Barstool Sports Founder Asks If Harvey Weinstein Should Be Allowed To Exchange Sex For Work

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, a guy who once took great pleasure in calling women “cunts,” posed a question to one of his female subordinates live on the radio. The question was: Actually, should Harvey Weinstein be allowed to demand sex from actresses in exchange for roles in movies? Get ready to listen to the world’s dumbest conversation:

Francesca Mariano, the woman to whom the question was posed, told Portnoy that no, she did not think it would be okay for a boss to suggest sex in exchange for advancing a subordinate’s career. Portnoy asked if Weinstein demanding sex in exchange for $1 million was appropriate; that led to a brief digression in which Portnoy, Mariano, and Barstool Radio host Kevin Clancy discussed the merits of legal prostitution.

The conversation returned to Weinstein, at which point Portnoy, who is in charge of a lot of employees at the company he created, attempted to explain how the Hollywood producer may have justified years worth of sexual assault and harassment in his own mind:

Harvey Weinstein’s answer to that, and he’s obviously a total scumbag, but any big powerful person, like—“Fuck you, it’s my company, I built this myself. I don’t get to fuck, because... I don’t owe Joe Blow, talented actress anything. This is my company, I gotta get fucking laid, and if she’s willing to make that trade... it’s not publicly... who do I owe? I don’t owe this talented person anything.”

Portnoy stopped to clarify that he interpreted the allegations against Weinstein to have been non-consensual. “But I’m saying the nature of a trade,” he added. At this point, a slightly uncomfortable Clancy sent the show to commercial break.