Advertiser columnist Ruth Wishart considers what allegations of sexual harassment against film producer Harvey Weinstein and others say about society and people in power.

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Harvey Weinstein, fired from the company bearing his name this week, wasn’t just a major film producer and Hollywood mogul.

He was a player too in national politics. But, as has now belatedly been made public in America, he was allegedly a decades-long sexual bully, harassing, embarrassing and seducing both wannabe film starlets and members of his own staff.

It is also alleged that no fewer than eight of them were expensively bought off when they threatened to go public.

You might call his behaviour downright Presidential. How could we forget that tape of Donald J. Trump boasting that he could kiss women at will, and grope them because “when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

That grotesque sense of entitlement is not confined to the occupant of the White House – although we might reasonably ask, in passing, why such a crass confession did not disgust those American voters, not least the religious conservatives, who still felt able to vote for him.

I heard one “Christian” lady intone in a TV documentary that while Trump may be “less than perfect”, he had been sent by God and had to be supported. Don’t fancy her God.

Fox News, noted for its relentlessly right wing, sub-racist bias, has also recently lost two of its heavy hitting executives – Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly – after the network had to settle a series of claims for sexual harassment.

Sadly, in all of these cases, the predators in question roamed freely in their personal jungles for many years before they were named and shamed.

Not that this use and abuse of power is a uniquely American phenomenon. Who could forget the decline and fall of France’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn, losing his high-profile role at the International Monetary Fund in similar circumstances.

And in the UK we have witnessed a parade of now elderly men charged with historic sexual misconduct.

The common denominator here is that the men in question all held very powerful jobs; all exerted a huge amount of influence in their field. And interestingly, many, like Weinstein, protested that their conduct was just how people behaved at the time.

And indeed this is so. Women of my vintage in journalism could all regale tawdry tales of being groped and worse by male executives when we were junior journos.

But this is not quite the point. Whatever the era, and whatever the imbalance of power, making unsolicited sexual demands of employees is both plain wrong and, not at all incidentally, against the law.

And to suggest, as Weinstein has, that he needs help to understand why he did what he did and change, is plain offensive.

And if you doubt how power corrupts in this very particular way, you need only reflect that some of the most famous female actors in Hollywood felt unable to call him out, until Ashley Judd bravely broke cover, despite his behaviour apparently being common knowledge.