THE HUMAN STAIN

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN BILL CLINTON, CULTURE, HOLLYWOOD,MEDIA

The Weekly Standard has posted a brilliant column by senior editor Lee Smith reflecting on the meaning of the disgrace of Harvey Weinstein. Lee’s piece is titled “The human stain: Why the Harvey Weinstein story is worse than you think.” It is unlike anything else you will read on Weinstein and full of quotable quotes to boot, including this cutting “thought experiment”:

Would the Weinstein story have been published if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency? No, and not because he is a big Democratic fundraiser. It’s because if the story was published during the course of a Hillary Clinton presidency, it wouldn’t have really been about Harvey Weinstein. Harvey would have been seen as a proxy for the president’s husband and it would have embarrassed the president, the first female president.

Bill Clinton offered get-out-of-jail-free cards to a whole army of sleazeballs, from Jeffrey Epstein to Harvey Weinstein to the foreign donors to the Clinton Global Initiative. The deal was simple: Pay up, genuflect, and get on with your existence. It was like a papacy selling indulgences, at the same time that everyone knew that the cardinals were up to no good. The 2016 election demolished Clinton world once and for all, to be replaced by the cult of Obama, an austere sect designated by their tailored hair shirts with Nehru collars. “That is not who we are as Americans,” they chant, as Harvey Weinstein’s ashes are scattered in the wind.

The Weekly Standard runs a file photo of Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein along with Lee’s column. It runs a photo of Weinstein with President Obama, Frank Lautenberg and Chuck Schumer with its editorial on Weinstein.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/10/the-human-stain.php