Today marks the release of Bully, a "moving and troubling documentary" about the victims of adolescent bullying. It's being distributed by the Weinstein Company, which is co-run by Harvey Weinstein, a monstrous and violent bully who has hurt hundreds of people with his frequent rages and sociopathic lack of concern for the emotional or physical well-being of anyone with less power than himself.

Director Lee Hirsch received praise in the New York Times' review of Bully today, which lauded his "compassion[ate] and tact[ful]" examination of "the extent to which that cruelty is embedded in our schools and therefore in our society as a whole." Even before its release, Bully became something of a cause celebre when Weinstein balked at the MPAA's refusal to grant it a PG-13 rating—and therefore be available in theaters to the constituency that most needs to see it—on account of its swearing. Weinstein brashly chose to release it without a rating rather than submit to an R.

What devotion to getting the message out about bullying! Good for you, Harvey. Here is a very brief and very incomplete list of some of the awful, shitty, subhuman things that Harvey Weinstein, newfound advocate for the bullied, has done to people less powerful than he is:

  • He placed then-New York Observer reporter Andrew Goldman in a headlock and dragged him out of an event Goldman was covering. "You know what? It's good that I'm the fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town," Weinstein said at the time.
  • After calling director Julie Taymor "the most arrogant person I have ever met" at a screening of Frida, and instructing her to "go market the fucking film yourself," he turned to her companion and said: "I don't like the look on your face. Why don't you defend your wife, so I can beat the shit out of you."
  • He leveraged Gwyneth Paltrow to pose for the cover of the inaugural issue of Talk magazine in a ludicrous S&M get-up. "There were certain favors that he asked me to do," Paltrow later said about the shoot, "that I felt were not exploitive but not necessarily as great for me as they were for him."
  • He once screamed at Democratic operative Terry McAuliffe, "You motherfucker! I'll rip your balls off!"
  • In a dispute with the producers of O, he threatened to release the film on "1000 poorly venued screens at inopportune times with no public relations support" if he didn't get his way.
  • He badgered Sydney Pollack, one of the producers of The Reader, as Pollack lay dying in an effort to get the film released in time for Oscar consideration.

Weinstein has blamed all of his atrocious behavior on a sugar imbalance, and claims that quitting M&Ms has helped curb the assholery. Of course he relapses now and again, like the time he ate M&Ms off the floor of a screening room after fighting with an aide over the bowl.

Anyway, go see Bully, so you can give money to Harvey Weinstein, so he can use it to hurt more people.

[Photoillustration by Jim Cooke; image via Getty]