Lindy West Unhinged

Hollywood, you might have noticed, is not the epicenter of the vast right wing conspiracy. Hollywood, even Hollywood in Tribeca, is a politically correct thoroughly enlightened feminist paradise. Even before they proclaimed themselves leaders of the Resistance against Donald Trump movie industry moguls and actors were true believers in the leftist, feminist cause.

We used to think that the only way anyone could lose a role in Hollywood was to be outed as a Republican. Now, we know that the other way, for women, was to refuse the ham-handed advances of Harvey Weinstein. In some cases, such women were not even allowed to refuse.... 

Obviously, other women in other industries have suffered sexual harassment and sexual assault. You may have been up in arms against what Clarence Thomas supposedly said to Anita Hill, but the charges against Thomas pale in comparison to the assaults and rapes that Harvey Weinstein is accused of having committed.

So, we have had nearly five decades of feminist consciousness raising. We have had two and a half decades of intense conversation about workplace sexual harassment. What did we get from it? We got Harvey Weinstein. Somehow it turned the feminist paradise of the movie industry into a fever swamp of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.

Keep in mind, Hollywood is not filled with Tea Party patriots. It is not chockablock with Republicans or Bible-thumpers or holy rollers. It is not even filled with alt-right fanatics and wingnuts. It is filled with people who are probably atheists, but who religiously fill the coffers of every Democratic candidate and who proudly support every liberal and progressive cause. Hollywood bigwigs pretend to superior moral character and superior insight. And yet, from this fever swamp has arisen, not respectful behavior toward women, but Harvey Weinstein.

People overlook the fact, so let’s emphasize that all of these self-righteously sanctimonious empty-headed moralists voted to give an Oscar to a man who had raped a 13 year old child. Led by luminaries like Meryl Streep, Martin Scorsese, and Harvey Weinstein they cheered lustily when Roman Polanski won his Oscar. What message was people supposed to learn from that, except that the community would forgive any man anything as long as he made great movies.

Allow me to repeat the obvious. The feminist men who abused, harassed and raped women were given the greenlight by none other than Hillary Clinton. Remember that our enabler in chief defended her sexual predator husband by attacking the women who dared accuse him. When Weinstein stated that he would do penance for his perfidy by supporting leftist causes, he was simply stating the obvious. Feminists happily excused predatory men if they supported the feminist cause. Be a feminist, support the cause, and a man can do what he pleases to women.

Even now, Clinton friend and satrap, Linda Bloodworth Thomason, in a column about what she knew about Weinstein, cannot bring herself to denounce Bill Clinton:

One of the best friends I will ever have and a man I love dearly, former President Bill Clinton, has certainly taxed my feminist conscience, but always without diminishing my affection. I even helped write his apology to the nation for his own sexual misconduct, was sitting next to him when he delivered it, and believe to this day it was based on something that was none of our business.

Not-so-famous feminist ranter Lindy West has declared war on men. As though she needed the recent events to be at war against men. In truth, many feminists have been at war against boys and men for decades now. How is that one working out?

Any time you want to declare war on someone make sure that you have the fire power to win. And keep in mind that when you make war against a large group, indiscriminately attacking the guilty and the innocent, you are going to stoke animosity. And you are going to discover that some of those you are warring against will fight back.

There’s an old moral precept: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It’s not the same as: Do unto others as they have done unto you.

Unable to accept any responsibility for the state of affairs to which she and the sisterhood contributed West denounces “powerful men.” You see, even in a world that has had its feminist consciousness raised, it’s always the patriarchy. By powerful men you can read capitalist warmongers. And you can read West's column as a veiled effort to enlist women in the revolutionary cause. Isn't she therefore trying to use the Weinstein victims as recruiting tools for her leftist caues.

But, you cannot put the patriarchy on trial. West is exonerating the men who committed sexual malfeasance by blaming all men… as though there is something about men that makes them into predators.

West ignores the fact that men are normally inclined to protect and defend women. As we know, feminists reject all such protection because they say it makes them feel weak. And yet, as one commetator remarked, one of Hollywood’s problems is that—with a couple of notable exceptions, like Brad Pitt—there weren’t any men around to protect and defend young women. Lest we forget, none of the strong empowered feminists in Hollywood were willing to denounce it either.

West is fuming against men, against:

… the smothering, delusional, galactic entitlement of powerful men.

She especially attacks Donald Trump—not Bill Clinton, of course—and his followers. Why miss the chance to make a cheap political point.

In her white hot rage West forgot that the men in Hollywood who have been preying on aspiring actresses were not Trump supporters. Heck, most of them were not even Republicans. She adds a bit of nonsensical psychobabble, presumably to show how bright she thinks she is:

Donald Trump, our predator in chief, seems to view the election of Barack Obama as a white man being fired. He and his supporters are willing to burn the world in revenge. This whole catastrophic cultural moment was born of that same entitlement, of Trump’s paws and Weinstein’s unbelted bathrobe, of the ancient cycles of abuse that ghostwrote the Trump campaign’s real slogan: If I can’t have you, no one will.

By West’s reasoning, the fault lies with the system. One cannot but agree. In a just system Weinstein would have been called out and ruined for his behavior. But, the system that, as she puts it, tolerated Weinstein for years, was not a bunch of church-going folks in Kansas. It was the entertainment industry, in Hollywood and downtown Manhattan. In small town America if someone tries to rape your daughter or your sister, he will not be seeing the next sunrise.

Unless you are sufficiently mindless to believe that all men are bad to the bone, and that all men do the same thing, the crime wave West is inveighing about was committed by card-carrying feminist men, men who have been financing the Democratic Party for decades now. If you ask who let Weinstein get away with it, the answer is: the power brokers in the film industry. It's not so much that they were cowed; I suspect that they did not care:

In a just system, Weinstein would have faced career-ruining social and professional consequences the first time he changed into a bathrobe and begged a horrified woman for a massage. In a just system, the abuse wouldn’t have stayed an open secret for decades while he was left free to chew through generation after generation of starlets. Weinstein’s life, like Cosby’s, isn’t the story of some tragic, pitiable downfall. It’s the story of someone who got away with it.

West is happy to show the world what some already suspected, that she is a witch. But, her wild-eyed harangue at all men, one that has been widely praised, demonstrates that emotional extremes often blind one to the obvious, and even to the self-evident.