Say It Ain’t So — Another Icon Down the Drain |

By Bill Lee

The rapidly growing list of powerful and rich men charged with sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault in the United States and elsewhere recently is astounding. Starting with beloved television star Bill Cosby, going on to Fox News giants Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, snaring legendary movie producer Harvey Weinstein, and then recently bringing down the likes of film and theater star Kevin Spacey, liberal politicians Al Franken and John Conyers, ultra-conservative senatorial candidate Roy Moore, television news icon Charlie Rose, and others, the list disregards race, age, political creed, and sexual orientation. The necessary conditions for inclusion on the list seem to require that the harasser/attacker be male and in a position of significant power. And of course heading the list, but not suffering any of the consequences befalling the others, is the sexual predator in the White House, who, according to a recent New York Times report, has suggested, unbelievably, that the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasts about his sexual assaults, is “fake.”

The causes of the sexual predatory behavior are not obscure, but the consequences are not self-evident as they include, according to accounts from victims, (repressed) feelings of trauma and terror. And on a cheaply political level, will all of these revelations reduce the pool of future male political candidate who may be apprehensive that some inappropriate behavior done 20 years previously will come out? That reduction is a good thing, some will argue.

A controversy of sorts was sparked in China by an article in the China Daily in the wake of the allegations against Weinstein that claimed that sexual harassment does not happen in China because of cultural traditions. That caused quick and sharp repudiations of the claim, and the newspaper removed the article.

In the United States, the obtuse may shrug off the tsunami of allegations as part of the unravelling fabric of American culture or of a deeper strand of human nature, but many will see them as a learning moment that should be taken very seriously.

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