This black-and-white video, posted last night by Megyn Kelly, was taped by Robert De Niro some time ago, but the timing seems especially apt in the wake of last night’s crotch-grab hot mike Billy Bush video.

Swaggering, big-dog alpha men — connected, financially fortified, honeyed — tend to talk crudely about basic urges and attitudes in private. With a smirk. Guys with less-than-elegant educations and backgrounds, I mean. Not writers and directors as much as bulldog producers, agents, executive producers, etc. I’ve witnessed their behavior in private sanctums, within the quiet corridors.

This is one of the things I hate about guys who lug golf clubs around…their yaw-haw chortlings, the smug entitlement. Introspective X-factor types (including guys like Jimmy Carter) may have occasional thoughts along these lines, but big dogs boast and chuckle about them. It gives them comfort to let their hair down, goad each other.

I’d like to take this moment to thank my late father — an unhappy, sour-mannered advertising guy and onetime alcoholic — for raising me not to be a smug, swaggering golf-club type. You didn’t raise a smiling, happy-faced son, dad, but you did influence and prod me in the way of taste, refinement, erudition, liberal values, literary adventure and a worship of smart movies. Seriously, you did well in this respect.