Last week, fellow Viewpoints Writer, Joseph Caleb Brunson, wrote an article titled “Weinstein scandals, classic Hollywood hypocrisy.” It was supposed to be an article about the horrific Weinstein scandals, how Hollywood has handled it, and how the problem is still prevalent within that community. This is good because while Weinstein was rightfully outed, there are still other Hollywood figures that have gotten away this kind of behavior. However, we did not get that article. What we got instead was Mr. Brunson using the scandal as an excuse to get out his personal beef with Hollywood’s political agenda.
He begins the article criticizing Hollywood for acting like heroes amidst the reveal, even though they supposedly “protected the man,” for years, while citing Quentin Tarantino and Jane Fonda as examples. But how exactly have they acted heroic? Jane Fonda confessed she knew about what was going on and did not say anything about it. Quentin Tarantino said he didn’t know the full extent of what Weinstein did, but knew enough to come forward. That’s confessing to cowardice and playing dumb, and while Jane Fonda has recently made some distasteful comments, the response from Hollywood has mainly been reflective of the previous comments: playing dumb, confessing to knowing and not doing anything, or being a victim themselves. Joseph might see a community trying to save their own skin. I see a community that wanted to get rid of a man for a while, but couldn’t, and took the opportunity when it arose.
He then berates how if only someone had said something, all of this could have been prevented; that is when he doesn’t seem to grasp the weight of one of the statements he makes. He points out that Weinstein uses his power and money to shut up his victims, but he doesn’t seem to understand how far that power extends. To put it into perspective, let’s talk about Juanita Broaddrick. Juanita is the prime Bill Clinton rape accuser. Before 1999, when she officially said Clinton raped her in 1978 when he was running for governor of Arkansas, news media outlets had been investigating her to try to get her to say something. However, she would deny everything until the 1999 NBC Dateline interview, and even signed an affidavit, a written statement under oath, that any story about Clinton raping her was false. This was during another Clinton sexual harassment lawsuit. So, if Clinton did rape her, then she committed perjury, and Clinton has never had half the power in government that Weinstein has had in Hollywood. This is a guy who is worth more than almost every celebrity in Hollywood, and most of his victims were just working class female actors who would have had no protection if Weinstein went after them.
The sad part is that sexual assault is still a rampant problem in Hollywood, and there is still an enormous amount of hypocrisy surrounding this situation (Roman Polanski, Woody Allen), but he does not mention any of that. Instead, he takes the final moments to complain about Hollywood promoting a political agenda. Hollywood’s political agenda has nothing to do with what Weinstein has done, and being a private business, they can promote any ideology they want to. I do not agree with Fox News’ political agenda, but I don’t think they should not be allowed to promote their agenda because of the sexual harassment scandals. I don’t think they should because they’re a news station and neither should CNN. However, if they were independent media companies, I would still respect their right, but still expect them to exterminate any sexual misconduct within that company. If Mr. Brunson has a problem with Hollywood’s political agenda he can write an article about it, but he shouldn’t use the issue of rape to justify his non-related grievances with the industry. Doing so takes focus away from such a horrific problem, and keeps us from being able to do anything about it.
