JIM HENDRICKS: Tinseltowners find themselves shocked and appalled

With all the revelations and such coming from the Harvey Weinstein scandal out in Hollywood, I guess it’s not particularly surprising that one of the first things that came to mind — for me, anyway — was a scene from a movie.

Louis Renault, the police captain in the classic “Casablanca,” played marvelously by Claud Rains, is charged by Maj. Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt) with finding a reason to abruptly shut down Rick Blaine’s (Humphrey Bogart) Cafe Americain in Casablanca as the Nazis try to corner Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid).

Renault promptly orders everyone out of the nightclub, leading Rick to challenge him as to why, exactly, he was closing the establishment.

“I am shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in here!” Renault proclaims.

Which is the same instant when one of Rick’s employees from the gaming room walks up and hands Louis a wad of cash, saying, “Your winnings, sir.”

Renault responds, “Oh, thank you very much,” then, not missing a beat, he pockets the loot and turns his attention back to the crowd: “Everybody out at once!”

I don’t have any insight on Tinseltown or the Left Coast in general, but from what I’ve seen and read, it’s pretty telling that Weinstein’s gone from the penthouse to the outhouse with the show biz people and politicos he used to pal around with. And it appears to be another example of how these days civility and common decency have become recessive traits with too many people, and another affirmation that wealth can’t buy you class.

But what strains credibility, much like a bad movie script, are the assertions by the number of people who were shocked — shocked! — to find out The Harv was preying on young female actors.

Ben “Batman” Affleck, a collaborator with Weinstein, said he was “angry” about Weinstein’s actions and has been asking himself “What I can do to make sure this doesn’t happen to others?” Rose McGowan, who reportedly settled with Weinstein for $100,000, shot back that Affleck had known for some time that Weinstein was mistreating women — and he knew it before she told Affleck about her own experience, she said.

Subsequent reports also indicate Affleck could, in fact, help make sure “this” doesn’t happen to others by refraining from his own groping.

Meanwhile, Affleck pal Matt Damon, another Weinstein collaborator, says he would have stopped it had he known about it, but the only stopping involving Damon that’s been alleged has been by a former New York Times reporter who says he and Russell Crowe managed to get her 2004 story on Weinstein’s sexual misdeeds scrapped.

Others among the Hollywood glitterati also have professed blissful ignorance about The Harv’s carnal cravings, though they have picked up the wolf’s scent now that he’s been badly wounded — kicked out of his company and tossed off the Oscar board, which means his usefulness has ended and, with it, any reason not to jump on the “shocked and appalled” dog pile. It is, after all, an industry that’s proud to stand up for what’s right when there’s no adverse financial exposure.

That also extends to politics, where Weinstein has been a big supporter of Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who, after nearly a week, determined she, too, was “shocked and appalled.” That was probably roughly the same amount of time it took her to make sure all of Weinstein’s checks had cleared and to confirm that Bill hadn’t been hanging out with The Harv when any of these alleged goings-on were allegedly going on.

Bill Clinton, by the way, was cleared by Hillary Clinton in her recent interview regarding his own sexual preying on women because it’s all been “litigated.”

Still, the scandal sounds like marvelous fodder for late-night talk shows, which, I’m told, have become the social conscience of America, at least so long as the target of ridicule is Republican or named Trump, who pretty much writes the jokes himself, 140 characters at a time, and deserves to be mentioned in the credits at the end of those shows.

I’ll have to takes someone’s word for it. I quit watching them — outside of catching an occasional Conan O’Brien — because there’s no one left who’s an equal-opportunity wit worth losing sleep or DVR space over. Like Jimmy Kimmel says, he can’t be bothered to comment on every single little scandal out there that erupts, especially, it seems, one he finds politically inconvenient. Guess it would take away his valuable time from watching his video collection of “Girls on Trampolines” from his days on “The Man Show,” or something equally edifying.

In the meantime, it’s probably just a matter of time before the next predatory casting couch entertainment mogul is revealed and more oblivious-to-the-obvious insiders read the words “I’m shocked” from their carefully crafted unreality show scripts with great feigned sincerity.

After all, Hollywood does love its sequels.

Email Jim Hendricks at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_JHendricks on Twitter.