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Streep has since protested that she was shocked, shocked, to find out there was gambling going on in Casablanca

A more remarkable intervention came from Tina Brown, for a time in the 1990s the undisputed queen of celebrity journalists, running Vanity Fair and The New Yorkerconsecutively. She was lured away from the latter by Harvey Weinstein to run his media business.

“When I founded Talk magazine in 1998 with Miramax, the movie company Harvey founded with his brother Bob, I also took over the running of their fledgling book company,” Brown wrote this week. “Strange contracts pre-dating us would suddenly surface, book deals with no deadline attached authored by attractive or nearly famous women, one I recall was by the stewardess on a private plane. It was startling — and professionally mortifying — to discover how many hacks writing gossip columns or entertainment coverage were on the Miramax payroll with a ‘consultancy’ or a ‘development deal’ (one even at The New York Times).”

So Brown, perhaps one of the most powerful women in journalism, had the goods on Weinstein. She saw the payoffs. But she quietly kept cashing her cheques from Miramax and attending Weinstein’s swanky parties.

Sordid, it all is. But the scourge of sexual predation likely now has one less place to hide

So the tale so often replicated in other parts of the culture has now come to be told about the celebrity world of Hollywood and New York. This must be deeply traumatizing for those accustomed to condemning others for insufficient virtue.

One fevered reaction has been to shine the Weinstein spotlight on his fellow show business celebrity, currently serving as president of the United States. But the president who will be most damaged by Weinstein is Bill Clinton. Hillary’s delay in condemning Weinstein was likely due to entreaties from her husband, who knows that with each round of such condemnations, his own lecherous past will constitute an ever more prominent part of his legacy. After all, when Trump’s lechery was exposed last year, his (effective) response was to accuse Hillary of being complicit in much worse from Bill.

Sordid, it all is. But the scourge of sexual predation likely now has one less place to hide, a place where it has been hiding for a very long time.

Which leaves perhaps one last part of culture where sexual exploitation still flourishes: the family. That is where most of it still takes place, and where the light is most difficult to shine.

National Post