On Friday morning the disgraced Harvey Weinstein smiled as he was being arrested by New York City authorities for Harvey Weinstein over sexual misconduct allegations, including rape. It was definitely a weird thing to do under the circumstances, but big-swaggering-ego guys tend to respond this way when they feel their dignity has been sullied or compromised. (Which is definitely the case here, except the compromiser is Weinstein’s own behavior.) They feel they have to project a certain no-sweat, water-off-a-duck’s-ass insouciance.

Anyway, Philadelpha-based film critic Carrie Rickey was understandably irked or disconcerted by Harvey’s signage and tweeted, “How do you describe that half-smile?” So I tweeted a response by channelling Harvey: “I can’t frown or look forlorn…I have to convey that I’m not overly ruffled by this…appearing too chastened or contrite would be humiliating…I may be a rapist, but I’m Harvey fucking Weinstein and I have my pride, or what’s left of it.”

And what happened? A few hours later the dickish Brooklyn life form known as Glenn Kenny tweeted that a new blurb from Weinstein might theoretically appear on the HE masthead: “Jeff Wells gets me.” In other words Kenny tried to turn what I wrote, which was merely an impulsive stab at character-explaining as if I had temporarily become a playwright, into a p.c. slur. The world we live in is so full of rancid bile and sickening spear-throwing and intellectual snakebite venom it’s enough to make you want to throw up on a daily basis.