There was a lot of soul searching from people in the entertainment industry who know and were close to former studio head Harvey Weinstein — and so many others in the industry — who were abusing their power and allegedly sexually assaulting women. How did these people turn a blind eye to what was happening? Or was it more than that?
Knicks’ and Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan is one of those people, he was a friend of Weinstein’s who was on the board of directors for The Weinstein Company for a time. Dolan and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry are both named in a lawsuit against The Weinstein Company board claiming and its members worked to conceal what Weinstein was doing.
Dolan has now written a song for his band about his feelings on Weinstein and these issues, and he performed it on the Fox New York morning show, something Ian Begley of ESPN recorded and Tweeted about.
James Dolan on Fox 5 says that he is not selling the Knicks. He also plays a song, “I Should Have Known” about friends he knew, including Harvey Weinstein “and others”, who were said to have sexually assaulted or abused women. “What did I miss?” he said. https://t.co/GtKb4idyeF
— Ian Begley (@IanBegley) August 9, 2018
Here are some of the lyrics of the song:
I should’ve known
I should’ve known
I should’ve thrown myself across his tracks
Stopped him from these vile attacks
I should have known
We believed and didn’t see
Through the lies he told us all
They led him to his endless fall
I should’ve known
I should’ve known
If all this seems a little late and, maybe, disingenuous, well, remember that former Knicks employee Anucha Browne Sanders successfully sued then Knicks’ coach and president Isiah Thomas and Dolan’s Madison Square Garden in 2007 for sexual harassment. Dolan had to pay out $11.6 million in that lawsuit. Dolan still thinks Sanders made her story up and that Thomas should have been cleared (and he re-hired Thomas to run the WNBA’s Liberty, something he still does).
Dolan feels he missed something with Weinstein, but this seems to be a pattern in his life. Maybe he’s recognized that and the harm it has caused, or maybe he doesn’t see the pattern at all.
