About Elon Musk: Another Reason You Should Read Beyond the Headlines

The 2.800 sq. ft. home was the property of Gene Wilder. Elon Musk sold it to Wilder's nephew.

Elon Musk forecloses on homeowner is a headline that seems to confirm the worst suspicions about a billionaire and his greed; that is, until one digs into the story and the homeowner sings his praises (!). [bold added]

In 2020, tech mogul Elon Musk agreed to sell one of his Los Angeles homes to filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter, for $7 million. Walker-Pearlman had grown up in the Bel-Air house—the longtime home of his uncle, the late “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” actor Gene Wilder—and Musk agreed to loan the couple most of the money they would need to buy it.

“He could have sold it for so much more,” Walker-Pearlman, a film director and writer, told The Wall Street Journal in 2022. “His sensitivity to me can’t be overstated.”

The facts, as noted in the article:

2013 - Elon Musk buys the late Gene Wilder's home for $6.75 million.

2020 - Musk lists the home for $9.5 million but sells it to Jordan Walker-Pearlman for $7 million and provides him with a $6.7 million loan, a much higher advance than any bank would allow.

2024 - The Musk loan managers file a notice of default after Walker-Pearlman fell behind the loan payments. Walker-Pearlman lists the home for $12.95 million ("Musk’s representatives have made it clear that they have no intention of forcing a sale").

Normally a foreclosure is bad news for the homeowner, but look at the overall picture. Jordan Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter put $300,000 down, lived for four years in a house they never could have afforded were it not for a billionaire's generosity, then stand to receive $5.25 million ($12,950,000-6,700,000 mortgage-1,000,000 selling expense plug estimate) on the sale.

That's a $4.950,000 profit, 16.5 times their down payment, a 1,650% return on investment. On a yearly basis, that's 105% per annum over four years [$300,000 x (1+1.05)^4].

Elon Musk has given away multi-million-dollar profits to someone he probably never knew four years ago. Are billionaires greedy? Sometimes, but not always.

Note to Kamala Harris' speechwriters: that's how one does a "return on investment" calculation. It would be nice if you show your work, but I'm not holding my breath.

Kamala Harris: the Play within the Play?

Jean Hagen and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain

My favorite musical is Singin' in the Rain, largely because of its famous song-and-dance numbers. The simple romantic plot occurs against the backdrop of the transition from silent to talking pictures, and the cartoonish villain is Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont, who forces ingenue Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) to dub over Lina's high-pitched screech so that Lina can keep her leading-lady status.

Amherst professor Hadley Arkes likens Kamala Harris to Lina Lamont: [bold added]

Movie buffs often look for a film that catches the political moment. Before Joe Biden dropped out, it might have been “The Last Hurrah” (1958). Now it’s “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), a picture about the emergence of the “talkies” in the mid-1920s, when sound was added to films.

The shock came when glamorous figures suddenly had to speak and, in some cases, their voices and accents made the audience cringe. The captivating siren, threatened with exposure in “Singin’ in the Rain,” is the invincible, unteachable Lina Lamont. In the movie, Lina is played by the veteran Jean Hagen, but the turnabout comes in our own politics, where she is played by Kamala Harris.

Or rather, Ms. Harris is now our Lina Lamont, who must be carefully guarded by her handlers and barred from speaking, for her own good (and that of the Democratic Party). That her managers have kept her shielded and confined to scripted performances confirms their own judgment that she simply isn’t up to it.

In “Singin’ in the Rain,” Lina’s songs are dubbed while she lip-synchs. Ms. Harris can make the sounds; the point of resemblance is that the words aren’t hers. So it was, one might say, for all presidents between Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama. Calvin Coolidge used to plead that he had to decline so many invitations to speak because he didn’t have the time to do the research. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speechwriter Sam Rosenman knew the style and sensibility of the patrician figure for whom he was trying to write. With Ms. Harris, there is no fixed persona or style, confirmed in writing and speech. She is something for her writers to invent.

In real life Jean Hagen was an excellent actress who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Singin'.

It would be an ironic life-imitates-art twist against Prof. Harkes' thesis if Kamala Harris were a Jean Hagen who performs well in unscripted moments, and that her "drunken Kamala" and "word salad Kamala" videos were all her being captured in a weak moment or even an act (is she really that Machievallian?).

Don't Get Stuck in the Money Room

Juan Amaya and Prop Movie Money product (WSJ)

There's nothing like the sense of excitement at the sight and feel of paper money, especially when one had so little of it in childhood. But enough about me.

One way to de-sensitize the emotional reaction to cash is to immerse oneself in it. It's unnecessary to have access to the real thing for the "treatment" to work, because fake money will do.

There is a space in the Atlanta office of RJR Props that workers call the money room.

Along one wall, about 20 feet of shelves hold a buffet of prop money, in stacks, bundles, cubes, rolls and other arrangements.

When outsiders enter the money room, they usually burst out laughing, said Rich “RJ” Rappaport, the company’s president. “It creates a very deep emotional reaction from everyone,” he said. “Well, except me. I’m ruined.”

“You’ve been around hundreds of millions of dollars in fake money,” he explained, “so it just completely loses its sense of wonder.”

Rappaport says that being more aware of money’s effect could put you in a better mindset for thinking about its place in your life.

He feels rich because he has a spouse, children, a house, a car and food. “To me, that’s everything,” he said. Meanwhile, it seems to him like many other people are, in a sense, stuck in the money room, marveling at the stacks.

It's easy for oldsters who are done with the making-it phase of their lives to advise younger, struggling folks that money isn't that important. To be perfectly honest, my younger self would have listened with half an ear. Just don't think it's all important. Don't get stuck in the money room.

Destination Wedding (2018)

Misleading: there's little smiling.

Sometimes tiring of too much saccharine, I switch off the Hallmark Channel and go to Netflix and Amazon Prime for romantic comedies, where the visuals are PG-13 but the language is R-rated.

Expectations were middling for 2018's Destination Wedding, currently streaming on Netflix, but with leads Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder there was a good chance the production wouldn't disappoint.

The movie begins as many Hallmark scripts do, with two strangers clashing at the airport. Making things worse, they find that they're both going to the same wedding at a winery in Central California.

Unlike a Hallmark plot, there's no guarantee that Frank and Lindsay will end up together. The dialogue is spirited, and the topics often dark and misanthropic. The only subject on which they agree is their loathing for the groom, Keith, who is Frank's brother and Lindsay's ex-fiancé.

Comments:

I liked the movie.

The repartee was sharp and Neal Simonesque; Keanu Reeves, not famous for his erudition, got off words like "avoirdupois" as if they were natural to his vocabulary.

Distracted by the cinematography that showed off Paso Robles and the hubbub of people at the airport, hotel, and wedding, it took me 20 minutes to notice that it was a two-person play; Frank and Lindsay had the only speaking parts.

The music and transition from various pre-wedding activities to the wedding itself helped to lighten the atmosphere and give the audience a break from the intense dialogue. I don't mean emotionally intense, but pay-attention-to-every-word intense to catch all the humor and cultural references.

The question that loomed from halfway to the end was whether the conclusion would be heavy (Pygmalion) or Hollywood (My Fair Lady). Which way do you think it went, dear reader?

The script made funny, subtle references to some of Keanu Reeves' famous action-hero characters. In the clip below, he can't tear open an airplane snack because "there is no notch."

A Real-Life Tragedy That is Destined for Hollywood

Ellen Chung, Oski, Jon Gerrish, and Miju (Chron)

It's an enigma wrapped inside a tragedy.

The mysterious death of a young couple, their daughter, and their dog on a day-hiking trail on Tuesday has puzzled investigators:

“This is a very unusual, unique situation,” said Kristie Mitchell, a spokesperson for the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office. “There were no signs of trauma, no obvious cause of death. There was no suicide note. They were out in the middle of a national forest on a day hike.”

Ellen Chung and Jonathan Gerrish walked away from their successful professional lives in the City and moved to Mariposa "for this quieter life, focusing on their daughter.”

Gerrish for years had been an engineer for Google, [family friend Steve] Jeffe said, and had only recently begun working at Snapchat after his paternity leave had ended. Chung was a certified yoga instructor and a graduate student studying counseling psychology.

Until recently the couple were mainstays in San Francisco’s social scene, with both Gerrish and Chung known to DJ from time to time, Jeffe said. The pair also mixed with the “burner” crowd, people who visit the famous arts and culture festival known as Burning Man in a Nevada desert.

Gerrish had done well for himself and was extremely generous, Jeffe said, always sharing his good fortune with friends. While the couple took a trip abroad a few years ago, they let Jeffe stay in their San Francisco loft.

While still maintaining a residence in San Francisco, the pair mostly uprooted their life in March of last year, when the pandemic was beginning to take hold. While Chung was still pregnant, the couple relocated to Mariposa, hoping to integrate their daughter to a life in the outdoors.

180 miles east of SF, 50 miles west of Yosemite

The Gerrish family owned multiple properties in California and was independently wealthy. We, who have been reading mysteries since childhood, could not suppress suspicious thoughts. Yet, there are absolutely no signs of foul play.

“You come on scene and everyone is deceased. There’s no bullet holes, no bottle of medicine, not one clue,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese said from his office in town on Friday. “It’s a big mystery.”

The cause of death was likely accidental poisoning, yet there are problems with current theories of toxic gas from old gold mines (they would have had to go deep into a mine with a baby), exposure to toxic algae blooms (all would have to go into the water), and dehydration (they still had water in the container).

On top of everything else the area has a "dark" history:

Three years ago when the Ferguson Fire swept through the valley, burning more than 96,000 acres, a firefighter rolled his dozer down a ravine along the Hites Cove Road stretch of the trail and died. The north side of the trail empties out onto Highway 140 and the Yosemite Cedar Lodge, a notorious landmark.

In 1999, serial killer Cary Stayner was working as a handyman at the motel when he murdered 42-year-old Carole Sund; her daughter, 15-year-old Juli Sund; Juli's friend, 16-year-old Argentine exchange student Silvina Pelosso; and Yosemite Institute employee Joie Ruth Armstrong. Sund and the teens had been staying at the motel.

Let's hope the mystery will be solved soon by the toxicology reports. We can then focus on where the story belongs: the sorrow over the tragic death of a young family who had all the makings of a happy, fulfilling life ahead of them.

The Harshest Judge

(WSJ illustration)

Tom Hanks regrets the "accumulated minutes wasted" playing solitaire (the old-fashioned way with cards, not on the computer) this past year.

And what else was there to do?

Actually, there was plenty to do! Damn! There was a sink to clean out and a dishwasher to empty. Laundry to sort. Rice to put in the cooker with the timer set for breakfast. Letters I could have written and the typewriter and stationery to do it.

Books I had packed in a suitcase were set on a reading stack, unread, even though I was, sort of, always reading one of them. There were floor exercises and yoga stretches to do. I have kids to talk to when they are available. I have business partners to contact. I have friends who are hilarious and interesting. I have scenes to study and work to prepare. I have stories in my head—and I tell stories for a living—that could have been sketched out, noted, outlined. I could have re-watched “Chernobyl” on HBO!

As with many successful people, Tom Hanks' harshest judge is himself.

"I did get around to doing many of those things. I lived up to most of my responsibilities," he says, and yet like the common men he often portrays,thinks he didn't do enough.

Tom Hanks is one of the most successful, famous, and admired people in the world. At the age of 64 he may be sensing his mortality, accentuated by his and his wife Rita's battle with COVID-19 in 2020.

If he wanted to quit, or at least kick back, no one would begrudge him. He just has to give himself permission.

Wonder Woman 1984: Worth a Look

1984 or 2020? women do the warrior-ing while the men lie prostrate.

Wonder Woman 1984 has gotten mixed reviews, IMHO because it suffered in comparison to the 2017 original, Wonder Woman . The earlier film was fast-paced and character-driven; the excellent special effects didn't detract from the plot; and movie-goers were challenged to keep up with the titular character's origin story (it helps to know Greek mythology) and the Victorian / La Belle Époque ambience that terminated emphatically with the Great War.

Adding to the first movie's appeal was the chemistry between Gal Gadot's Diana Prince (Wonder Woman's alter ego) and Chris Pine's Captain Steve Trevor. Gal Gadot is perfectly cast as the principled superwoman whose only weakness is her empathy, and Chris Pine has been making a habit of playing the archetypical American with heartland values (Jack Ryan, James Kirk). Part of the fun of their interactions is the alien-ness of each of their worlds to the other's.

WW84, like most sequels, doesn't have the joy of discovery to fall back on. Its higher budget ($200 million vs. $150 million) is reflected in the CGI, and the stakes--preventing the destruction of the world from nuclear war--may be true to the 1984 setting but are hard to take seriously.

WW84 can best be understood as a very expensive special effects movie where they blow up everything without anyone getting killed onscreen. It's definitely targeted toward kids--the villain's affection for his young son near the beginning of the movie is a dead giveaway--and is safe to watch with all but the most sensitive children.

Considering the lack of competition, Wonder Woman 1984 is definitely worth a look, even at the cost of a subscription to HBO Max.

Reviewers' headlines say it all:

Time: Wonder Woman 1984 Arrives When We Need Some Fun—But It Could Have Been More Than That

SF Chronicle: Review: Gal Gadot can’t rescue ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ from pit of empty ideas

WSJ: ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Review: Wishfulness Run Riot

Good Goes Around, Then Comes Around

Maj. Gen. Miguel Correa, rescued Zayed bin Hamdan al
Nahyan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (WSJ)

The peace agreements (Abraham Accords) between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain would not have occurred without an unpublicized good deed in which the United States risked its soldiers' lives in 2017:

Gen. [Miguel] Correa was at his home in Abu Dhabi in 2017 when he got a call that the Emirati helicopter had gone down in Yemen while carrying out a counterterrorism mission...

Three Emirati soldiers were killed. Zayed bin Hamdan al Nahyan, a 27-year-old nephew and son-in-law to the country’s crown prince, was one of seven others seriously injured. U.S. officials soon learned that the young Emirati royal was among those being rescued.

Two American Ospreys carried a special operations forces medical team to the helicopter crash site in Yemen. The American medical team flew the seven injured soldiers to the USS Bataan, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship in the Gulf of Aden, said Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command. One soldier died on the way to the ship as a surgeon on the Osprey revived a second Emirati whose heart stopped, said Capt. Urban.

Medical teams on the Bataan worked frantically for 48 hours, Capt. Urban said, as American forces onboard lined up to give blood for the Emirati soldiers. The medical team used 54 of 66 units of blood, making it the largest such “walking blood bank” the Navy has used since World War II, said Capt. Urban.

Meanwhile, U.A.E. leaders asked the Americans for special permission to fly the six soldiers, including the Emirati royal, to Landstuhl, Germany, where the U.S. Army has a medical hospital that specializes in treating combat injuries.

Gen. Joseph Votel, then head of Central Command, called then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who quickly approved the plan as Gen. Correa kept the anxious Emiratis apprised.

The U.S. flew the Emirati soldiers from the ship back to an airport in Yemen, where an Air Force C-17 cargo plane equipped with a special medical unit was waiting to fly them to Germany,

Flying the massive plane into Yemen posed a risk. The U.S. landed the plane at night and flew out before the sun rose to ensure everyone’s safety.

General Correa coordinated the mission and became "something of a hero" in the UAE. The trust that had developed between him and the UAE royal family was an invaluable part of the peace negotiations. Emirati ambassador Yousef Otaiba:

“The truth is, for the Abraham Accords to have materialized, there was a very much-needed element of trust, and we had that trust with Miguel Correa and the White House,” he said. “A pretty big leap of faith was required from all sides for this to happen.”

One good thing that will come out of a Biden victory is that the historic foreign policy triumphs of the Trump Administration may finally be given their due. Who knows, Hollywood may even make a movie (or limited series) about Major General Miguel Correa, soldier and diplomat.

That's Still Funny

One of the silver linings in the coronavirus cloud ("bad cloud", as opposed to "good cloud" like Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services) is that boredom and ennui have led to revisiting old videos.

Tosh Togo

The Three Stooges were a top-three favorite when my parents let this kindergartener watch on the old black-and-white during the '50's. I howled at the ridiculous physical comedy, complete with the sound effects of face-slapping, head-bashing, and eye-poking.

[Related: I also enjoyed watching the fake violence of pro wrestling on Saturday mornings and was later thrilled when Tosh Togo got the role of Oddjob in Goldfinger.]

But back to the Stooges, who had material for the adults, too. In 1940 they starred in one of the first anti-Hitler Hollywood films. You Nazty Spy! is filled with Nazi references such as "storm" troopers who wear raincoats while carrying umbrellas and "books" burning to erase gambling debts.

When arms dealers seek to install a puppet dictator, they entice wallpaper hanger Moe and his assistants Larry and Curly. Dialogue:

Paper-hanger Moe smears black
paint above his lip by accident.

Moe: What does a dictator do?

Arms manufacturer: A dictator, why he makes love to beautiful women, drinks champagne, enjoys life, and never works. He makes speeches to the people, promising them plenty, gives them nothing, then takes everything. That's a dictator!

Curly: A parasite! That's for me.

The cinematography is obsolete, but the script is not.

Que Sera, Sera

Apr 03, 1922 - May 13, 2019 (Time image)

Blonde and blue-eyed, Doris Day wasn't sexy in the same fashion as Marilyn Monroe, but she was perfect for pre-1964 America, girl-next-door beautiful.

Though her public persona never strayed from what we would call "traditional cultural values," her movie characters were articulate and spirited. With the benefit of hindsight we can see how she was the precursor of the ideal professional woman who is assertive, talented, and feminine.

Her personal life was no Doris Day tale:

Her 1976 tell-all book, “Doris Day: Her Own Story,” chronicled her money troubles and three failed marriages, contrasting with the happy publicity of her Hollywood career.

“I have the unfortunate reputation of being Miss Goody Two-Shoes, America’s Virgin, and all that, so I’m afraid it’s going to shock some people for me to say this, but I staunchly believe no two people should get married until they have lived together,” she wrote.

In my humble opinion, Doris Day is under-rated as a singer. Her music is part of the American songbook--Sentimental Journey, It's Magic, By the Light of the Silvery Moon--often producing an I-didn't-know-that-was-her-song reaction.

Born to a music teacher and a housewife in Cincinnati, she had dreamed of a dance career, but at age 12 suffered a crippling accident: A car she was in was hit by a train and her leg was badly broken. Listening to the radio while recuperating, she began singing along with Ella Fitzgerald, “trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.”

Her hit Que Sera, Sera, (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) from Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is a throwback to old-style performing--perfect intonation, clear projection, vocal control, feeling without emoting, and erect posture. She knew how to get on and off the stage. R.I.P.

Choosing Bravely

We think of optimism or pessimism as an affect of our circumstances, that is, as an emotional reaction determined by what's happened in our lives. Academy Award winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, 2018) says that it's a willed choice:

A love story with an
amphibian won Best
Picture. No wonder
he's optimistic.

Optimism is radical. It is the hard choice, the brave choice....

History and fable have both proven that nothing is ever entirely lost. David can take Goliath. A beach in Normandy can turn the tide of war. Bravery can topple the powerful. These facts are often seen as exceptional, but they are not. Every day, we all become the balance of our choices—choices between love and fear, belief or despair. No hope is ever too small.

If you ask most people what their hopes are for themselves and their children, it is that they find happiness. Guillermo del Toro seems to be saying that all they have to do is to choose to be happy. Can it be that simple?

Still on the Scene

Though having appeared in recent TV shows and movies, Nick Nolte is best known today to the younger generation for his infamous mug shot (right) after a DUI arrest in 2002. For years that photo was grist for late-night comics.

Hearing him referred to as the "sexiest man alive" in a 1992 episode of Murder, She Wrote reminded us that Nick Nolte was once a Hollywood leading man.

He burst upon the scene in the ABC mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man, which was must-see TV. In 1976 there were still only three networks, and most Americans didn't have video-recorders (the Sony Betamax had just been introduced in 1975). So we had to be home every Monday night for twelve weeks to see RMPM. It was a television event, the second highest-rated show for the 1975-76 season.

Now 78, Nick Nolte has "ditched the booze, drugs and cigarettes that used to control his life." We wish him well.

Offbeat

Actor Jeff Goldblum, known for his quirky heroes, self-aware villains, and oddball funny guys, is a skilled jazz pianist. As a child he was fascinated by syncopation.

Future movie star, 11, in 1964 (WSJ)

In our living room, we had a baby-grand Steinway. My mother, Shirley, knew her way around the keyboard, so we had lots of piano books. I used them to learn chord markings and how to improvise. I also played on our upright piano in the basement. It was the ’60s, so I painted it lots of different colors.

Acting was his dream job, but piano would have been his profession, he says, had the former not panned out.

At 66 he's cut his first album, giving encouragement to all us baby late-bloomers. (Note: his profile on CBS Sunday Morning is here.)

Two Icons and the Man Who Loved Them

The cover photo (by Richard Landers) of My Girls

All right, I admit it, I really like the cover photo on Todd Fisher's My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie.

Todd Fisher, 60, spent his life in the presence of two Hollywood icons, his mother, Debbie Reynolds, and sister, Carrie Fisher.

More than just a chronicler, Todd helped them through failed marriages, financial problems, and substance abuse:

The author turned patriarchal in his teens, when he discovered his mother being cheated out of program sales during a Broadway show and observed [Debbie's second husband Harry] Karl’s lawyers shoving her around in their divorce negotiations. Mr. Fisher’s role expanded beyond son and brother into lawyer, bouncer, doctor, stage manager, business adviser, psychiatrist, gate-keeper and pal.

Fun fact: Todd Fisher was named after his dad Eddie Fisher's best friend, Mike Todd. When Mike died in a plane crash, Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds to marry Mike Todd's widow, the A+-lister of the 1950's and 60's, Elizabeth Taylor, in 1959. So that's what my parents were talking about and why they changed the subject when we kids entered the room.

His Pride Was Pricked

His IMDB photo drips with humility.

Justifying a Will & Grace episode that shows a bleak portrait of historical NYC, executive producer Max Mutchnick said in EW (12/8/17): [bold added]

"It's important to note no matter how much complaining that a certain part of this country is doing, the good ol' days weren't actually that good when you jump back 90 years...The world we live in now is better than it once was."

Comments:

Max, why can't people agree with both premises--the past wasn't that good and the world is better than it once was--and still disagree with you politically?

Way to go, dissing a good chunk of your customer base. I guess I wouldn't care either, if my net worth was $100 million.

We can't enjoy sports or entertainment as an escape. It's all politics, all the time.

Collapsing Like a House of Cards

I knew something was true but couldn't prove it.

I knew that the sexual depredations of various Christian leaders--Catholic priests, television evangelists, and conservative religious politicians--trumpeted almost gleefully by the media, could not have been the whole story. Every practicing Christian I encounter knows that he is a sinner, but regularly repents and tries to do better next time. How come the only abusers and harassers of women and children were Christians and/or conservatives? How come Hollywood, the media, and academia, rife with people who are not religious and often proudly so, were so free of sin?

Now we know that they were not, their actions have been more numerous and severe, and their deeds have been actively covered up for at least the 20 years dating back to the Clinton Administration. The whole edifice is collapsing like a House of Cards.

Much more important than the current
discussion, the congregation blessed Jared
and Alexandra, who grew up in our church,
on their wedding earlier this week.

Dear Lord, please forgive me for any feelings of satisfaction or vindication that I feel. If I were more secular, I would crow about justice being served (is this the "social justice" that I keep hearing about?), but that would be wrong.

Let's all start by taking a break from deploring the repugnant cultural other.

There are numerous reflections on this topic. Here are a few:

Ross Douthat, What if Ken Starr Was Right?

Andrew Sullivan, The Danger of Knowing You're on the Right Side of History

David Brooks, The Siege Mentality Problem

Respite from Their Harangues

Admonitions against self-righteousness ("pot calling the kettle black", "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones") go back centuries or longer:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? [Matthew 7:3]

The first European colonists brought strict moral codes to the New World, and the Puritan tradition held sway for hundreds of years.

Burt Lancaster won Best Actor in 1961 for
his portrayal of a con-man evangelist.

The philosophical revolt began in literature, then continued in film. Morally compromised clergy became so commonplace in fiction that nowadays it is unusual to read the story of a man of the cloth who is not consumed by lust, avarice, and/or ambition. Real-world revelations of child abuse, adultery, and financial chicanery contributed to the erosion of Christianity's moral authority.

By the end of the 20th century the status of Christianity was so undermined that few clergy had the temerity to pontificate upon the evils of society, preferring to minister to the needs of their congregation and focus on individuals' spiritual health. (To be sure, some issues like late-term abortion did rouse conservative Christians from their torpor, but those occasions were rare.)

There was a strain of Christianity--endemic in my Episcopal Church--that embraced progressivism (Marxism rechristened) and gave full-throated advocacy to identity politics, the denunciation of "structural" racism/sexism/economic inequality, and the use of State power to rectify perceived injustice.

Academia, Hollywood, and mass media merged with progressive Christianity to create a new priestly caste, the educated philosopher-kings who marched on the right side of history. After Donald Trump was elected in November, the outrage from these morally superior beings has been broadcast unceasingly over all TV, radio, print, and internet channels.

Until last Sunday, that is, when the deeds of Harvey Weinstein came to light. He was one of their spiritual ringleaders, and his crimes--moral and social, if not legal---were far more severe and extensive than any Donald Trump might have committed.

The priestly caste will not be shaken from their worldview by the actions of one, two, or ten Harvey Weinsteins, but here's hoping that for a little while we will be granted respite from their harangues.