KYLE SMITH: Virtue-signaling reaches a new extreme in the silly ‘#MenToo’ online petition.

Attention all problematic dudes: Would you like to distance yourself from any sleazy behavior toward women in the past and proudly attach the adjective “former” to your problematic-dude status? The New York Times has the means. Sign an online “affirmative consent pledge.” Swear to the following: “I’m a Man, and I Commit to Making Sure All My Sexual Encounters Are Fully Consensual.”

The man behind this nonbinding, meaningless, and superfluous consent pledge is author Michael Ellsberg, whom the Times is promoting in a splashy, fawning feature, complete with animated graphics (“#MeToo” is transformed into “#MenToo” when a friendly-looking anthropomorphic “N” saunters into the headline, waving at readers) and one of those dramatic portraits that features Ellsberg gazing courageously into a more honest and better future. Presumably Ellsberg’s future will be more gentlemanly than his past, because in the interview he admits to Aziz Ansari–like behavior and acting like the guy in the New Yorker short story “Cat Person” — which is to say, being a major jerk.

Yes, well, Hollywood is trying to reinvent itself with conspicuous virtue-signaling now too: Hollywood Is Suddenly Serious. That’s Exactly What America Needs Right Now.

But if America overall seems to have backslid into a darker age, Hollywood is examining everything in a new, more starkly revealing light. Over the past five months alone, Hollywood has moved quickly to right long-established wrongs and to rattle ancient modes of thinking. The revelations about Weinstein crashed like a tidal wave: even though the fallen mogul had plenty of enablers, relatively few people–beyond the women he abused or harassed–grasped the full extent of his manipulative, devious behavior. In our naiveté, we’d always assumed that beautiful, successful female actors just drifted through life, untouched by the travails ordinary women deal with every day; suddenly, we knew differently, as women risked their careers to speak out first about Weinstein and then, in a swell that became bigger and louder by the day, other abusers. The subsequent and swift downfall of other Hollywood players changed everything about how we view women–or anyone who doesn’t hold the big power cards–in the entertainment business. Now Hollywood isn’t just part of the political conversation; it’s actively driving it, motivating its denizens to speak out about certain core American values in a way we’ve never seen before.

But you know the rule: The more virtue signaling, the less actual virtue. And in Hollywood’s case, it’s just more whitening applied to the sepulcher.