Hollywood fears Weinstein, not Trump

Peter Baker reports that many within Hollywood’s elite are refusing to comment on the Harvey Weinstein story:

In an odd way this is reassuring.

“What!?” you may ask. “Why?” I’ll tell you: Because it means that, their rhetoric aside, very few people in Hollywood actually think that the president is a fascist, or that we are really on the verge of a descent into tyranny.

This Weinstein story does not “reveal something about the Left,” as some partisans have claimed. Indeed, we have seen similar stories, and associated omertà, on the Right in the last couple of years. Rather, it reveals something about the nature of power and self-censorship. Harvey Weinstein is powerful, as is his former company. Which is why, despite knowing he was bad news, most refused to speak up. A similar dynamic appears to have obtained at Fox during the Roger Ailes years. If you were worried about your next contract, or your career in general, you kept quiet and declined to rock the boat, whatever you knew or suspected.