shouted at her, as one of them ran to open the garden gates. When the people in the house heard the cries from the garden, they rushed in by the side gate to see what had happened to her. At the accusations of the old men, the servants felt very much ashamed, for never had any such thing been said about Susanna.
When the people came
to her husband Joakim the next day, the two wicked old men also came,
full of lawless intent to put Susanna to death.
Before the people they ordered: “Send for Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah, the wife of Joakim.” When she was sent for,
she came with her parents, children and all her relatives.
Susanna, very delicate and beautiful,
was veiled; but those transgressors of the law ordered that she be exposed so as to sate themselves with her beauty.
All her companions and the onlookers were weeping.
In the midst of the people the two old men rose up and laid their hands on her head.
As she wept she looked up to heaven, for she trusted in the Lord wholeheartedly.
The old men said, “As
we were walking in the garden alone, this woman entered with two servant
girls, shut the garden gates and sent the servant girls away.
A young man, who was hidden there, came and lay with her.
When we, in a corner of the garden, saw this lawlessness, we ran toward them.
We saw them lying together, but the man we could not hold, because he was stronger than we; he opened the gates and ran off.
Then we seized this one and asked who the young man was,
but she refused to
tell us. We testify to this.” The assembly believed them, since they
were elders and judges of the people, and they condemned her to death.
But Susanna cried aloud: “Eternal God, you know what is hidden and are aware of all things before they come to be:
you know that they
have testified falsely against me. Here I am about to die, though I have
done none of the things for which these men have condemned me.”
The Lord heard her prayer. As she was being led to execution, God stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy named Daniel, and he cried aloud: “I am innocent of this woman’s blood.” All the people turned and asked him, “What are you saying?” He stood in their
midst and said, “Are you such fools, you Israelites, to condemn a
daughter of Israel without investigation and without clear evidence? Return to court, for they have testified falsely against her.”
Then all the people
returned in haste. To Daniel the elders said, “Come, sit with us and
inform us, since God has given you the prestige of old age.” But he replied, “Separate these two far from one another, and I will examine them.”
After they were
separated from each other, he called one of them and said: “How you have
grown evil with age! Now have your past sins come to term: passing unjust sentences, condemning the innocent, and freeing the guilty, although the Lord says, ‘The innocent and the just you shall not put to death.’ Now, then, if you were a witness, tell me under what tree you saw them together.” “Under a mastic tree,” he answered. “Your fine lie has cost you your head,” said Daniel; “for
the angel of God has already received the sentence from God and shall
split you in two.” Putting him to one side,
he ordered the other one to be brought. “Offspring of Canaan, not of
Judah,” Daniel said to him, “beauty has seduced you, lust has perverted
your heart. This is how you acted
with the daughters of Israel, and in their fear they yielded to you; but
a daughter of Judah did not tolerate your lawlessness. Now, then, tell me under what tree you surprised them together.” “Under an oak,” he
said. “Your fine lie has cost you also your head,” said Daniel; “for the
angel of God waits with a sword to cut you in two so as to destroy you
both.”
The whole assembly cried aloud, blessing God who saves those who hope in him. They rose up against the two old men, for by their own words Daniel had convicted them of bearing false witness.
b They condemned them to the fate they had planned for their neighbor: in accordance with the law of Moses they put them to death. Thus was innocent blood spared that day.
Hilkiah and his wife
praised God for their daughter Susanna, with Joakim her husband and all
her relatives, because she was found innocent of any shameful deed. And from that day onward Daniel was greatly esteemed by the people.
***Which is partially an odd comment, and he must know that, as there's no prohibition at all in the Jewish faith prohibiting the tasting of wine. By that he presumably meant leading a wild life, which he did for quite some time (with rumors of pretty extensive drug use being part of that). Of course, Judaism, while it recognizes divorce, does not allow libertine behavior towards women. At least he was honest, which most of these other characters were not, about not adhering to his Faith even if not actually abandoning it.
****
You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
*****Spacey's situation bring sup the fact that it might be, sadly, only Americans who really care about this stuff. Spacey's career may well be completely wrecked at this point. Roman Polanski, on the other hand, has managed to survive drugging and raping a 13 year old girl decades ago, which seems rather odd to say the least. But Polanski is a Pole who fled back to Europe where it seems authorities have taken a rather relaxed view about what is undoubtedly a truly horrific action on his part.
