COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ABI WILKENSON IN THE
GUARDIAN
“It’s easy to sneer at
Hollywood doing politics but the Golden Globes nailed it.”
Yes, they said the right words, but they say them at the
wrong time, all of them.
Good God, given Oprah's long and affluent career, don't tell
me she didn't know. And did she ever open her mouth?
And Meryl Streep had her picture taken in various
affectionate poses with Weinstein at various times. She actually was quoted heaping
praise on him in the past.
Well, it is very simple. A monster like Weinstein could not
have flourished without all those "willing helpers."
It is more appropriate to speak up now than to be silent, of
course, but there is something slightly stomach-churning about people
"jumping on the bandwagon' of condemnation, now that the monster is gone.
We do not, in any area of human activity, get a better world
this way.
The time to speak, the time to act is when it happens.
You want to praise a heroic woman? Praise young Ahed Tamimi.
She did what must be done in the face of abuse and oppression.
_____________________
Afterthought on the wider
symbolism of this shabby Hollywood pageant:
You know, there is something so fundamentally wrong in this
American celebrity behavior that I think it could almost be taken as an
allegory for the way America behaves on a much greater scale in the world.
It commits atrocious act after atrocious act, devoid of ethics
or honor or even common decency, but its representatives stand always ready to
make speeches putting America into the role of hero or at least good guy.
Only recently, we had the mass killer of women and children in
half a dozen lands, the user of cluster bombs and white phosphorus and depleted
uranium, absurdly described from the high podium of a world organization in
Lincoln’s touching phrase, “the last best hope of earth.”
Here is something genuinely creepy in America’s modern
identity, a kind of sick duality, the vicious Mr. Hyde alternated with the
kindly face of Doctor Jekyll.
