EXPLAINING THE LIBERAL CESSPOOL

Why is it, Glenn Reynolds likes to ask, that liberal-run cities and institutions all seem to be hotbeds of sexism and racism? To adapt this slightly, maybe there’s a reason the left is so obsessed with sexual harassment and racism, because it is practiced so much in their communities and institutions.

These thoughts come to mind in looking over the peculiar Cosmopolitan magazine (yes, Power Line’s research staff reads Cosmo so that you don’t have to) interview with actress Amber Tamblyn, in which she makes the startling claim that the Harvey Weinstein scandal would likely never have come to light if Hillary Clinton had won the election.

Let that claim sit there and sink in for a moment.

Here’s how Tamblyn actually puts the argument:

Read the whole thing.

Embrace Hollywood

I don't want to live in a world where Harvey Weinstein is God

Mark Steyn is the best wordsmith in America (even if he is Canadian).

Contradictions and Condescension

Not so long ago, picking up a Golden Globe for her turn as Mrs Thatcher, Meryl was happy to salute Harvey Weinstein as God, notwithstanding that the previous occupant of that position was famously antipathetic to the sin of Onan, with or without attendant shrubbery....

Why do Mitt's binders full of women outrage liberal sensibilities but not Harvey's pot plants full of semen?

Well, in the old days, the bourgeoisie expected bourgeois values throughout society. The wealthy and powerful disdained them, but discreetly. Now they disdain them openly. Indeed, they wage war on them, relentlessly. Instead, they enforce "progressive" values. Institutions fundamental to the nation-state, such as citizenship, have to be rendered meaningless - so that what matters in any immigration debate is not the citizens but the invaders, to the point where Nancy Pelosi thanks the parents of "Dreamers" for breaking American law and bringing them here, as a precious gift to a nation crying out for even more low-skilled immigrants. As for institutions that pre-date the nation-state - institutions almost as old as humanity - they're as easy to redefine, so that marriage can no longer be confined to those of opposite sexes. Speaking of the sexes, human biology can be vaporized, so that two sexes become 57 genders, and grade-school boys more interested in Barbie than GI Joe get to be pumped full of puberty blockers and directed to the girls' bathroom. And after all that, religion has to be put on the back foot, so that any recalcitrant mom'n'pop bakery for whom two men atop a wedding cake is an abomination, must be hunted down, dragged into court and financially ruined pour encourager les autres. And in a revolutionary present it is necessary ultimately to throttle the past - eliminating Robert E Lee, Christopher Columbus, Dr Seuss, Stephen Foster, the national anthem, to dam up the stream of history, the flow of past to present to future, and thus sever the citizenry from their entire inheritance, so that we are mere flotsam and jetsam on the frothing surface of the moment - a world where, in a certain sense, Harvey Weinstein is God....

Amid the condescension, there are contradictions. So a century-old statue of someone dead a hundred and fifty years who does not conform to the identity-group pieties of 2017 must be torn down - whereas an actual flesh-and-blood human being who does not conform to the identity-group pieties of 2017 can stagger around Hollywood and New York and London and Rome treating women like garbage.

Read the whole thing.

Harvey Weinstein didn't persist because he failed every single time

From the madgeniusclub:

So it is kind of the same level of shock as the revelation of gambling in Rick’s Casino that I read of Harvey Weinstein harassing actresses for sexual favors. It’s as surprising as Bill Clinton… And the reality is, in an environment where there are 100 (or 10 000) nearly equally qualified eager applicants for a job, and Harvey or Bill or Mary or Sally… have got the power to decide which of you gets that break, and you expect none of the deciders to use that, and none of applicants to use that either? I don’t know where you find such humans, but it isn’t Hollywood. I’m not excusing it, but let’s try and pretend we understand the basics of evolutionary genetic selection: AKA survival of the fittest. Such tactics must have succeeded-on both sides, probably with a substantial number of directors (or people in positions power, be they kings or tribal medicine men or Company directors or presidents) and substantial part of Hollywood’s A-list back when they were no-list or low-list. Let’s be real here, Harvey didn’t keep trying because he failed every single time. But maybe I’m wrong: Who knows, perhaps all those eager pussy-hat wearers who became vastly wealthy, famous and successful due to Weinstein never ever gave him what he wanted, and he just kept right on trying…

Oddly, now, many years later, some of them are complaining. None of them have yet volunteered to give back the tainted money and awards… And some of his award winners aren’t complaining, or at least yet.

Look… take the sex aspect out of it, and many an author is no less of a slut, willing to do whatever necessary to please an editor or publisher, and many an editor, publisher or agent, is not much of a moral step up on Harvey. Let’s not get sanctimonious about it. It’s mercenary, not admirable behavior perhaps, but realistically many an author faced similar choices – and not just authors. The two aspects are that the honorable mercenary (or individual of negotiable virtue) stays bought, and secondly doesn’t pretend they’re the soul of virtue. Looking at Hollywood’s A-list (and their all too public private lives) they seem to make a big deal out of telling the world – or at least those who disagree with them, just how wicked and without virtue others are. Yeah, the bimbo who had sex with something that resembles Baron Harkonnen, to get her success, with the intellect of lard, who has a personal life that resembles a psychological and social train-wreck… preaching morality. Telling the public – for example – that guns are bad, and abortion is essential.

But the scary part is…

Some people listen.

It's not really surprising that Weinstein and people like him exist, and most especially in Hollywood where beautiful people go and who will do anything to get fame and wealth.   What's surprising is that others give them the power to shape our culture, our ideas. These people are eye candy; they are not famous for their virtue or their wisdom ... things that they totally lack.