Don Pesci: De Sade would approve: Libertine culture led to scandals around public-figure 'pervs'
"Eros Stringing His Bow,'' statue in the Capitoline Museum, in Rome.
-- Photo by Ricardo Andre Frantz
The “Me Too” movement is a long delayed reaction to libertinism, which is not ordered liberty, liberalism or even libertarianism. The father of libertinism was French revolutionist and eros anarchist the Marquis de Sade, an aristocrat gone bad. His erotic works, many of them written while a prisoner in the Bastille, combine philosophical discourse with pornography and depict in an approving manner violence, crime and blasphemy against Christianity. He favored unrestrained freedom free of morality, religion and law. In the 21st Century, he might have been richly rewarded as a Hollywood film producer.
So far, the reaction has swept in its undertow media celebrities such as Charlie Rose, politicians such as Roy Moore, the founder and president of the Foundation for Moral Law now running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama; John Conyers, a Michigan congressman and a civil rights icon, U.S. Sen. Al Franken, of Minnesota, dubbed by one critic “a non-funny comedian,” powerful Hollywood producers such as Harvey Weinstein, and other quivering libertines still swarming in the shadows.
Conservative Boston-based columnist and radio talk show host Howie Carr has introduced a new segment into his broadcast -- the perv (short for pervert) walk of shame. Carr is not likely to run out of material any time soon. Even New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has come aboard. Times change, said de Blasio. In response to a reporter’s question de Blasio agreed with a statement made by New York U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand that had the Monica Lewinsky scandal occurred today, President Bill Clinton would have been forced to resign. Given Bill Clinton’s checkered past, which includes accusations of rape, it is not possible to exclude the former President from observations about juvenile cupidity and bullying of women.
“If it happened today,” said de Blasio, “there would have been a very different reaction. No question. I don’t think you can rework history. I think if it happened today — if any president did that today — they would have to resign.” Gillibrand, who occupies a seat in the U.S. Senate vacated by Hillary Clinton after she was named secretary of state by President Obama, has since softened her statement.
It would be rash of us to assume that modern libertines have suddenly become puritanical. Gillibrand is the author of a bill that would protect transgendered military personnel from being summarily discharged. The Puritans of pre-revolutionary Boston would not have unblinkingly supported her bill. Harvey Weinstein, were he a U.S. senator, would have supported the bill with great enthusiasm. Rap music will not put on sackcloth and cover its misogynistic lyrics with ashes. Hollywood will continue its genuflections to eros. Pre-pubescent boys, confused about their gender and slouching towards “re-assignment” surgery, will continue to be featured approvingly on the front page of National Geographic.
The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes understood that eros is a disturber of the peace, as did Boccaccio and Shakespeare and, coming closer to our own day, a repentant Charlie Rose and Harvey Weinstein. We deserve Harvey Weinstein; he’s our Frankenstein. We made him.
What only three decades ago might have been considered illicit sex will not be tossed on the ash heap of history. However, senators in bathrobes may not in the near future be so incautious as to display their wares to female interns – for a while. Business manners will improve -- for a bit. Millionaire smut producers in Hollywood may for a time content themselves with obtaining sex from their trophy wives. We have miles to go before all the accusations are holstered.
Both the guilty and the innocent will have their day, if not in court, then in the court of public opinion. Charges of lewd brutality are not time-sensitive, and there is no statute of limitations on commentators deploring the sins of others; though it is, of course, passé to regard unwanted sexual intimacies as sins.
Congress, as usual, has hedged its bets by creating a tax-funded, post de Sade slush fund that already has paid out $17 million on 264 claims. It is difficult to view that fund as other than an insurance policy against whistleblowing women, men, boys and girls who will be further intimidated by high-priced lawyers whose services that the fund will buy.
Let’s have the names of the congressmen who have tapped the tax-supported de Sade slush fund before the “me too” effort peters out. Someone should call the seven all Democratic members of Connecticut’s sainted U.S. congressional delegation and get them on board.
Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based essayist.
Don Pesci: The Fall of the House of Weinstein
Everyone in Hollywood wants to be a libertine -- like the Marquis de Sade, who also was an amateur revolutionist -- or perhaps they wish to emulate ex-Presidents John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Kennedy was a tolerable Catholic because Catholic dogma did not live loudly in him, and the husband of Hillary Clinton was permitted indiscretions with cigars and interns because he was a hale fellow well met with a photographic memory, whereas ordinary politicians rely on Google and an expensive staff of brash know-it-alls.
To be an artist, after all, is to be in perpetual revolt against the usual pieties, conveniently listed in the Decalogue. Marriage among the Hollywood elite, for instance, is considered but a temporary interruption of multiple liaisons, and adultery, sex outside the boundaries of marriage -- “You shall not commit adultery” -- is rampant. Andy Rooney, whom everyone will admit was a nice guy, had eight wives, the same as Henry VIII, none of them executed. Ex-Connecticut Sen. and Gov. Lowell Weicker had only four. The second commandment – “You shall not make yourself an idol” -- is in Hollywood incompatible with Oscar Night.
Few are the Hollywood twinkling stars unwilling to rally round the partial-birth-abortion flagpole. A caricaturist neatly summed up the ethos of the Hollywood mega-stardom when he said about his own profession, “What is the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?”
Hollywood is here used as a synecdoche to indicate anyone, short of convicted felons, who transcends the morality of the lower orders, plebeian ethics, common sense and, worst of all, bad manners. The trouble with bad manners, Bill Buckley used to say, is that they sometimes lead to murder – or reputational suicide, as is the case with Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose fall from the starry heights was only a bit less dramatic than that of Icarus.
The New York Times is credited with bringing down Weinstein. On the other hand, former Times reporter Sharon Waxman has said that she had the goods on the serial molester as early as 2004. Her piece, Waxman said, had been gutted after Weinstein contacted the paper “to make his displeasure known.” The FBIdid put a wire on one complainant.
The prosecution fizzled out. The grapevine was full of lurid stories concerning Weinstein, but what happened in Hollywood stayed in Hollywood – until now.
Weinstein was politically connected. He contributed generously to liberal and progressive Democratic candidates: Hillary Clinton, then Running for President, white-hatted U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, then and now running against the NRA, and other prominent Democrats.
During the 2012 election, President Obama attended a money-making fete at Weinstein’s lavish mansion. Fifty people attended the event, forking over $35,800 each. Weinstein praised the president extravagantly – “Leading with your heart is the utmost for this president. Fighting for Planned Parenthood and protecting women's rights, this president has fought the good fight. Recently in Aurora, we saw him put his arms around the people that needed him the most. You can make the case that he's the Paul Newman of American presidents" – and the money furnished by Weinstein, some now suppose, inoculated him against the charges now swirling above his head.
The House of Weinstein lies in ruins. Blumenthal has now given to some worthy cause, not Planned Parenthood, the campaign donations received from Weinstein, as have other politicos, all of them professing shock and dismay. Weinstein’s Connecticut mansion is up for sale, and his wife has indicated that a divorce may be in his near future. Weinstein will be recovering from culture shock at some place in Arizona that caters to men suffering from satyriasis, an occupational hazard of both the Hollywood and Washington. D.C., cults. Even the libertines in Hollywood are shocked.
Really, who knew?
Lots of people knew, but no one came forward -- because Weinstein had taken out a social- insurance policy that had effectively protected him from exposure. Why should a starlet speak out when she knows the groper had brushed cheeks with Obama and other large political constellations and by doing so she might lose her place in line on the stairway that leads to stardom and riches?
Poor Harvey, adversity now sits on his throne. It's an old story. Even the Psalms offer no solace – only wisdom: “The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’ His ways prosper at all times; your judgments are on high, out of his sight. As for all his adversaries, he snorts at them. He says to himself, ‘I will not be moved. Throughout all generations I will not be in adversity.’”
Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based essayist.