A few years ago I had just begun my TV writing career when I was warned by friends in the industry not to publish a column critical of the fact that Democrats like Hillary Clinton had for years accepted donations from Harvey Weinstein and others like him.
I did anyway.
Even though Weinstein’s numerous instances of sexual assault were not common knowledge, his generally abusive behavior was, and he had previously launched a petition in support of Roman Polanski. That’s like wearing a flashing neon sign that says you’re not a great person, especially to women and girls. But Democrats—all of the major ones—lined up to take money from said terrible person, who was the embodiment of everything they claimed they were against. This made it hard for Democrats to tout their bona fides as the “party of women” and now here we are.
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Years later, our country is still picking up the pieces after electing a man who is terrible to women and girls (including E. Jean Carroll) as president and ultimately enacting policies that are terrible for women and girls. But Democrats appear not to have learned their lesson.
Though both major unions in Hollywood are now set to be on strike at the same time (SAG-AFTRA representing actors and WGA, representing writers, of which I am a member), the nation’s most powerful Democrats have offered tepid support. There have been polite Instagram posts and one-sentence statements talking generally about “supporting striking writers” and how important storytelling is—and how they hope the labor action “gets resolved.” Despite the increasing cruelty demonstrated by the AMPTP, what they have not done is specifically call out the bad guys, because yet again, the bad guys happen to be their friends, donors and business associates.
Let me illustrate what I mean.
In 2015 when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed what many consider one of the most notoriously anti-union laws in the country, President Barack Obama had this to say:
“Wisconsin is a state built by labor, with a proud pro-worker past. So even as its governor claims victory over working Americans, I’d encourage him to try and score a victory for working Americans—by taking meaningful action to raise their wages and offer them the security of paid leave.”
He continued, adding: “It’s inexcusable that, over the past several years, just when middle-class families and workers need that kind of security the most, there’s been a sustained, coordinated assault on unions, led by powerful interests and their allies in government.”
His statement would have been perfect for today. All he’d have to do is swap out the name “Gov. Scott Walker” with Ted Sarandos at Netflix. But President Obama is not going to do that. Because Netflix is where he and the former first lady have their extremely lucrative production deal. This is not particularly surprising because Sarandos and his wife, Nicole Avant, were major fundraisers for Obama’s presidential campaign, and she eventually served in his administration as ambassador to the Bahamas.
In fact, Netflix is considered the most progressive-leaning in terms of donations among all the major tech media entities. David Zaslav, who recently became one of the most powerful men in the history of media thanks to the Discovery-Warner merger, has also given extensively to Democrats.
Ron DeSantis has basically centered his entire presidential campaign around the fact that Bob Iger is not a conservative. In fact, according to reports, Iger and Zaslav have been two of the biggest media donors in Democratic politics.
Early in his presidency, President Biden put Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is from California and whose donor base is entrenched there, in charge of a landmark labor task force to increase support for unions and their members in the U.S. Here’s my question: Wouldn’t a good place to start be calling their donors and tell them to stop acting like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker? Why do I get the feeling that if more entertainment execs donated to Trump or DeSantis, that’s exactly what they would be doing, not posting social media platitudes.
I had been warned by well-meaning friends that Harvey Weinstein would get a slap on the wrist and I would “never work in this town again.” (I have friends who were similarly concerned about this column since David Zaslav seems to be fairly thin-skinned, but thankfully my editors have more gumption than some others.)
But that’s not how things turned out. Instead more and more people stepped forward and decided that the status quo for inequity and abuse could not hold. As a result, Democratic politicians began rushing to either return his donations or give them to good causes. I couldn’t help thinking about that as Ted Sarandos, who took home $50 million last year, was lambasted for celebrating the anniversary of “Orange is the New Black,” a show that helped build Netflix but where many of the actors were paid so little that while filming they lost money.
If that represents the values of Democrats, then they actually aren’t the party of unions or the middle class and certainly not the working class.
But let’s see if any of them have the courage to tell their big-time Hollywood donors that.
