Harvey weinstein

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the year | 13 December 2018

January Four young men were stabbed to death in London as the New Year began. The Crown Prosecution Service was to review rape cases, after several prosecutions collapsed when evidence was not disclosed to the defence. Carillion went into liquidation. London Zoo delayed its annual stock take after a fire killed an aardvark called Misha. Turkish forces shelled the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. The supreme court of Iceland upheld an import tariff on potato chips of 76 per cent. The Grand Mufti of Egypt said that bitcoin was forbidden by Islam. California legalised recreational cannabis. February The Charity Commission launched an inquiry into Oxfam staff paying for prostitutes in Haiti in 2011.

Thursday

Taki

High life | 15 February 2018

#MeToo! It happened right here, in Gstaad, last week. A man in his mid-fifties, about six foot tall and 165lb, grabbed me forcibly by the neck, pushed my head down, and then slid his hand between my legs. He continued to do so in a very dominating and aggressive way — he could have passed for Kevin Spacey, but with his own hair — pulling at my thighs, clawing at my chest, always drawing me closer and closer while breathing heavily on my neck. I couldn’t move my head, so I finally succumbed and lay back. He then stretched himself on top of me and held me tight. I had to give in. Yes, dear reader, however horrible it might sound to you — after all, I’m 81 — at times a boy has to surrender to superior force.

Thursday

Tina Brown

Diary – 9 November 2017

It’s remarkable how fast the unthinkable becomes the expected. It felt almost routine to pick up the New York Post last Sunday morning and see the front page mocked up as a wanted poster for Harvey Weinstein and the news that the NYPD is preparing to arrest him for alleged rape. Between the daily barrage of Trump’s lies and excesses and the sexual harassment tsunami, America has outrage overload. The result is that all the predations, political or sexual or both, come close to drowning each other out. Already Weinstein’s legal advocates are test-driving the theory that the Harvey ‘pile-on’ is really about Trump — that thwarted feminist fury at the serial sexual harasser in the Oval Office has flushed out a surrogate who’s even more gross.

Mary Wakefield

The #metoo movement has an icy heart

On rolls the Harvey Weinstein horror show with no finale in sight. The next episode looks likely to star Uma Thurman, who’s waiting for the right moment, she says, to tell her own Harvey story. Hollywood waits for Uma and I wait for Robert De Niro, who said of Donald Trump: ‘He’s a dog, he’s a pig, a mutt.’ If groping makes you mad, Rob, why so silent about friend Harvey? Weinstein is clearly a slimeball predator. I hope the great wave of feminist outrage washes all the Harveys clean away, out of Tinseltown, out of Washington, out of Westminster. But running alongside the Weinstein drama is another trickier case — one I think the credibility of the whole #metoo movement rests on.

Matthew Parris

The sex scandal is what psychologists call ‘displacement activity’

There are three reasons why Britain’s political and media world finds itself in the present ludicrous uproar over sexual misbehaviour at Westminster, and only one of them has anything to do with sexual misbehaviour. But let us start with that. And, first, a caveat. Can there be an organisation anywhere in discovered space which, subjected to the intense media scrutiny that the House of Commons now attracts, would not generate a comparable stock of report and rumour? Imagine a workplace — indeed imagine a workplace like our own august Spectator offices – peopled by a lively mixture of creatives, eccentrics, wannabes, rascals, saints, absolute bricks, total pricks and drones.

Thursday

Mette Leonard

Women need to free themselves from permanent victimhood

If there is one thing the reactions to the Harvey Weinstein accusations have confirmed, other than the common knowledge that human beings are corruptible and will sometimes try to exploit their position of superiority, it is feminism's obsession with men in power. When confronted with Björk’s accusations of sexual harassment by Danish director Lars von Trier on the set of Dancer in the Dark, Trier’s producer, Peter Aalbæk, rejected the claim, maintaining that if anyone was to be made responsible for harassment it was the singer, who, he claimed, had been bossing the two men around.

Rod Liddle

So what attracted you to that powerful man?

Somewhere towards the end of the 1980s I was suddenly promoted three grades upwards in my job at the BBC; a bit like going from the middle of the old fourth division to the top of the Championship. Yay. The immediate consequences were more money, more power and almost endless opportunities for sexual intercourse. Women who had hitherto been averagely amiable work colleagues became much friendlier — and in a very different way. It was as if I’d been transformed overnight from Marty Feldman into Orlando Bloom. What a delightful period of my life that was.

Lara Prendergast

The sexual reformation

Nell Minow, an American film critic, recently described how in 2010 she had interviewed the Friends actor David Schwimmer. When the noise in the restaurant grew too loud, he asked her whether she might like to move to a room upstairs with him, and if so, would she like a chaperone present. She praised him for this behaviour. ‘He understood what it is like to have to be constantly on the alert and he wanted to make sure I understood I was safe.’ When I read Minow’s story, my reaction was to think what a patronising arse Schwimmer must be. A woman journalist shouldn’t need a chaperone when she is doing her job. But, in the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein allegations, it has become clear that, for many women, safety is starting to trump liberty.

Saturday

Steerpike

Why lambast Michael Gove for the Weinstein joke – and not Neil Kinnock?

Michael Gove has a good line in risqué jokes, not all of which ought to be broadcast – as he demonstrated this morning when he used an appearance on the Today programme to compare being interviewed by John Humphrys to being in Harvey Weinstein’s bedroom: 'Sometimes I think going into the studio with you John is a bit like going into Harvey Weinstein’s bedroom. You just pray you emerge with your dignity intact.' Cue entirely predictable outrage and apology from Gove. https://twitter.com/michaelgove/status/924198131637673984 But while politicians rush to condemn Gove – why does no one seem interested in his co-interviewee Neil Kinnock? No one seems to be demanding his head on a plate yet the Labour grandee joined in, saying: 'John goes way past groping...

Thursday

Anthony Horowitz

Diary – 19 October 2017

New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Dallas… I’m on a book tour in Donald Trump’s USA, which feels much like the USA I’ve visited many times before. The tour doesn’t go to any of the so-called ‘rust belt’ cities where Trump has his main support and the people I meet are quietly shocked, apologetic — as if their President is an elderly relative who has displayed horrible manners at the table. Washington is such a handsome, classical city, with its free museums and wonderful collections of art, that I feel a stab of pain as I drive past the White House and think about the man inside.

Taki

High life | 19 October 2017

I may have spoken too soon last week when I defended my old friend Harvey Weinstein. It now looks very bad for him, with even Hillary Clinton joining the Greek chorus condemning him. It is not just boorish behaviour towards the fairer sex that he now stands accused of; it is also rape, something that he and his lawyers strenuously deny. Mind you, I’ve always thought that someone was innocent until proven guilty — but that does not appear to be the case in these hyper-feminist times. And the idea that Bill and Hillary were unaware of Harvey’s shenanigans — not to mention the sleazy bunch that is Hollywood — brings to mind Captain Renault’s reaction to the gambling taking place in Rick’s Café.

Tuesday

James Kirkup

Misogynists can’t decide: are Weinstein’s accusers weak subhumans or devious slags?

The volley of accusations against Harvey Weinstein has been extraordinary – and, to some, suspicious. Why keep silent after so many years? If an actress says that he raped her, why did she agree to go for lunch afterwards? The Spectator, in keeping with its tradition of saying things you’re unlikely to read elsewhere, has published some of these more controversial points. Gwyneth Paltrow says she was sexually harassed by Weinstein when she was 22, says Toby Young. He continues: Why, then, did she thank him three years later when she won an Oscar for her performance in Shakespeare in Love?” The same goes for Angelina Jolie and all the other actresses who have gone on the record only in the past week to describe the ordeals Harvey put them through.

Isabel Hardman

There’s plenty to be suspicious about in the Weinstein row

Why are all the women involved in the Harvey Weinstein allegations only speaking out now? That question has been asked repeatedly - including on this blog - since the accusations against the film mogul first emerged. Why now? Ross Clark suggested on Coffee House yesterday that women who had achieved what some of the actresses and UN goodwill ambassadors had managed should be brave enough to speak out about someone who appears to have been a serial predator over many years - but that they failed to do so because their allegations date back to when they were ‘on the make’. It’s a fair point, isn’t it? But isn’t it just a little odd that a slightly different species of fair point tends to appear whenever any sort of woman complains about abuse and assault?

Monday

Ross Clark

The Weinstein affair has exposed Hollywood’s culture. Let’s boycott it

Oh, the glorious hypocrisy of it all – the dozens of actresses, UN goodwill ambassadors among them, who have come forward to make accusations against Harvey Weinstein – and yet whom said not a word between them when they were on the make and he was in a position to help them with their careers. I should say that if you are important and mature enough to serve as a UN ambassador you ought to be brave enough to report wrongdoing that is going on beneath your nose – and not wait until there is a bandwagon on which to leap.

Friday

Carrie Fox

Welcome to the jungle: a guide to the priapic predators of Westminster

Shortly after I began my working life, on the edge of the Westminster jungle, I landed a job with a ‘big beast’; an alpha male, in very much the same mould as Harvey Weinstein or Dominique Strauss-Kahn: silver-haired, heavy-set, charismatic. For a few months, he ignored me as I busied away researching stats. Then, during what should have been a routine working lunch, the searchlight of his wandering eye settled on me and out of the blue he declared passionate love: ‘Say you love me too. I just can’t live without you.’ This was both flattering and confusing. Why now? Why me? This famous man had a devoted wife and a small daughter and at the time that shocked me too. Well, I was young. In the months that followed, I grew up.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 October 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, when asked by Iain Dale in an interview on LBC: ‘If there was a Brexit vote now, would you vote Brexit?’ repeatedly refused to say. Earlier, briefing the House of Commons on Brexit, she said that the country must prepare for ‘every eventuality’. The government published two papers on trade and customs arrangements that envisaged ways by which Britain could thrive as an ‘independent trading nation’ even if no trade deal were reached with Brussels. Mrs May admitted that during a transitional period, the European Court of Justice would retain jurisdiction.

Toby Young

I met Weinstein and, yes, I’d heard the rumours

According to an ex-employee of Harvey Weinstein’s, the movie producer once whispered something to himself that she found so disturbing she wrote it down. After leaving his film company, where she claimed to have acted as a ‘honeypot’ to lure young models and actresses to meetings with her boss in hotel rooms, she signed a confidentiality agreement. But she has decided to speak out anyway. The words he muttered were: ‘There are things I’ve done that nobody knows.’ This is one of the less shocking details in a long New Yorker article published on Tuesday in which 13 women allege that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them, including three who accuse him of rape.

Taki

High life | 12 October 2017

I smell a rat when it comes to Harvey Weinstein. Let’s take it from the start. The telephone rang very early in the morning and a woman’s voice told me that Harvey Weinstein wanted to speak to me. I was put on hold. I waited. And waited, and then waited some more. The reason I didn’t hang up was that I wanted to tell Harvey that if Queen Elizabeth had made me wait as long as he had I would have hung up. ‘But for you, Sir Harvey, I’ll wait an eternity.’ Well, Harvey is a Commander of the British Empire but I upgraded him a notch because, as strange as it may sound, he and I are buddies.

Mary Wakefield

Hollywood A-listers should stop shrieking and admit Trump was right – when you are a star, women let you do what you want

As awful as Donald Trump is, as oafish his attitude to women, I think his celebrity haters are even worse. Since the Trump tape was leaked, and The Donald’s special way with the ladies made public, Tinseltown has started to emit a collective shriek of A-list rage. Mark Ruffalo (the Incredible Hulk) and pals have begun an anti-Trump petition: 'Artists United Against Hate'; Cher compared Trump to Hitler; Jennifer Lawrence has said that she thinks the world might actually end if Trump won. Robert De Niro has released a video in which he simply insults Trump straight to camera: 'He’s a punk, a dog. He’s a pig…I’d like to punch him in the face.' I’d like to give them all a shake, for being such appalling hypocrites.

Thursday

Taki

High life | 7 January 2016

OK sports fans, what do Dame Vivien Duffield and Evelyn Waugh have in common? The answer is absolutely nothing, so why start 2016 with such a dumb question? Waugh was short and round and so is Vivien, but apart from weight and height there are no similarities. So why ask? Easy. I was reading about a dinner party Waugh gave for Clare Luce in November 1949 at the Hyde Park Hotel. He later wrote to Nancy Mitford complaining how much money the dinner had cost him, and how Clare — in my not so humble opinion the greatest woman of the 20th century — had failed to write a thank-you note. Waugh was a hell of a writer but a pretty piss-poor human being. He was petty, a closeted tortured gay with seven children.