Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The #metoo movement has an icy heart

Have mercy for the weakest – or you no longer occupy the moral high ground

issue 11 November 2017

On rolls the Harvey Weinstein horror show with no finale in sight. The next episode looks likely to star Uma Thurman, who’s waiting for the right moment, she says, to tell her own Harvey story. Hollywood waits for Uma and I wait for Robert De Niro, who said of Donald Trump: ‘He’s a dog, he’s a pig, a mutt.’ If groping makes you mad, Rob, why so silent about friend Harvey?

Weinstein is clearly a slimeball predator. I hope the great wave of feminist outrage washes all the Harveys clean away, out of Tinseltown, out of Washington, out of Westminster. But running alongside the Weinstein drama is another trickier case — one I think the credibility of the whole #metoo movement rests on.

Four women have now come forward to claim that the nonagenarian George Bush Sr assaulted them. He made a lewd joke, then patted them on the bum, they say.

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