There are multiple underlying issues in the recent allegations of the ongoing Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment and assault scandal. The first aspect worth discussing is what an indescribably repulsive reptile this amoral predator is. It is impossible to imagine that his abuses continued for three decades without Hollywood bigwigs knowing of it, going along, and accepting the idea of his casting couch as part of doing business: "You want me to make you a world-famous, mega-millionaire movie star? What are you going to do for me, and why should I pick you over a million other gorgeous wannabes?"

As reprehensible as his behavior indisputably was, the entire industry is much less forgivable for choosing to play along and enable this activity, victimizing countless women for decades. And why? Because stars could get that next movie role and further their own careers. Or even more cynically, because Weinstein was a huge Obama and Hillary bundler, and they were on "our team."

Another story to emerge from this ugliness is how many well-known actresses may have prostituted themselves for roles.Sexual exploitation seems to remain part of the Hollywood system; it may not have been primarily their acting that earned some of their roles.

The hypocrisy of Ashley Judd is most appalling — she’s one of the phony "champions of women" who absolutely excoriated Donald Trump at the Women's March in Washington last winter while at the same time remaining silent about Weinstein (just as she did with Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski …), a man who inflicted far worse damage, on far more women, and for more decades, than a crude taped conversation. Or Meryl Streep, whose Academy Award speech at the Golden Globes had her fighting back tears at the horrible behavior of Trump — while giving an even better performance pretending to be as shocked and outraged as Hillary, the self-proclaimed leading advocate for women, would later pretend to be about Weinstein when it finally became impossible to feign ignorance.

And yet these sanctimonious Hollywood hypocrites bashed a decent man like Mitt Romney for his comment about "binders full of women." Romney’s innocent verbal misstep caused Hollywood elites to spend millions of dollars on advertising and character assassination, which tried to sell the notion that his comment could be placed in the same universe as Weinstein's near-sexual slavery. All this perpetrated by the same Hollywood figures who presume to claim the mantle of safeguarding the rights, dignity, and respectful treatment of women everywhere. The Weinstein scandal has revealed the dirty little secret that all the speeches, all the protests, and all the marches on behalf of women are, for too many Hollywood elites and people close to them, born not out of conviction or passion, but rather as an effective weapon to advance a political agenda.