Now that Harvey Weinstein has lost his job, his family, his friends, and every aspect of his reputation as decades of alleged sexual misconduct come to light, we’re left to grapple with the monster that was apparently in plain sight the entire time. People ranging from Meryl Streep to Hillary Clinton have had to temper what they allegedly knew and did with what is now being reported, all of which is what makes all these archival clips about Weinstein so deeply unpleasant. It was such an “open secret” it was a joke.
30 Rock had a series of gags about an aggressive relationship between Weinstein and Jane Krakowski’s Jenna Maroney:
A few years later, they returned to this well:
At 3:09 in the video below, Seth MacFarlane congratulates the 2013 Oscar nominees for Best Supporting Actress with a creepy Weinstein joke and an extremely MacFarlanian smirk:
And, most chillingly, here’s Gwyneth Paltrow, who yesterday spoke out about Weinstein allegedly attempting to coerce her when she was 22 years old, talking to David Letterman about Weinstein, well, coercing her:
There will be a lot more of this, and it will all look bad.
Update: MacFarlane has since issued an explanation of his joke.