THE SAME PREDICTABLE APOLOGIES

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization.

After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: "it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on." The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”

Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

TRIGGERS LATELY - SIMILAR BEHAVIOR

THEY EVEN LOOK SOMEWHAT ALIKE!!

Like much of America, I’ve been watching the Harvey Weinstein scandal unfold, appalled but not surprised. More than 40 women have now accused the famous and powerful movie producer, whose films have won 81 Oscars, of sexual harassment and even rape.

The Weinstein Company, which he co-founded, fired him. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences threw him out. The Los Angeles police have opened an investigation.

Still, Hollywood has always been about starlets who want to make it big and powerful men who took advantage of them — that’s why everyone knows about the “casting couch.”

So I wondered — was Weinstein just a prolific user of the couch, or was he disordered?

The answer came in an article published by the New Yorker yesterday in which current and former employees of the Weinstein Company described their boss’s behavior. Although no one used the word, they described a raging psychopath.

Here’s how the article starts:

• Harvey throttled someone.

• Harvey called an employee a f*cking moron.

• Harvey threw the shoes, the book, the phone, the eggs.

• Harvey went to work with his shirt on inside-out and no one had the courage to tell him.

•  If you f*cking say anything to him, the assistant said to the other assistant, I’m dead. 

• Harvey would eat the fries off your plate, smash them in his face, and wash them down with a cigarette and a Diet Coke.

• He belittled and berated: You can’t name three Frank Capra movies? What the f*ck are you even doing here? 

• He was funny; he was grotesque, a boisterous, boorish, outrageous, gluttonous caricature of a man, a Hollywood type. A “man of appetites”; a philanderer; a cartoon beast, surrounded by beauties.

A group of employees submitted a statement to the New Yorker saying that they didn’t know how bad Weinstein was. Here’s how they described him:

• a man with an infamous temper
• manipulative
• a womanizer with extramarital affairs
• unbridled ambition
• aggressive deal making
• insatiable desire to win and get what he wanted
• unabashed love for celebrity

So Harvey Weinstein may be more than a sexual predator. These are all examples of psychopathic behavior.

Harvey Weinstein’s former employees reckon with what they knew and what they didn’t, on NewYorker.com.