Harvey Weinstein, whose bacchanalia of beastliness, from casting couch extortion to blacklists for resisters to media payoffs to sex harassment payouts, hasn't even been fully outed yet, has left Woody Allen worried.  According to the Daily Mail:

He told BBC Arabic: 'The whole Harvey Weinstein thing is very sad for everybody involved. 

'Tragic for the poor women that were involved, sad for Harvey that is life is so messed up. There's no winners in that, it's just very, very sad and tragic for those poor women that had to go through that.'

He hoped the victims can find 'some amelioration' now the allegations have come to light, but added: 'You also don't want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself. That's not right either.'

Allen is worried about repercussions against guys who wink?

Now, hold on.  This is taking one bad thing and flipping it in the entirely opposite direction – getting out the fire hose in a time of flood, as G.K. Chesterton put it.  Far be it that winkers are facing sanctions; it's guys like Weinstein – and Allen himself – who have been getting away with highway robbery.  Woman after woman, 35 at the last count, say Weinstein would lure actresses up to his hotel rooms; show up naked or in a bathrobe; demand sex and massages; and downright rape, as was the case claimed with a couple of European actresses.  Accusations are rolling out of the woodwork.  Weinstein masturbated in front of his targets, did disgusting things to the shrubbery, got actors to shut women down with threats that they'd never eat lunch in that town again, put reporters on the payroll to silence them, and contributed to left-wing causes such as Planned Parenthood – not to mention left-wing politicians such as Hillary Clinton – the better to get these groups to turn the other way.

Allen is saying this stuff because he knows he's something of an abuser himself, and he doesn't want things to change too much in the Hollywood of his good fortune.

After all, his son or stepson, Ronan Farrow, was the person who lit the fuse for his good buddy Weinstein, writing a piece in the New Yorker that described rapes and worse from Weinstein's accusers.

The Weekly Standard posits that after Woody Allen did so much harm to his family – reportedly molesting his wife Mia Farrow's daughter Dylan (which Allen denies) and running off with Farrow's adopted stepdaughter Soon Yie Previn, dumping Mia in the process, Allen wasn't a popular guy, and Weinstein, who revived Allen's career after the scandal, probably wasn't, either:

Imagine what the world looks like if you believe yourself – with some reason – to be Frank Sinatra's son. He's the only man your mother, Mia Farrow, really loved. Sinatra was a womanizer, sure. But he really liked women. I mean, listen to how he owns the lyrics in songs such as, among others, "The Way You Wear Your Hat," or "The Lady is a Tramp." In his phrasing there's so much wit and – the signature of respect – observation. There's so much noticing of women and their charming, winning ways. Sure, he put them on pedestals. That's one reason your mother loved the man, from whom you, like all American men worth the name, learned one inviolable, gem-like thing – men protect women. The man who was putatively your father, Woody Allen, left her and hurt her. He shamed her in public when he took with him your adopted sister. As a parting gift, he left nude pictures of her, a teenager, around the house. Your other sister, Dylan, says that he molested her. You're thinking this is unacceptable, all of it. I am willing to bet that the second-most hated man in the Farrow household was Harvey Weinstein. After Mia Farrow banished Woody Allen from the herd, it was Miramax, the company the Weinsteins founded, that helped revive his career in 1994 when it distributed Bullets Over Broadway. Who knows what turned Ronan Farrow's attention to Harvey Weinstein ten months ago when he started reporting the story? Maybe he heard an actress, maybe a number of them, describing what Harvey had done to them. Maybe, after the movie industry refused to listen to Dylan Farrow and continued to honor Woody Allen, Ronan Farrow decided to go after Woody's protector.

With a sequence like this, it's obvious why Allen would want to minimize Weinstein's reaction effect, the better to keep the spotlight off himself.  He's got a lot to hide himself and would much rather see a return to the good old days – the days when Weinstein got away with anything he wanted.