October 13, 2017

Less popular outrage over victims of Dems b/c they're more likely white-collar

It's only natural that the media would collectively do damage control for one of their own, as when Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is publicly revealed to be a serial sexual exploiter, and perhaps serial rapist.

But why isn't there more on the demand side for coverage of these practices in a major industry? All it would take would be a few journalists at a few outlets with even a few sources coming forward to break the propaganda cartel and meet that pent-up demand.

Even if more big-wigs in the media are outed and shamed for Weinsteinian exploitation -- whether in Hollywood or in the New York / DC media -- I still don't sense that much outrage at the popular level.

Contrast that with the revelations about similar longstanding patterns of sexual abuse by the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts, or public schools where adults prey on children.

The main difference seems to be that the victims in Hollywood are generally members of the elite -- and that their sexual exploitation was part of their induction into the Hollywood economy. If they want the roles, they have to let some disgusting slug have his way with them. If they don't want the roles, they can turn him down.

Now these aren't everyday blue-collar roles in the Hollywood economy that they're getting -- these roles will catapult them into elite status and wealth.

Most observers are going to see this kind of casting-couch exploitation as the actors and actresses sleeping their way into a job, or into a promotion, which nets them millions of dollars in wealth, as well as national and even international fame.

If, on the other hand, they had to sleep with some disgusting creep just to get a cashier's job in retail, or had to tolerate some fat hairy ugly boss feeling them up in the stock room, that would strike most people as real degradation and slavery. They're working class, they get very little out of it, and they don't have sustainable alternatives -- unlike actors and actresses who could make a decent living outside the entertainment or media industry.

The same goes for child victims -- now that would really nuke Hollywood, if the pedophile rings are finally outed and their ringleaders shamed. That is not consensual, not a calculated move to advance their wealth and status in exchange for degrading treatment, and not a career move they made instead of a number of well-paying alternatives (children can only make money by being in entertainment, not by being professionals or managers or stock market gamblers).

I addressed this in an earlier post about prosecuting pedophiles in order to delegitimize Hollywood. The casting-couch stories are not going to wreck Hollywood's moral credibility. Those reports mainly resonate with people who face similar pressures if they want more wealth and status -- other white-collar workers in the media / entertainment industry, and at most white-collars in general.

That might lead to a movement among media workers to seek better working conditions, like not having to let some slithering reptile touch you in order to get the job. But will it lead to a broader outcry from the public and fuel the anti-liberal side of the culture war? Not really.

The anti-pedophile stuff would, though, and that's why the media is far more dogged in doing damage control over that kind of sexual exploitation. A related post is only four months old, yet the offending tweet from a Breitbart reporter and the video clip embedded in it have already been removed from Twitter. They showed Al Franken at a roast of Rob Reiner, telling a story about Rob being molested as a baby and turned out by his well-connected Hollywood father, which was likely an outing in disguise of Rob himself as a serial pedophile in Hollywood.

But it's not just Hollywood that gets a pass for exploiting aspiring or actual members of the elite. Wall Street took rich people for a ride, yet nobody cares about Bernie Madoff's victims because they were just rich scum looking for a get-rich-quick scheme and got burned by the only type of person who would sell them such a scheme, namely a con man.

Silicon Valley replaces American computer coders with cheap foreign workers, either over in India or by bringing Indians here. Yet there is little popular outrage like there is about the decline of manufacturing in the Rust Belt. Again, the coders in Silicon Valley were more elite, and factory workers in Michigan and North Carolina more blue-collar.

This all traces back to the fundamental split between the Democrat and Republican parties, where the Democrats represent the power factions that are more cerebral, digital, and easily scale-able, while the Republicans represent the power factions that are more physical, labor-intensive, and less scale-able. These are differences at the material level -- how they develop their wealth and power -- and not at the ideological level.

Democrat industries scale up easily and are not labor-intensive, so their workers tend to be more elite. Republican industries are more physically rooted, so their workers will be some elite but mostly working-class (fruit pickers and ranch hands, policemen and soldiers, oil and mine workers, stock boys and cashiers at Walmart and McDonalds, and so on).

By their very nature, these two sets of industries are not equal when it comes to portraying their workers as being exploited. White-collar professionals who have to submit to casting-couch hiring practices are not as sympathetic as blue-collar workers slaving away at physically taxing labor.

Some culture warriors will try to score points asking "Where are all the feminists coming out against Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood?" But more to the point, where are all the women among the general public coming out in anger over how Hollywood actresses are treated?

This should be yet another reminder that gender plays little role compared to class, when it comes to collective behavior. As disgusting as Weinstein's behavior is, most women cannot put themselves in the place of Hollywood actresses who make millions of dollars and global fame on the other side of that revolting exploitation.

But some child who gets inappropriately touched or otherwise taken advantage of -- that's something that transcends class and gender. Working-class women would have no trouble relating to those kinds of crimes, and would threaten to destroy Hollywood if it came out that so much of the upper crust there have been serial pedophiles who have twisted and ruined people's lives before they even got started in adulthood.

The real culture war against Hollywood must target those kinds of crimes, which are far more heinous and would resonate with a far broader audience, and not the casting-couch practices that are less offensive and even then primarily to white-collar women.

Ditto for taking on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and higher education -- expose their exploitation of naive and innocent young people, and they will have zero moral authority left. Not just sexual abuse of their workers, but financial exploitation of youngster consumers who don't understand how the world works.

11 comments:

  1. "The main difference seems to be that the victims in Hollywood are generally members of the elite -- and that their sexual exploitation was part of their induction into the Hollywood economy. If they want the roles, they have to let some disgusting slug have his way with them. If they don't want the roles, they can turn him down."

    Of course Hollywood is a moral cesspool, but it is no different than Trump, who repeatedly used his power and "charm" to coerce women into bed with him, yet his allies come to his defense. Call a spade a spade.

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  2. Ag, please stay on top of this. I'm free from Twitter and the thought of stepping foot back on that site... Shudder!

    From what I understand, Ronan Farrow was utterly relentless to the point of using his own money when NBC began trying to shut him down and ultimately, he shopped his story around; the New York Times heard about it through the grapevine and got on the ball with their own, much smaller story.
    About Farrow. Son of Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, half Italian and half Irish, I believe. Intelligent and good looking. He's fey, but clearly one of our people. Got to see up close his mother and adopted sister say Woody Allen molested his sister and the media storm of disbelieving, as a kid. In 2014, his sister, as an adult, speaks for herself for the first time, and is mostly ignored.

    You know what this means: one of our own got on the inside, waged a guerrilla campaign, and did them so good. Nobody, good or bad, saw it coming.

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  3. "...whether in Hollywood or in the New York / DC media"

    DC media. Nice.

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  4. "but it is no different than Trump"

    Wrong. Trump didn't make it a condition of working for him that women had to sleep with him, watch him take a shower, etc. He didn't fondle, grope, or molest them during interviews.

    We would've heard about that by now because the other side tried to dig for anything they could find during the campaign, and they came up with nothing.

    Trump is a poonhound, adulterer, etc. But not a molester or worse like Harvey Weinstein & Co.

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    Replies
    1. Yes
      And that stuff was hoisted on America at the very end to counter Juanita Broaddrick. It was all about her. I believe it was all about giving people inclined to vote for Hillary, but disgusted by her role with Juanita Broaddrick, permission to vote for the enabler. Even if the accusations weren't terrible and the evidence flimsy, they only needed a little something to overcome their cognitive dissonance.

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    2. By the way, there's a blind at Blind Gossip involving Hillary. It's alleged she not only knew about Harvey Weinstein for years, but partook in the gossip.

      I think this is utterly unremarkable and completely in keeping with what we know. Seriously, was anybody at all surprised at her delay in response?

      Obama did surprise me and I don't think I was alone on that one. But for now, I'm chalking that up to his classic coolness and "women's issues" not being something that drives him.

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  5. http://blindgossip.com/?p=87674

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  6. Corey Feldman has been extremely outspoken in last 24 hours, seemingly trying to get encouragement and build up the courage... Go time?

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  7. This also undermines Hollywood's moral authority and the artistic/moral merits of the movies that Weinstein worked on. Something like "Sex, Lies, and Videotapes", for instance, which portrays a bunch of scummy characters and asks us to accept that its a gritty portrayal of the way life really is.

    Cocooning makes people more morally confused and quiet, and less likely to speak up against somebody like Weinstein, and to accept and laud the moral confusion shown in his movies.

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  8. Privileged and liberal Silents and Boomers created a lot of skeezy crap in the 70's-present day; proles were mostly against this stuff in the 70's and especially the 80's. Remember, elites set the agenda and the tone. Roe v Wade, the DSM being re-written to not offend gays, and so forth were all part of the the striving/decadence trend that upper class people bought into first, back in the 70's. Cultural liberals were very vulnerable after the 60's and 70's, and conservatives pounced in the 80's. This caused a lot of decadent liberals to go back in the closet. After Clinton was elected, it's like a switch was hit and the culture started flirting with nihilism again; as usual, proles weren't interested (drug use was low in the early 90's, criminals were still hated, etc.) but since the 70's when have elites cared about what the commoners think?

    Due to cocooning and generational factors, the increasing cultural liberalism of the 90's-present day hasn't been quite as destructive as the 60's and 70's were. Agnostic recently said something to the effect that people born in the 70's and 80's are all bark, and no bite; we might posture as libertines and nihilists, but we don't sleep around, do drugs, get into fights, etc. like Silents and Boomers did.

    We grew up around hedonistic adults who burned bridges, lost money, slapped each other around, etc. It turns out that it this stage, the rebel "kids" are going to be "radical" by not being as out of control as their elders were.

    BTW, there are lists floating around, showing the people supporting guys like Polanski. How many of these supporters are me-gen decadents who still are in denial of the damage they've done?

    A lot of Weintsein's victims were X-ers and Millennials. Having to hear this pig bloviate about liberal activism must've been annoying enough to the people who weren't victims, but imagine the gears grinding in the actual victims. Who knows how much crying, sweating, and bleeding has taken place in the domain of these decadent elites, and how many perps will never be exposed, and how many victims will fade into obscurity, never getting any justice from an uncaring system that protects the powerful.

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