In 2017, the #MeToo movement erupted into full public view, with the Harvey Weinstein scandal as the driving wedge for the defenestration of a large number of prominent people (nearly all of them men) from high positions, typically for patterns of sexual abuse and predation towards subordinate women that had gone on for years. Why then? At the time, I had a theory:

In the climate of 1998-2000, “sexual harassment” meant “Bill Clinton,” the sexual harassment and affair-with-starstruck-young-subordinate story that had transfixed the nation for two years and dug the entire world of liberalism into a defensive crouch against female accusers of powerful liberals, complete with a theory of “compartmentalization” under which a man who did good for the movement could be forgiven his private sins, regardless of the trail of women he’d treated as disposable… But now, while the mores of Hollywood may not have changed, the partisan climate had. Stories about Fox and Trump make it fashionable again for liberals to be against this sort of thing. In that sense, Weinstein isn’t totally wrong that right-wingers are behind his downfall, but not the way he thinks. There is finally a bigger target to whom he can be sacrificed.

In the climate of 1998-2000, “sexual harassment” meant “Bill Clinton,” the sexual harassment and affair-with-starstruck-young-subordinate story that had transfixed the nation for two years and dug the entire world of liberalism into a defensive........

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