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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2348 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Louis CK's powerful army of enablers

    Generally speaking. If Harvey Weinstien harassed Angelina Jolie while she was the most prominent female in Hollywood then that's not uniformly true.

If Harvey Weinstein harassed Angelina Jolie while she was the most prominent female in Hollywood, it would have been done to prove that Harvey Weinstein was more powerful than the most prominent female in Hollywood. Nonconsentual sexual acts are about power. "I'm more powerful than you, I don't need your consent." "I'm more powerful than you, I can steamroller you into consent." "I'm more powerful than you, I can convince the world you gave consent."

goobster is not wrong - the structure in place gave that power to men. What we're observing is a challenge to that structure. Here's a guess:

NBC did not run the Weinstein story, even knowing it was right, even knowing it was morally imperative, even knowing history would be on their side. They did not run it because they knew that if they were to fire the first volley, they would be consumed by an Inquisition that would have destroyed their internal culture, consumed their reporting, and dominated their dialog for the next two to five years. So they sat on it, made it go away, and chose to be in the position of reacting rather than acting.

The system is in dire need of change. It has been forever. But the first insider that speaks up is gonna get shot. When the corruption is self-supporting the only way to take it down is external force, and it's been such a chummy and insular community that the external forces couldn't get close enough to care.

I'll also say that liberals care about this shit. Conservatives don't. If liberals weren't looking to fight with anything they could defeat, they still wouldn't do anything.