Am I understanding this correctly? Big Harv thinks his alleged rape habit is kinda sorta redeemed by the fact that the awareness it’s raised of sexual malfeasance against women has been a net win for social justice? By that logic, Stephen Paddock would have done a good deed opening fire on that crowd if only Congress had responded by tightening up gun laws. If you want to make a woke cultural omelette, you need to break a few eggs.

Or does he actually want us to believe that every one of his accusers is lying but it’s okay, sort of, because the whole scandal is a vehicle for progress?

This comes from Page Six so adjust your credibility meter accordingly. But just the fact that a gossip sheet would run a story this unflattering to Weinstein, alleging that he’s not only unremorseful but outright delusional about his sins, is noteworthy in itself. It’s been alleged repeatedly over the past month that the reason Big Harv’s crimes and lesser misdeeds never made it into the papers was because he had celebrity media under his thumb via payouts, book-deal offers, threats, and other pressure tactics. Now here’s Page Six running items that make him look like an even bigger nutball than everyone thought. It’s over.

“Harvey believes he is a savior,” a Hollywood insider says.

The source adds that the pervy former Weinstein Co. and Miramax macher has been telling confidantes “that he was born to take the fall for his behavior in order to ‘change the world.’ He is resigned to his punishment — as a martyr for social change.”

A rep for Weinstein commented, “That’s absurd.”

“Take the fall”? Asia Argento’s list of Weinstein accusers is up to 93 and counting, including 14 separate claims of rape.

What makes the Page Six story hard to believe is that, in an odd way, it gives Weinstein too much credit. Celebrating the fact that women feel more comfortable exposing their abusers today than they did a month ago suggests that he does have a moral compass of a sort, that he can see that sex crimes are an evil that shouldn’t be committed with impunity even though he’s allegedly been committing them for 40+ years. Can a man without a conscience have a social conscience? Seems ridiculous.

But then I remember that infamous damage-control statement he issued after the Times’s first story about him was published a few weeks ago. After admitting that he has “demons” that need conquering, Weinstein wrapped up this way:

I am going to need a place to channel that anger, so I’ve decided that I’m going to give the NRA my full attention. I hope Wayne LaPierre will enjoy his retirement party. I’m going to do it at the same I had my Bar Mitzvah. I’m making a movie about our President, perhaps we can make it a joint retirement party. One year ago, I began organizing a $5 million foundation to give scholarships to women directors at USC. While this might seem coincidental, it has been in the works for a year. It will be named after my mom, and I won’t disappoint her.

With his secret life of predation suddenly exposed to the world, Weinstein retreated into the cocoon of progressive virtue. That seemed at the time like an absurdly cynical, goofily ham-handed attempt at misdirection. Caught with his pants down, Big Harv suddenly wanted everyone to talk about gun violence. It was a classic case of a liberal attempting to purchase “indulgences” for his rotten personal behavior by promoting causes championed by the enlightened left. But maybe there was more to it psychologically. What if Weinstein has been justifying his behavior *to himself* by insisting that his staunch progressivism balances the moral scales? He’s not trying to buy indulgences from the public, necessarily, he’s trying to buy them from his own conscience, or whatever’s left of it. No PR professional on earth would have okayed that bit about the NRA in his statement, knowing how it would come off. It could only have been added at Weinstein’s insistence. Maybe he needed it in there to reassure himself, at the moment of revelation, that he’s still a good person if you squint reeeeeeeally hard and try not to think about it too much.

But I don’t know. Could be he’s just a delusional reprobate who can’t face what he’s done and has convinced himself that he’s being framed, for The Cause Of Progress. By 93 women.