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Comment by Fricken | Hacker News Reader

The Weinstein thing really opened the floodgates.

There's a guy in my hometown, whom I've worked with in the past, he's a pretty talented and prolific playwright, actor and director who's been at the centre of the local theatre and filmmaking scene for about 20 years now, and he's also a sexual predator, as anyone who's worked with him can attest to.

The day before yesterday he made a long Facebook post under the #metoo hashtag basically confessing to his sins apologizing profusely, and promising to never do it again. Today he got fired from everything that he's involved with. The apology was career suicide.

The fucked up thing is that, just like Harvey Weinstein, everybody knew what he was up to, it had going on for years and while it made everyone uncomfortable people just looked the other way. Opening up about it is what ruined him. Honesty is the best policy something something.

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> Today he got fired from everything that he's involved with. The apology was career suicide.

I'm obviously not familiar with the exact situation, but I'd be willing to bet money that he had received word that it was going to become public and the apology was an attempt to appear proactively remorseful and to circumvent the consequences resulting from the forthcoming publication. (In other words, the "apology" was not the precipitating action.)

He was artistic director of a local theatre, and he came under fire from them, which is what prompted the public confession/apology, but then he was fired from his role as head writer and part time performer in a locally produced sitcom, booted out of an improv troupe he was in, and he had a couple plays lined up with different theatres that were cancelled.

This all happened in less than 24 hours. If he hadn't made the confession I'm not sure he would've lost all of that.

No, the behavior was career suicide. The apology was just the coda on a very sad, pathetic story.

How was it career suicide if it had been going on for so long and no one did anything?

To be clear, I can't blame the people who fired him. They probably felt relief that they could finally stop working with him.

As the article said, we shouldn't demonise these men. But that is hard. It's not in our nature as humans. It's hard for us to look with compassion at an aggressor.

Correlation of confession vs. firing != causation.

He very likely was going to be fired either way; the public apology was likely his attempt to avoid being fired.

From the OP: He was artistic director of a local theatre, and he came under fire from them, which is what prompted the public confession/apology[...]

The apology was career suicide.

No, being a creep was career suicide. Making an apology is not the suicidal act, that's just a last-ditch effort to get ahead of the shit storm that the rumor mill says is coming (oh, did you think he apologized out of a sudden sense of remorse?)

EDIT: ya know, after some thought, I find the statement I quoted to be ridiculous. Because the implication is "see? He tried to do the right thing and it got him fired!". That, of course, is bullshit. The person fired hadn't tried to do the right thing for a long time, and that is what got them fired. Apologizing wasn't "the right thing", apologizing was an attempt to get away with it again.

> last-ditch effort to get ahead of the shit storm

This raises an interesting question. If you know a shit storm is coming is it more advantageous to do:

a) Get ahead of the storm (as you say) or

b) Wait until it hits and then apologize profusely and say and do all the right things?

Seat of the pants I say 'b' is better. First under the 'better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt' (there is a chance the storm won't hit) and second because most people will think you came out upfront because of the obvious reason of 'get head of the storm' and so it won't mean anything anyway.

For scenario "a", here's how a person such as myself might react as one who doesn't pay much attention to rumor mills (er, sorry, "entertainment news"): "huh? Boy, that came out of left field." Two days later: "oh, that's why they were apologizing seemingly unprompted. I do believe my cynicism increased about 0.4%." It is highly unlikely that I will be convinced that the apology was sincere.

Option "b": do it right, and I might believe you. Don't hide behind "I apologize if anyone was offended", at least try to sound sincere. "In these recent days it has come to light that I'm a scum bag. I'm sorry. Now, some will say that I'm only sorry that I got caught. Those people would have been absolutely correct two days ago. But as I spent the last 48 hours reflecting on the the charges brought against me, for the first time I realize the genuine pain that I have caused...yada, yada, yada."

Shed a tear, say it in the right tone of voice, you might pull it off. And, as you mention, you might not ever need deploy option b if you're lucky.

> Now, some will say that I'm only sorry that I got caught.

One thing though as someone who gets paid a great deal to negotiate for others I think that would be a mistake. Reason is you don't negotiate for the other person. Hard to explain but that is how that strikes me. Very possible there are people that won't think that. And now you are putting the idea into their head when they hadn't thought of it. [1] And those that thought of it won't care (is my guess).

[1] I am reminded of when I was younger and was looking at a house on a main street. The real estate agent said to me (and my fiance at the time) 'and you know street is no big deal there is a big yard in the back so you don't have to worry about your kids playing in the front and the traffic!!'. Well you know we hadn't even thought about that at all at that point!

I wonder why Weinstein getting outed as a sexual predator after it being an open secret in that community for years had this effect and Bill Cosby getting outed as a sexual predator after it being an open secret in that community for years didn't.

Weinstein was far more powerful and thus dangerous to his potential denouncers.

His fall is a signal that abuse isn't tolerated anymore from people with his stature.

NO. His fall is a signal that abusers that get caught won’t be tolerated. Everyone knew about this. They even joked about it on the Oscar stage a few years back. Had that news story not come out, nothing would be happening to Harvey right now. We ought to ask why The NY Times let Matt Damon, Russel Crowe and George Clooney influence their decision to spike the story ten years ago. And we ought to ask why those actors are not being demonized for contributing to Harvey’s continued predatory behavior.

> we ought to ask why those actors are not being demonized

There's as yet no suggestion that those actors were aware of the context of their endorsements.

> Weinstein was far more powerful and thus dangerous to his potential denouncers.

Really. Interesting. So you claim that e.g. The New York Times was weaker than a studio head?

Sexual deprevity in Hollywood has never been a "secret", but it doesn't help if your "stars" -- which are then promoted to soft politics propaganda work -- are shown to be individuals that tolerate anything for fame and riches. And equally, it doesn't help advancing various social engineering projects if the heads of studios that push JUNK to your children are shown to be sexual predators.

The actual question of interest here is what is being covered up that throwing Weinstein under the bus got the green light.

Now that's an interesting take...

This is what I was thinking. The octopus sacrifices an arm to conceal the full extent of its reach.

Because unlike Cosby, Weinstein is not just a story about a depraved individual, but about the wider US cultural (and politcally liberal) elite. He was a major donor and fundraiser, he was covered for by major media outlets, Hollywood bigwigs etc. This forces an attempt to make it more about men in general, thereby implicitly making it less about the cultural elite specifically.

There's the possibility that he apologized and confessed to get ahead of a scandal because one or more of the people he harrassed/assaulted were about to come forward with their stories. The Weinstein saga has and is still emboldening many of his and other predators' victims to go public.

The act of "confession" is meaningless if it cannot result in consequences.

Yes, it's better than remaining silent (and continuing). But it's still far worse than never having done these things in the first place.

For an employer who didn't already know, the net result of such a confession is obviously to see the person in a worse light than before, and firing them makes sense.

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