The duplicity of grandstanding luvvies is explained in Weinstein’s Theory of Relativity. The central logic of this little-known theory is that politics and crime are two aspects of media spacetime. Spacetime is curved, and the gravity of a crime is a product of key variables, such as money, emotional currency and time.
This explains why an alleged sexist faces calls for impeachment but a more serious offender will get standing ovations at the Oscar nominations.
It also explains why a wrongfully convicted footballer is kept on a protected prison wing then prevented from working again. But a Hollywood big cheese gets his own parking space.
So why? Why would Meryl Streep lead the cheers for film director Roman Polanski? Why would Emma Thompson comply with a request to sign up her support for said director as she said she did? What was it about his power and influence that made these ladies overlook the fact that he had had ‘unlawful sexual conduct’ with a 13-year-old girl? Or didn’t they see it was wrong? Emma admitted she’d had to be put right by her student children’s friends.
And quite what made Matt Damon and Russell Crowe summon up the courage to condemn Donald Trump (which can’t have been easy in front of an Oscar night audience) and yet act like the school bully’s sidekicks towards vulnerable women?
There are examples at home. I won’t go into the sanctimonious radio phone-in host who makes great play of his feminist sensibilities one week, then does a reverse ferret the next.
But let’s leave aside the morality of a person who makes his income from exploiting tragedies on the pretence of ‘starting a debate’. What could have fashioned these dramatic reversals of logic? What variables were at play? Race? Religion? Politics? Surely not these, as that would make our Hollywood A-listers bigots.
Could the law of Weinstein’s Relativity explain all this? There’s another dimension to be considered here, you see – time, which is inversely proportional to fashion.
Emma and Meryl and Lindsay all loved Harvey to bits until very recently. But not now. As the style bibles will say in the Sunday supplements: Harvey Weinstein is so last week.
