We Know

If you think Meryl Streep didn't know about Harvey Weinstein, WAKE UP. Because here's reality: anyone who followed anything in H'wood knew about Harvey.

I'm pretty sure every dog I've ever had knew about Harvey.

I will grant that the women probably didn't know the extent. I, too, did not know exactly the extent. But I've seen frequent jokes about all kinds of things ranging from Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar (common theme: "I hope he got some serious tail from her for buying her that Oscar") to Gretchen Mol's career (common theme: "She was such a slut for putting out for Harvey too much that she became tainted"). And I've seen them since the Internet was still in training wheels.

EVERYBODY KNEW.

I would submit that we all know, to a certain extent, about the men we're around. I'm going to pick on a couple by name that I've worked with, because I'd say this to their faces (and have).

I may never have known a man MORE married than Dare Dutter, except possibly Mike Netto. I worked with both of these men at Nottingham. I don't think any of us at 'Ham were worried about harassment from these men, even though they outweighed most of us. Because we all knew. Dare would actually throw himself in front of an oncoming train before he did anything to betray his wife. Netto spends so much time focused on talking to Tammy in his downtime that it would be sickening if it weren't also cute.

I picked on those two because I know them well. But I could just as easily talk about a dozen others with whom I had the pleasure of working at Ham.

We know about the character of the men we're around. At Ham,  we knew who was having an affair with whom and why we didn't necessarily blame anybody in the situation. We knew who was a hound dog in his earlier days but was a stand-up guy now. We knew who would have your back at work and would never cross that line but who was a freak on the weekends.

We knew.

Conversely, every woman has worked with a man she wouldn't be alone with. I cannot even bring to mind more than a few names personally, but we all know who not to be alone with. We all know the reputations that come with those men once we've been around them for a while.

We know.

I know locker room talk happens, even with the decent men I have worked with. I know that the kind of locker room talk that occurs is normally not about domination but rather "Did you see that woman in that dress today? Holy Toledo! What a pair of..." I don't think there's a woman alive who doesn't know that this happens. We have our own version, dudes. It goes like this: "Did you see that guy in the suit today? Holy Toledo! What a fantastic..." And yet, when we do these things, somehow we convey this lack of personal respect. We are objectifying so that we can feel free to talk this way, to achieve the camaraderie that comes from understanding that more than one of us has these feelings...but they do come at a price.

In a culture that fosters sexuality at its fore more and more, this kind of verbiage is unsurprising. But "we all do it" may or may not be license to do it. We all break the speed limit while driving, but that doesn't mean we don't have to suffer the consequences of those actions, either. Most of the time we don't, but if you choose to go 80 in a 55 and you run into Ms. State Trooper...well, you made that choice. We choose to allow this kind of talking, and we've chosen greater and greater permissiveness in the name of openness, which is not the same thing.

Did this culture also allow Weinstein to become the absolute scum of the earth that he is? I honestly don't know. I do remember reading in Premiere magazine (God, I miss it) nearly 30 years ago about the Weinsteins, about Miramax, and wouldn't you know it, innuendos regarding both brothers were there in the magazine. As someone who incredibly naive even by my culture's standards, I didn't necessarily believe it--but it was there, in black and white, that no sane man would ever trust his daughters with these guys. And yet, nobody reined him in. Not even the mother that he worshipped, whose death a year ago may have inadvertently triggered all of this going down.

At the end of the day, I still think it's all about power.

Why do we give certain people power? Harvey was given the kind of latitude in H'wood normally reserved for Saudi Arabian Princes--but maybe that's the point: we let you do this because we love money. Money is something Harvey and his family apparently had a lot of, and people wanted it and let him run rough shod over women in the name of that money. Some women allowed him to run over them in the name of that money, a fact both tragic and appalling to think about.

I can personally name several other Harvey Weinsteins in H'wood--maybe not nearly the volume of power, but certainly men who laud their power over women, who have subjected women to inappropriate behavior or inappropriate demands, and who believe they can get away with it (and who have been decked by at least one leading man in their careers). And I'm not talking about men from the Roman Polanski era, either. I'm talking about men currently in the primes of their careers who have been nominated for Oscars or Emmys (or have won them).

We do have to be open enough to talk about these things, to drag them into the light of day, and not to tolerate that kind of behavior. But I fear this may only lead to greater permissiveness in discussion, which may lead to greater personal disrespect...which is very much how we got here in the first place.

Your mileage may vary.