For instance, not one late-night talk show host (a breed quickly becoming as well known for promoting liberal political causes as for cracking usually lame jokes) even mentioned the Weinstein revelations. Hollywood itself has also been largely silent in condemnation of Weinstein, who if he was a conservative who couldn’t impact their careers, would, much like Roger Ailes before him, be treated as a grave threat to national security.
Even Weinstein’s Hollywood lawyer, Lisa Bloom, is doing a remarkable disservice to the cause of combating sexual harassment which in the past (when it benefited her) she has championed. It
The principles of liberals are so obviously “buyable” that Weinstein himself seemed to offer them a deal in his bizarre statement where he admitted that he has a problem. He basically said, “Let me slide on this and I will take out the NRA” (there’s nothing like using anger over a national tragedy to help you get away with exposing yourself to Hollywood starlets!).
So this should be a situation where liberals are extremely vulnerable to charges of obvious duplicity, which used to be considered a very serious political crime. However, conservative attempts to focus attention on this have gone over about as well as Weinstein’s effort to get Ashley Judd to watch him shower naked.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to attack the Washington Post for not having the story on its front page and was roundly mocked. Breitbart.com attempted to condemn Barack Obama for allowing this sexual predator to visit the White House thirteen times and was also laughed at.
Gee, I wonder what might have defused the conservative attack machine and rendered these charges totally impotent? Could that be because the entire conservative movement sold out every possible principle to support an unqualified conman, who is also a serial sexual harasser (if not worse), and made him the president of the United States?
Uh, yeah. Duh!
Most
The Weinstein story is a classic example of where previously strong conservative arguments have been effectively injected with kryptonite. Quite simply, when you vote for an already unqualified creep to be president, even after you hear him on tape bragging about grabbing the “pussy” of unknown women just after his wife has given birth, you don’t get to credibly criticize liberals for letting a movie executive they find useful get away without being completely destroyed.
Conservatives are, of course, even more vulnerable on this particular issue because how there is no evidence at all that they have abandoned Fox News after the extremely pervasive sexual harassment scandal there which cost Alies, Bill O’Reilly, and Eric Bolling their jobs. There is no indication that their ratings took a major hit because of this issue and I know of no major conservative who has boycotted appearing on the network in response.
Before Trump pulled off his amazing coup to take over the Republican Party, I knew conservatives were far from perfect, but I honestly thought we were in many ways better than our
The sad reality is that nearly everyone in power, regardless of their politics, sucks.
John Ziegler hosts a weekly podcast focusing on news media issues and is documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com.