Memo to powerful men: If you're caught in the crosshairs of a major news story filled with years of sexual harassment claims, don't even consider responding the way Harvey Weinstein just did.
In a bizarre statement released in response to a New York Timesarticle Thursday morning, the Hollywood mogul veered from citing his childhood in the 1960s as a mitigating factor, to dragging the NRA and Donald Trump, to bringing up his Bar Mitzvah and his mom -- all in an apparent attempt to deflect the growing scandal.
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But by far the strangest moment was when Weinstein claimed to quote Jay-Z -- who "wrote in 4:44'I’m not the man I thought I was and I better be that man for my children.' The same is true for me."
As Spinwas the first to note, this is not a Jay-Z lyric. It does not feature anywhere on the 4:44album or the song 4:44. The closest the rap star gets to that line is "And if my children knew/I don’t even know what I would do."
4:44, in a nutshell, is about Jay-Z's marital infidelity and his fear that daughter Blue Ivy might read about it. This isn't remotely comparable to Weinstein, who is accused not of infidelity but of multiple counts of harassing female employees and actors over decades.
So quoting 4:44accurately would be inappropriate enough, but misquoting it -- perhaps in a bid to burnish the pop culture credentials of a 65-year-old man, perhaps to remind us that Weinstein, too, has kids! -- is pretty much the worst.
It has a lot of competition in this statement, which opens with "I came of age in the 60's and 70's, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different."
Legally speaking, this is about as accurate as the Jay-Z quote. Unwelcome sexual advances in the workplace -- such as a boss asking an employee to watch him shower -- is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which passed in 1964 when Weinstein was 12 years old.
The phrase "sexual harassment" was coined in 1975, when Weinstein was 23 years old and when there was an uptick in Title VII lawsuits. He really can't hide behind the "old dinosaur" claim his lawyer made Thursday.
What Weinstein probably meant to say is that the rules often weren't enforced, which is hardly a winning argument. And it's already getting dragged mercilessly on Twitter:
Tweet may have been deleted
Weinstein's statement moves on to a brief apology, which seemed less than sincere once his attorney announced the mogul would be suing the New York Timesover its story.
In true type-A style, Weinstein also insisted that he was the bestat resolving his issues, having known about them for a whole decade. "I've asked [civil rights attorney] Lisa Bloom to tutor me and she's put together a team of people," he wrote. "I've brought on therapists."
Kudos for going into therapy, Harvey, but how many people does it take to teach you that you just shouldn't make sexual advances towards women with whom you have a business relationship? It's really not that difficult a concept.
And then we get to the final paragraph of this epically bad apology, which is so scattershot it's worth quoting in full:
I am going to need a place to channel that anger so I've decided that I'm going to give the NRA my full attention. I hope Wayne LaPierre will enjoy his retirement party. I'm going to do it at the same place I had my Bar Mitzvah. I'm making a movie about ourPresident, perhaps we can make it a joint retirement party. One year ago, I began organizing a $5 million foundation to give scholarships to women directors at USC. While this might seem coincidental, it has been in the works for a year. It will be namedafter my mom and I won't disappoint her.
We're going to leave it to you to figure out exactly what's going on here. It seems this was composed in haste ("one year ago .... in the works for a year") and takes aim at two targets Weinstein hopes we will agree are worse than him, NRA CEO LaPierre and Donald Trump.
Beyond that, though, there are a galaxy of questions. What is this "retirement party" of which Weinstein speaks? (LaPierre started reporting millions in retirement benefits in 2015, but remains as CEO.) Why is it important that the party will happen at his Bar Mitzvah location? How can a movie about how awful Trump is, something we all already know, bring about his impeachment? How exactly does a $5 million fund for women directors mitigate years of harassing women employees?
And why the reference to channeling your anger, which reads like a vague threat? Shouldn't you just be angry with yourself over what you did? Lashing out at other targets, however repellant, is not a great sign that you've learned anything.
And most importantly, is there anything Weinstein won't use -- his supposed familiarity with rap, his mother-- to try to burnish his credentials with his audience?
Memo to powerful men: If and when you need to write an apology, don't make it read like you ran it through a really bad focus group first.
Just apologize.
