Eugene Robinson: Weinstein and his enablers cant hide behind culture of the 60's
Confronted with allegations of serial sexual abuse and rape, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s instinct was to lie: “I came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.”
No, it wasn’t.
The different-era defense was also used by those who would excuse fugitive director Roman Polanski’s confessed 1977 crime, drugging and having sex with a 13-year-old girl. And those willing to forgive and forget the first 20 or so of Bill Cosby’s alleged sexual assaults, which took place during those scarlet decades.
Blaming the 1960s and 1970s has become the first refuge of abusive creeps. But those of us who lived through that time can recall — yes, perhaps through a slight haze — that “the culture” never approved of the kinds of things Weinstein is accused of doing.
That era was about personal liberation, the biggest component of which involved women’s empowerment. The sexual revolution gave women options that previously had been forbidden to them, but it never took away the option of rejecting unwanted advances. And never did “the culture” give men the moral right to use money and power to coerce sexual favors — or the legal right to commit sexual assault.
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