Heh.
Asked why it took seven months for this to come out, @maggieNYT, who broke the story, says, “I’m a little surprised at how effective people in the White House were at lying to us…”
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 26, 2018
Seriously, though, the big question is why the news about the firing of Mueller is coming out now. What’s happening right now that would cause this to leak? I don’t know the answer.
All my posts (or as many as possible) are fundraising posts these days. Let’s raise some money for Swing Left. I’ve heard a lot of great things about them in the comments. They are now targeting over 70 Republican-held House seats.
Adam L Silverman
McGahn doesn’t want to be charged with a crime.
jeffreyw
April Ryan of CNN reported it as it was (not) happening.
Rabble Arouser
“Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!”
– Stephen Colbert
comrade scotts agenda of rage
This sentiment is Reason #3,593 why the Villagers are so despised. She’s a “little surprised”? Oi fucking vey, they just don’t get it. Well, a few of em are but good ole Mags will have her head up the Popular Vote Loser’s ass until the very end.
Hildebrand
As McGahn has been in to see Mueller recently, not sure this is much of a mystery.
Timurid
If you don’t know who the sucker at the table is… it’s you.
retiredeng
@Adam L Silverman: Well, not THAT one anyway.
Doug!
@Adam L Silverman:
How does this help him with avoiding being charged with a crime?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I seem to recall it was obvious for a while Trump wanted to fire Mueller and Trump was being prevented. The only new information is who was stopping Trump. The only surprise was it wasn’t Trump’s lawyers telling Trump doing that would be an admission of guilt. So one has to be clueless as well as suck up to be a Washington reporter?
schrodingers_cat
Maggie Hackerman
Well I am not. You wanted to believe their lies, that’s why they were so successful.
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Not really clueless but keeping up the pretense that Rs are better than they are or have been in the past two decades.
Rs say jump and media bots say, how high?
MisterForkbeard
Honestly, I’m a little sad that this didn’t come out until after Mueller had interviewed Trump. Because this WOULD have come up. And Trump WOULD have lied about it to the FBI.
@Adam L Silverman: This is my read as well. McGahn (or others who were favorably viewed in the piece, like Reince) are leaking this to make themselves look better.
McGahn may also be doing it in order to show Trump it’s STILL a bad idea.
@schrodingers_cat: “It turns out that this historically lying administration that calls everything fake news may not be entirely honest. Maybe we should have thought of that.”
Matt McIrvin
Were they around from 2001-2009?
Butch
Perhaps, Maggie, it was because you were more interested in preserving your access than you were in journalism.
oatler.
Boy, we just wish Mueller would do something, anything, we could savor and chew on. Instead of working.
MattF
When you hear lying liars lying, it’s always a HUUUUUGE surprise.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
Hey, how’s Mrs J doing? Hope the nausea has subsided and that she’s healing well.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I assumed it was just that Jeff Sessions had recused himself and Rod Rosenstein wouldn’t do it. So Trump would have had to do a lot more than just fire Mueller, and he’s fundamentally kind of a cowardly guy, so he’d need more cover than he felt he had. But maybe that’s ascribing too much intelligence to Trump.
efgoldman
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s not “intelligence” so much as behavioral consistency.
A scorpion doesn’t have “intelligence”
Bailey
@Doug!:
Arguably, it keeps him free from a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Old-timers, help me. Were there any Haberman/Thrush equivalents during Watergate, eagerly slurping up anything that Nixon had to offer?
dmsilev
I’m wondering if the reason this came out now (in a coordinated set of leaks to three different news orgs) is that Trump is again getting close to trying to pull the trigger on firing Mueller and this was an attempt at warning him off.
efgoldman
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
I’m sure there were, but the really important players (WaPo, NYT, CBS, Time, Newsweek) were all in hot pursuit. It seems like there were new revelations every day, certainly for a while, because of the house and senate hearings broadcast gavel to gavel and rebroadcast in the evenings. There was no cable news, remember, and no intartoobz
jonas
Whether Trump was trying to get Mueller fired goes right to the heart of an obstruction case. My assumption is that someone in the WH counsel’s office is signaling to Trump and other staffers: “just a heads-up: please, please don’t lie under oath about this when Mueller’s team deposes you. Anymore.”
Mary G
Maggie was probably saving the news for her book. And is furious with McGahn.
Baby and/or dog photos with money posts please Doug.
Amaranthine RBG
The real question here is what is going on at the NYT. They are “all in protecting Trump” right?
Why are they now breaking stories NOW that are unfavorable to Trump?
This just doesn’t make sense.
efgoldman
@Mary G:
Isn’t that political bribery?
B.B.A.
@efgoldman: And keep in mind, Nixon was genuinely more popular than Trump is, and presided over a much whiter, more conservative country than we have now.
Leto
@Butch: This right here; they want to be a part of the story, to preserve that access, so they’ll willingly accept any amount of horsepucky as long as they get to stay in the spotlight.
@Thoroughly Pizzled: I know it’s been mentioned here before, at least I thought it has, but the podcast, “Slow Burn: A Podcast About Watergate”, is excellent. I believe it’s episode 3 that discusses part of the media response. Also it’s pretty f-ing scary how much Watergate/Russiagate are paralleling each other. Listening to the podcast, I swear it’s like they’re discussing current events.
Listen to the intro, first 5 mins, of episode 5 and tell me they’re not describing the Shitgibbon and his supporters.
Ryan
When did this story drop? When Trump was at Davos! Know anyone currently or formerly around Trump who is/was not a fan of the Davos set?
Cacti
@maggieNYT was terrified of losing her position as court historian.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin:
Well don’t forget Trump is also lazy and a weather vein so I imagine it’s not all that hard to talk Trump into doing nothing, I mean heck, it sounds like Trump’s own staff has been BSing Mr Stable Genius that Mueller is about to wrap it up for the last half year.
Hmm I bet the real revelation will be who talked Trump into firing Comey.
eric
I think “Mother” is the leak for all the anti-Trump stories.
MisterForkbeard
@Amaranthine RBG: You mean the real story isn’t “Why did they sit on this for months and are apparently unaware that the Trump admin lies to the press”?
B.B.A.
@Ryan: Davos is, per Felix Salmon, “the spiritual home of globalist cucks,” so I’d say all of them, Katie.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Amaranthine RBG:
Bad news about Trump sells papers.
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G: What’s the deal with that book, anyway? Does she just not type as quickly as Wolff?
jeffreyw
@SiubhanDuinne: She’s doing as well as could be expected, the Drs get a first peek at how the recovery is going in a week when they will crack the first cast. The next cast will be a two piece affair as far as I can recollect from a briefing immediately post-op. Still some pain, controlled somewhat by the same drugs that seem to be upsetting her stomach. They did manage to get the anti-nausea meds by the insurance company, but it took an appeal from the surgical staff. We paid cash for a wheelchair (Amazon) because it was cheaper than renting. Handicapped placard applied for and received!
efgoldman
@B.B.A.:
And committed less obvious, more esoteric crimes.
Tricksie was a superb (if malign) experience politician, and a lawyer. He knew enough not to do stupid, obvious things.
Very different, less partisan times. There was a considerable number of Northern Republiklowns who’d be considered liberal/progressive in any context today. Lot of experienced lawyers who really did want the truth.
Leto
@efgoldman: The Slowburn podcast talks about this. CBS/NBC/ABC televised the hearings live during the daytime, and then PBS rebroadcast them, in full, at night. Apparently like most R nutjobs, Nixon hated PBS and tried to cut funding to them several times. The head of PBS at the time thanked Nixon because PBS received high levels of donations (around $1.5M) during the months they did the rebroadcast.
efgoldman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
My veins throb when the weather changes, but I think you mean “weather vane”
Thoroughly Pizzled
@efgoldman: Harder to make echo chambers back then.
@Leto: I’ll have to give that a listen. Thanks.
Jeffro
@Rabble Arouser: he really did take a (rhetorical) batto W that night and deservedly so …
Turgidson
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Kushner was pro-Comey firing. He’s such a fucking dipshit, he thought Dems would love it and see it as payback for Comey’s ratfckery of HRC.
Gin & Tonic
@jeffreyw: I got a two-piece cast after about three weeks, IIRC. It was a huge relief to be able to take the thing off once in a while. I’m sure she’ll be delighted when they first cut the current one off.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@eric:
Yes I can see it now;
“Turns out, Mark Pence’s wife “Mother” was behind it all. Sure she comes across as kind of batty but polite. In reality she is ruthlessly protective and decided Trump was the wrong kind of boy for her Marky. All that talk of eating in bed and chocolate cake was just to much for a good Christian lady like her, so she got to work…”
efgoldman
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
In spite of the fact there were fewer national media. I’m sure a lot of the local papers in heavily conservative area (midwest farm states, NH Union Leader, then-conservative Southern CA) stayed with Tricksie to the end.
James E. Powell
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
I can’t recall names, but I do recall that in the early part of the ordeal there were some who took the “let’s put this Watergate thing behind us and allow Nixon to get back to serious matters” position.
catclub
@efgoldman:
varicose weather veins.
Leto
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Slow Burn: A Podcast About Watergate
Edit: you can download the podcasts via iTunes, or you can listen to them on the site.
trnc
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: My money is still on Jr or Jared.
Rabble Arouser
@Jeffro: It was a thing of beauty, but I’m so glad he decided to reserve a good amount of venom for the courtier press that were seemingly aiding and abetting the administration. I’m in agreement with Village Delenda Est on this matter.
efgoldman
@James E. Powell:
The usual conservative suspects (Buckley, young Georgie Will….) mostly newspaper columnists
MisterForkbeard
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It was also apparently leaked to several other papers and new orgs, so maybe this was just a rush to capitalize on it while they still could.
@Turgidson: The thing is, this is such as transparently stupid opinion that it makes me think Kusher/Ivanka leaked that ‘info’ in order to avoid obstruction charges.
Amaranthine RBG
@MisterForkbeard:
Oh you’re saying that the NYT knew about this for months? What, exactly, do you base that on?
trnc
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Mike, not Mark.
rikyrah
I’m with those who are thinking that this is coming out because Dolt45 wants to do it now.
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. This looks to me to be the same dynamic in a campaign when the staff realize they’re going to lose and start leaking all the stuff that will make them look good for the next job. Politico becomes a land grab – whoever can get their story out first becomes the hero of the campaign and whoever is last is the goat. Move too soon and you both undermine your chances of winning but also your chances of getting a job in the administration if you win, move too late and your coworker convinces Politico you were the reason the campaign failed and you’re back to staffing state house races.
McGahn has determined that the trajectory of the Mueller investigation is now set and beyond his ability to influence. The only thing left is to mitigate the damage it will cause him.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
What a saga, and what a lot of really unnecessary hassle for you and discomfort for her! But I’m glad about the “as well as can be expected” part, and hope she recovers fully and swiftly.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Turgidson: That’s so idiotic it’s reasoning and yet so much like that administration.
jeffreyw
Bill Madden
@activist360
13h13 hours ago
More
April Ryan nailed it: April Ryan told CNN on the night of June 12, 2017 that the White House was in “mass hysteria” with staffers fearing serial lying psychopath Trump was about to fire special counsel Robert Mueller corroborates NYT bombshell bit.ly/2DFUSha @AprilDRyan
Lawrence
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Seem to remember Bob Novak trying to stem the tide. @Thoroughly Pizzled:
schrodingers_cat
@eric: They do have nice kittehs and bunnies, may be that thing about MP not being allowed to be with other women alone is all lies and an elaborate coverup for his proclivities.
BruceFromOhio
Stone the fucking crows, water is indeed wet after all.
Chyron HR
@Amaranthine RBG:
Have you considered the possibility that just because the NYT in general and Maggie H. in particular share your mindless, all-consuming hatred of the wh*re who stole Messiah B’s golden throne, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re great journalists?
Suzanne
I’m a little surprised that you’re a complete dumbass, Maggie.
Never cease to be amazed how dozens of people are in complete disbelief of women and girls who say they’re assaulted, but who believe every word from a notorious liar and his team of thugs.
Thoroughly Pizzled
My follow-up question is whether any ostensible leftists back in the day thought Watergate was just a DISTRACTION from the fact that George McGovern sucked.
Jeffro
Oh good grief
Looks like we are going to spend all afternoon hearing that Hillary Clinton had some campaign aide back into 2008 accused of harassment
Some Guy
Not to worry Maggie has an amazing scoop in today’s Pravda from eight years ago about another Clinton scandal good job Maggie, keep digging up dirt on Clinton from eight years ago you sure to hit gold
germy
@Jeffro: They kept running photos of HRC standing next to Harvey Weinstein. They simply can’t help themselves.
trollhattan
“I’m a little surprised at how effective people in the White House were at lying to us…”
Christ on a carbuncle. Once again, a reporter’s spider sense failed her. J school really needs to get better talent.
James E. Powell
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
Good one! My biggest laugh of the week.
trollhattan
@catclub:
Train in vane. (Doug!bait)
Ladyraxterinok
@efgoldman: Also NO FOX. And rew monster news orgs mergers.
Mnemosyne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
“I knew they were liars, I just didn’t think they would lie to me!“
Maggie is just starting to figure out that she was one of the marks all along.
JPL
@Some Guy: Both sides. Since I canceled my subscription, I can’t read it, but I’m sure 24/7 will be all over it.
Bailey
@Jeffro:
The story is more that she did very little about it and the young woman affected was the one to be moved to a new job.
Ordinarily, I’d say what they did was better than nothing (marginally) but they really should have fired him, not kept him around for years. Beyond that, I’d say it makes her voice on #metoo entirely inauthentic. So that’s quite topical.
Tom Q
@germy: And MSNBC — you know: the liberal equivalent of Fox — is running it as five-alarm fire.
Meanwhile, that story from Dutch intelligence is barely being reported. The “Trump wanted to fire Mueller” story obliterated it (in a manner similar to how the Access Hollywood tape drowned out the first Russian meddling story).
My recollection is, during Watergate, it was certain columnists who kept saying there was no real case against Nixon — Evans and Novak, whichever Alsop was then writing for Newsweek. George Will, actually, was an exception: he pretty much thought Nixon was a crook from the start. It’s why he won the Pulitzer that year, for being a rightie who didn’t apologize for Nixon (much the way Kathleen Parker did a few years back). Though I always thought it was possible Will’s real problem with Nixon was he wasn’t a True Conservative, like Will’s up-and-coming hero Reagan.
Mandalay
@jeffreyw: Indeed. And here’s Raw Story’s shameful headline: April Ryan’s June 2017 claim that White House freaked out over Mueller firing corroborates NYT bombshell
WTF??? April Ryan comes out with the story 7 months before Haberman/Schmidt, yet the headline says that Ryan corroborates “NYT bombshell”?
How about: After 7 months court stenographers finally corroborate April Ryan bombshell
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Because they know they already look like fools for not reporting on what was right under their noses after claiming they had all of this “special access,” and they’re desperately running to catch up.
I know people are sick of me saying this, but people who were never in journalism don’t really get how huge of a black eye it was for the New York Times to get scooped by an entertainment trade paper. That’s like Kobe Bryant’s little brother dunking on him.
Scott
@MisterForkbeard: This was my theory. They are getting out what they told Mueller so Trump doesn’t get caught perjuring himself.
Amaranthine RBG
@Chyron HR:
This is the sort of balanced, completely sane and normal commentary we have come to expect from you.
Jeffro
@Mandalay: this impending Haberman book…it better be worth it, considering all the non-reporting she’s been non-doing
Hildebrand
Regarding the latest NYTimes/Clinton knavery – I refuse to believe that anybody has ever been named Burns Strider.
Chyron HR
@Amaranthine RBG:
Hey, remember when you got wound up about MLK day and spent hours in the comments here throwing a shrieking fit? Good times.
Amaranthine RBG
@Bailey:
He was her spiritual or faith advisor, so he gets one freebie.
Chyron HR
@Bailey:
It’s okay, dude, you guys burned the country to the ground to save it from “The Clintons”. They’ve been vanquished forever. You can let it go.
You too, Arby’s.
Amaranthine RBG
@Chyron HR:
Errrrrybody up in heah is crazy. You are the only one talking sense.
geg6
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
Clarence Manion, William F. Buckley and Paul Harvey, off the top of my head.
zhena gogolia
@Chyron HR:
Yes, my God, they just can’t let it drop. Thank heavens we don’t have that evil witch sitting in the White House doing her job and helping people.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Really, something that happened 10 years ago is “quite topical”?
Ten years ago, Hillary (and every other Democratic politician) was publicly against gay marriage. Does that mean that we need to question her support of LGBT rights today because, after all, she did something differently 10 years ago?
LongHairedWeirdo
I don’t quite get that as a defense. The Trump administration isn’t very *effective* at lying. They lie, pretty constantly, but this makes it sound like they sound trustworthy, and sound reasonable, and once you know that they’ll lie about anything and everything, what kind of damn fool says that they’re “effective” at lying?
If they make a statement, you know that it’s self-serving, and only honest if the truth is self serving. Period. If a journolist says that’s *effective*, it’s a confession of
naivete and credulousnessbeing an incompetent moron of a journalist.Amaranthine RBG
@Mandalay:
I didn’t see anything from Ryan about McGahn threatening to resign. That is the story here.
Not that there is mass hysteria at the White House. That’s ordinary.
James E. Powell
@Tom Q:
You’re probably right. Though it’s long gone down the memory hole, Nixon’s policies both foreign (China, SALT) and economic (dollar convertibility to gold, wage-price freeze) were heresy to the True Conservatives®.
Eljai
@Some Guy: I saw that the FTFNYT was back to bashing Hillary too. In the meantime, over at the WSJ, there’s a story alleging mega GOP/Trump donor, Steve Wynn, of decades long $exual harassment. And the story is just as stomach churning as you imagine.
ETA: Can’t wait to see how long it takes Chris Cilliza to demand that Trump denounce Steve Wynn.
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
I guess I kind of get it — the people who have been convinced for years that Hillary is a fake feminist will dig and dig and dig until they find something, anything they can point to in order to bolster their claims, because those claims got worn awfully threadbare in 2016.
They can never admit that Hillary is a pretty standard politician, with all of the flaws that implies, because their entire worldview is built around her being uniquely evil. So they will never stop digging around for “dirt” that the rest of us look at and say, “That’s barely even dust.”
Amaranthine RBG
@Eljai:
Just hope that none of Wynn’s behavior is more than 10 years old, because apparently woke folks think thats just ancient history nowadays.
Chris
@Tom Q:
@James E. Powell:
I always got the impression that part of the reason for Nixon’s fall was that so many factions in Washington hated him for their own reasons. Liberal Democrats obviously hated him for shattering their coalition, segregationist Democrats for stealing their thunder without making the world safe for segregation again, conservative Republicans because he was a big-spending statist commie, and moderate Republicans because he was a vulgar populist boor. So everyone has at least some reason not to be sorry when he’s gone.
If, say, the conservative Republican or Southern Democrat factions had really seen him as one of their own, I’m not saying he wouldn’t still have fallen, but he would’ve gotten some kind of redemption narrative by now, like McCarthy has, if only among right-wingers.
Patricia Kayden
But but but Trump is claiming that this NYT story is fake news. And he never lies so …
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Uh-huh. Please tell us how Hillary re-assigning a staffer who’d been harassed by someone else is just like Steve Wynn personally harassing women.
No, wait, it’s even worse, because it was Hillary who did it! Steve Wynn is just a poor horny dude who couldn’t help himself, but Hillary planned to re-assign that staffer! Look at how she schemes! Burn the witch! Burn her!
Mandalay
@Some Guy:
Oh FFS.
Clinton has made the way society treats women a core issue for her entire political life, and good for her for doing that. But that story is not good. It may turn out to be better or worse than it looks on the surface, but it’s legitimate news. Clinton won’t comment, and her campaign colleagues who knew about it won’t comment. All Clinton has done is get a lawyer to spew this boilerplate:
You don’t get away with just dismissing this as “dirt…from eight years ago”.
Gretchen
Don’t you have to be a Slate Plus member to listen to Slow Burn.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
The fact that it’s coming up when a big Republican donor like Wynn is being accused of harassment is quite curious, though. As you can see, there are already people demanding that we discuss Hillary’s HR policies from 2008 instead of Steve Wynn (allegedly) harassing women who worked for him.
ETA: Given the NYT’s record on Whitewater, Travelgate, Benghazi, and Emails, I’m comfortable waiting to see if there’s an actual story here rather than letting them push a fake story yet again.
Amaranthine RBG
@Patricia Kayden:
It really is a mark of Trump’s tactical brilliance that he he keeps deriding the NYT as fake news since, as we all know, the NYT is “all in protecting” Trump.
An ordinary mind, a mind that didn’t get a perfect 30/30 score on his mental testing, would just keep quiet and enjoy the NYT’s support of him. But Trump, towering genius that he is is playing 17 dimension chess here by constantly attacking the NYT.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
You realize that a great majority of the accusations within #metoo are things that happened years, even decades ago? And that they’re now topical? In fact, virtually all of the credible accusations against Trump are over 10 years ago? Do we agree they’re topical?
I’ve never considered HRC to be particularly authentic on LGBT rights to begin with.
However, let’s not conflate issues here. On LGBT matters, one person–no matter if they’re a Senator, a President or a SCOTUS jurist was not going to be able to make a singular decision about gay marriage. In this instance, the candidate was presented with evidence and the counsel that she should fire this person. It was her and only her decision to make and she flubbed it. Shouldn’t have been a hard call ten years ago, either, particularly since her mantra is “women’s rights are human rights.”
Calouste
@trollhattan: J school attracts people who are too bad at math to even do business administration and too bad at logic to even do law.
charon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Confirmation bias. Maggie looks for the good in the WH, sees it.
Amaranthine RBG
@Calouste:
quite true
MisterForkbeard
@Mnemosyne: Was there even any indication that Hillary knew about this, or is it just more reflexive Clinton bashing from the usual suspects?
JR
Steve Wynn can join Nassim Taleb as another turd that Malcolm Gladwell has polished
James E. Powell
@Bailey:
I call bullshit. First, they didn’t keep him around for years. The events described were from 2008 and, unless the article omitted it, he never worked for Hillary Clinton again. The fact that Brock hired him doesn’t mean Hillary Clinton approved. Second, Hillary Clinton isn’t really part of #metoo other than when pundits force one into a story about the other. Like this one. So, no, it isn’t topical at all.
Third, this story has all the signs of being one that’s been sitting around for a while. The events described are from 2008. The unnamed sources supposedly held off talking about it till now? When is/was now? HRC’s campaign ended over a year ago. Why this week? I’m guessing Haberman got her sources from Trump’s team because they wanted a Clinton story out there and knew who would run with it. I’ve never seen any evidence that Haberman does her own investigations. She invariably writes what others tell her. Maybe worse. Maybe ( full tinfoil hat) Haberman had the story but waited until Trump needed something to distract from his insanity.
And fourth, the real kicker, what’s with the gratuitous Lena Dunham on Harvey Weinstein bit? Is that about Strider Burns? No. Is it just some more shit to throw at Hillary? Oh yeah, because that’s what the FTFNYT is always doing.
Amaranthine RBG
@MisterForkbeard:
Maybe that is the sort of thing that would be in a story written about it.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
That is classic whataboutery on your part.
The Wynn story has only broken in the past couple of hours and his company’s stock is already down 8%. His actions are hardly being ignored.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Of course they’re topical, because Trump is accused of personally harassing women. Wynn is accused of personally harassing women.
Hillary is accused of maybe making the wrong HR decision when someone else was accused of harassment.
If we’re at the point where we think that the person who made an HR decision is supposed to be punished more than the actual harasser, then we’re pretty fucked.
But, as I said, I’m pretty sure this is the latest manifestation of the Clinton Rules that dictate that Hillary be punished for things that no one else will ever be punished for, and that her punishment has to be far beyond what someone who ever did a similar thing ever had to suffer.
WaterGirl
@Thoroughly Pizzled: I followed Watergate religiously, and my answer to your question is NO.
trollhattan
@Calouste:
Maggie has ha BA from Sarah Lawrence, which I’m guessing opened the gilded NYT doors for her. J school could have helped her craft but truth be told, I don’t know what her “WH correspondent” jerb actually comprises beyond “acquire and retain access.”
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Actually, it wasn’t meant to be whataboutery. It’s me accusing the NYT of trying to protect a Republican donor by splashing a Hillary story on a similar topic across their pages on the same day. The fact that it isn’t working doesn’t absolve the NYT of making the attempt.
But her emails!!!
@MisterForkbeard:
Yes. The claims in the article were shoulder rubbing, a kiss on the forehead and messages (one late at night) that were inappropriate in a manner left to the imagination of the reader. It was also indicated that Clinton was presented with the misbehavior and counseled that he be fired. She said no and he had to forfeit several weeks pay and attend counseling while the target of his boorish behavior was relocated.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne: OK, my bad.
WaterGirl
@Bailey: Let’s all be sure to listen to the new commenter, who happens to be anti-Clinton. //
MisterForkbeard
@Amaranthine RBG: Yes. And perhaps I’m at work and can’t read the article, so I asked a simple and easily answerable question.
Are you reflexively just an asshole, or is this something you work hard at?
@But her emails!!!: Thank you. So basically… the guy was punished but not sufficiently and she never rehired him after the campaign ended. Meanwhile the woman in question was moved.
Not ideal, but I’m having a really hard time pretending this is important news.
James E. Powell
@trollhattan:
Maggie Haberman’s father, Clyde Haberman, worked for the New York Times for over 30 years. No doubt that had some impact on the decision to hire her and put her on the prestige beat.
Wag
@Cacti:
Lol at who has had a 40 year “successful” career at an official Washington court historian. It’s Carl Bernstein and (unfortunately, to a lesser extent) Bob Woodward. If it’s long lasting impact and job security that a reporter is interested in, being on the cutting edge of a major historical event is a ticket to immortality. Being an apologist for those who abuse power allows you to be quickly forgotten when the inevitable fall occurs. We remember Woodward and Bernstein and have largely forgotten the Nixon apologists.
Mnemosyne
@But her emails!!!:
So the guy was punished but not fired at the time, the woman was transferred to a new job, and Hillary never worked with the guy again after the 2008 campaign was over.
Gosh, that sure sounds exactly like what Trump is accused of doing! Burn her! //
MisterForkbeard
@Mnemosyne: This is one of those things where I just look at it and say “I’d have preferred this worked out differently, but I fail to see a problem that would cause literally anyone else a significant issue… or cause them to get another screaming NYT article about it.”
Yay, Clinton rules.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
I hope you get a gold medal in the mental gymnastics events. You’re doing some stellar work here.
Yes. Hillary is the person whose absolute decision it was to make when presented with evidence that a more senior member of her campaign staff was harassing a more junior female member.
In the #metoo discussions, it is both the behavior of the harassers and how their leadership has dealt with them that has been rightly under the microscope. I’m not sure how you think this doesn’t qualify, but I’m sure you’ll find a few more twists and bends to ignore the obvious.
That’s not really an argument anyone but you is making. And since the actual harasser was hardly punished at all, I think we all safely remain un-fucked.
I’m sure there is a corollary of Clinton Rules that dictates that devoted fans of Hillary ignore and deflect any behavior, past or present, which does not reflect anything less than luminously upon her.
JMG
Well, I’m certainly not going to vote for Clinton in 2008 after this bombshell. Come to think of it, I didn’t in real 2008 either. The New York Times will never stop covering Hillary like this as long as she lives, and if the cause of death isn’t suicide, they’ll do it for a decade after her funeral.
Mandalay
@James E. Powell:
Not only that, but he’s now on the NYT’s editorial board. For Maggie to have made it to the pinnacle of journalism with everything stacked up against her is just amazing.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
Her father was a longtime, prominent NYT writer. That’s what opened the doors.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@WaterGirl: Old troll.
zhena gogolia
@JMG:
She won’t commit suicide over them. She’s tough as nails.
MisterForkbeard
@Bailey: We’re telling you that this isn’t a big deal. Dude got punished with the loss of several weeks worth of pay, and then after the campaign Hillary never worked with him again. This is less than ideal, but it’s already not worth the time and effort you’ve put into yelling and screaming about it.
The fact that literally every time I’ve seen you here has you complaining that Hillary Is Awful And Her Supporters Are Awful really makes me think you might not be the most unbiased person in this particular matter.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
Yep. So sick of it. So fucking sick of it.
Bailey
@James E. Powell:
It is never mentioned that he remained HIRED for all those years. Her 2008 campaign did end, after all. But all through her 2016 run, he was still very much in her orbit. It is reported that she was still receiving her daily Bible quotes from him, or some such. For whatever that’s worth, it’s not like she cut ties with the guy or didn’t want him around her.
Seriously? So Hillary didn’t run a campaign based almost entirely on what a lecherous person Donald Trump was? Even today, she’s still giving interviews about sexual harassment. That’s some weird revisionism you’ve got going on there.
Yeah, weirdly, a lot of the #metoo stories aren’t exactly fresh. It doesn’t make them trivial.
Possibly. But considering that most of us can hold more than one thought in our heads at the same time, does this change the quality of the allegations?
It is possibly a second reminder that even when Hillary is explicitly told about terrible behavior, she doesn’t make the right decision. And I despise Lena Dunham.
glory b
@Mnemosyne: As I recall, The woman hosting “Fresh Air” on npr did just that. She roasted Clinton about changing her position on gay marriage and LGBTQ issues.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Yes, and her decision was to dock the guy’s pay, send him for harassment training, and ultimately never work with him again, while transferring the affected staffer out of the guy’s reach. What a monster!
Bailey
@MisterForkbeard:
Okay, well as long as you’re comfortable saying it isn’t a big deal. I guess that must make it true!
From that should we extrapolate that when young women are forced to change jobs because their harasser has been given a slap on the wrist but maintains their employment it should not be considered a big deal? Good to know but I think millions of women marching in the streets feel otherwise.
I really don’t care what your memory is of me. It’s totally irrelevant to the facts at hand.
James E. Powell
@glory b:
Because that’s what nice polite republicans do.
Chris
@JMG:
Right. Cause if the cause of death is suicide, they’re not going to let go after a measly decade, it’ll be half a century at least. The Witch of Benghazi committing suicide? What additional scandal could have caused that? Was she about to be subpoenaed? Was it really a suicide or did her Democrat friends do it to protect themselves? Or did one of her many victims finally get revenge on her, the only way they could because of the way she owns the courts and congress and everything? What role did she have in whatever other Democratic scandals and “scandals” the press is covering right now? How many more dark secrets did she take to her grave, ones we’ll never know about now?
The Clintons are already the richest vein of conspiracy theories in American politics since the Kennedy assassination. And I suspect their legacy will be a lot like Kennedy’s, in a way. In 2018, Kids These Days look back at Kennedy and ask their elders “I don’t get it. What the hell did he do that was so great?” In 2068, their grandchildren will be looking back at the Clintons and asking “I don’t get it. What the hell did they do that was so awful?”
glory b
@Amaranthine RBG: If he came out and apologized publicly, and made amends and changed his behavior, yes.
See also, Justice Black, and John Murtha
MisterForkbeard
@Bailey: I forgot who was I was talking to. Wow, you work really hard at this.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Of course, Dunham defended the accused rapist and publicly bashed his victim while Hillary sent the accused harasser to retraining and docked his pay, so same thing, right?
MisterForkbeard
I think we can all agree that the really important thing here is that Bailey is once again completely outraged that Hillary didn’t do exactly the thing he wanted her to do and therefore we’re all horrible people. Also, she’s exactly like Trump and the fact that we think this isn’t a huge deal means we can never talk about women again.
schrodingers_cat
When do we discuss the latest WH immigration proposal/ransom note ?
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
If Hillary is not The Worst Person Ever Who Always Makes the Wrong Decision, then Bailey has to rethink his/her entire worldview, and who has time for that?
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl:Bailey (Boris) is a never HRC, BS bro of long standing.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
After we get done combing over HR decisions that Hillary made in 2008. ?
JPL
@Bailey: Ten years ago, sending someone to counseling and docking pay was a pretty big deal. Of course, she should have fired him, but she did do something.
Are the repubs returning Wynn’s money? I doubt it.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: So the answer is never, amirite?
But her emails!!!
@Bailey:
The harasser in this case was docked several weeks pay and was required to attend counseling sessions. It was weak punishment, but might fit if the goal was rehabilitation. The article details inappropriate touching, but not sexual assault and hints at salacious messages, but doesn’t suggest anything that would require notification of law enforcement.
JPL
How come republicans get all the mulligans.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
I’ll give you credit–you’ve really stuck the landing on the Mental Gymnastics balance beam routine. Bravo!
catclub
@efgoldman:
this was also very bad when it was decided that “we cannot have another failed presidency due to revealing criminal acts of the president and his men”
was the approach to Iran-Contra. Not, let’s find out what happened and punish the wrongdoers.
At least the press is not saying that sort of thing now ( yet).
But her emails!!!
@Chris:
I don’t know. I think it would be pretty amusing if Hillary goes down in history as the world’s most prolific political super assassin.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Did someone open up the Macedonian firewall ?
Bailey
@JPL:
Yes, you agree, she should have fired him. We are in agreement.
I don’t know and I don’t particularly care. Did the DNC return Weinstein’s money? Not really. They vowed to give it away to groups that elect women. Again, that isn’t nothing, but it’s also a little self-serving since I imagine they just gave it away to other Democratic party aligned organizations. It doesn’t seem a talking point worth debating.
Mandalay
@Bailey: We all shake our heads in disbelief at how Trump supporters manage to look the other way at all of his failings, and ignore the obvious. And then you read the comments on this thread jumping through similar hoops, and performing the same mental gymnastics for Clinton.
It was too long ago….
Yeah, but what about….
It’s not nearly as bad as….
The timing…
The bias in the article…
No major political figure in American history has been a more powerful supporter of women than Hillary Clinton, and this incident flies in the face of what she claims she stood for. The notion that the media shouldn’t cover it is asinine.
BruceFromOhio
@Bailey:
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ordinarily, I’d say Gaia save us all and fuck the hell off (already) but this graf is so amusing I’ll thank you for it instead.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
We can do that later, Schrod, in an open thread or something. Right now we’re discussing why Hillary Clinton is the worst. This is a very serious issue, and I for one am relieved to see that some people are finally willing to discuss it after the inexcusable way it was ignored all through 2015, 2016, and the first year of her presidency.
/sarcasm
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
When people remember you for your context-free Hillary bashing, that’s what you get. Multiple people have already explained to you why punishing a harasser =/= personally harassing people, and yet you keep trying to draw that false equivalence because you saw Hillary’s name and “sexual harassment” in the same sentence and your brain shut down to logic.
Wevs, tho. I realize there’s no point trying to logically argue a nuanced situation with an irrational person. Have a nice day.
Gravenstone
Folks, it’s a long winded (very), Clinton hating sealion/troll. Notice it never rears its head in a thread unless it can attack HRC. Pie it an get on with arguing about the more important things in life – like boxers or briefs.
Fair Economist
@Eljai:
Now that the WSJ, a Murdoch rag, is doing more honest reporting than the FTFNYT, we know the NYT is hopelessly gone.
Bailey
@Mandalay:
Yup. No hypocrisy on display here whatsoever.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Again: you are holding Hillary Clinton to a far higher standard than anyone else. The two things I would like to see before I start excoriating Hillary over this story are (a) the victim saying that she felt the punishment was too little and/or that her career was stalled by the transfer and (b) that the guy accused continued the behavior at his new workplace(s) without his new employer knowing of his history. If you can show me those two things, then I’ll work up a little outrage.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Content-free? You’ve just spent the last hour completely tap-dancing around the content to an ever-accelerating tune.
I’m waiting to see anything from you demonstrating: 1.) Logic 2.) Nuance 3.) Rationality.
Whatevs.
Fair Economist
Actually this attack on Clinton is quite typical. Clinton, as usual, was ahead of her time, but she gets attacked because she’s not *far enough* ahead of her time. I guess she’s supposed to be using the same time machine Obama used to alter his birth certificate.
And also it’s brought up at the same time as a far more serious offense by a Republican. Remember Trump’s “charity”?
BruceFromOhio
@Mnemosyne: I know, let’s kick her ass to the curb and insure she never runs again for anything.
Next? Burn her at the stake, you say? Salt her lands so nothing grows? Drag her through the streets behind wild horses? And please note, there’s no defense of anyone’s actions here, I’m just curious where the end point lies, or that it even exists.
@JMG: Oh, I totally switched my vote. Yup. (nods)
Fair Economist
This Steve Wynn thing is huge. A 7.5 million dollar settlement? I guarantee that wasn’t some mildly inappropriate touching. And there are multiple incidents too.
It’s pretty obvious why the trolls are out trying to get us talking about Hillary Clinton.
James E. Powell
@Bailey:
You said she “kept him around for years.” There is nothing in the article that says that. You made that up, right? The article does not report that she continued to receive his daily bible quotes. You made that up, too. Hillary Clinton did not run a campaign based on Trump’s lechery, but on his patent unsuitability for the office coupled with the deplorable racist component of his supporters. So, you made that up, too.
The only legit argument with HRC is that she should have fired him. I agree with that, she should have fired him. If she were president, it would be a worthwhile story.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
Hardly. I am holding Clinton to the standards she set for herself. She put herself up on a pedestal, and pushed herself as the person to support if you cared about the way women were treated, and made women in the workplace a cornerstone of her political platform.
Trump and Wynn have never (sincerely) claimed to give a flying fuck about women so enough of the false comparisons. Look at what this story reveals about Clinton – compare her public words over the past thirty years with her private action in this specific case.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Sure, let’s look at the content of the story:
Guy is accused of harassment. His pay is docked, he’s sent for retraining, and his accuser is transferred away from him.
I give you the same challenge I gave Mandalay: show me that either (a) the victim says that her career was harmed by the transfer or (b) that the harasser continued on his path of workplace harassment after he left the campaign. Because the mere fact that a workplace harassment incident occurred is not enough for me to declare that Hillary Clinton is a Fake Feminist.
You have your assignment. Go.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
Nope. He doesn’t.
James E. Powell
@Mnemosyne:
So we can finally get started on things she did in 2009.
Amaranthine RBG
You might want to find a comfortable chair and put on some water for tea, because you are going to be waiting a while.
This is a person who cheerfully cashes paychecks from longtime Weinstein enabler Disney, remember.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
This.
Ab_Normal
@Gretchen: I’m listening to Slow Burn via Google Play without being a Slate Plus member; I just have to put up with ads.
No Drought No More
“..the big question is why the news about the firing of Mueller is coming out now”.
My guess? For the same, simple reason that startling revelations discrediting Trump surfaced days before the family sit-downs at Thanksgiving and Christmas (albeit not so startling that I remember the particulars, their having been a virtual avalanche of equally startling revelations since. They’re hard to keep straight).
Mueller’s team are today carrying the weight of the world- and American democracy- on their shoulders. Burdened with the knowledge of the vast scale of Trump’s criminality, they’ve been proceeding in deliberate fashion to bring Americans up to speed. Moreover, they’ve done so in light of the utter depravity of today’s republican party, which continues to deny the consequence of the dastardly 2016 attack upon the U.S.A by Putin’s Russia. Despite their ongoing and active collaboration by the GOP with that foreign enemy, I believe Mueller’s team has largely succeeded in insuring that Americans will be truthfully informed of the stone cold FACTS of the case.
Doug R
@Mnemosyne:
That is the email bullshit in a nutshell.
Bobby Thomson
Hey, Haberman also bought that Trump weighs 239 pounds, so, you know, she’s corrupt or a fucking moron or both.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
And, as Fair Economist said above, she handled the situation in the way that was considered best by 2008 standards. You are now looking back and complaining that she should have known to follow 2018’s standards since she claims to be so feminist.
I am. The guy was punished. There was no coverup. His pay was docked, he was sent for retraining, and his victim was transferred out of his reach. To claim that Hillary did nothing or covered it up is clearly insane.
Again: Clinton Rules state that any changing standard must be used retroactively against them. What was considered a pretty harsh punishment in 2008 is now considered weak sauce in 2018, so now we have to go back and re-judge everything Hillary did based on today’s standards.
The fact that we never do this continuous process of applying new standards retroactively with any other public figure should be instructive, but somehow it never is.
germy
Interesting how far the conversation has been steered from the above.
And towards …. [cue spooky music] HILLARY!
Mission Accomplished, apparently.
schrodingers_cat
@Bobby Thomson: You mean the nice man in a crisp uniform is a liar? How can that be?
Bobby Thomson
Jesus, who woke up the Wilmer dipshits?
Steve Wynn raped people who worked for him and paid them to shut up about it.
Clinton demoted a guy for rubbing shoulders and sending some dumb emails and then fired him when he blew his second chance.
Somehow it’s hypocrisy to think the news about the serial rapist should be getting more attention.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Hey, did you ever check Wikipedia to see when they fired Weinstein? Because that claim gets more hilarious every time you use it.
glory b
@Bailey: I used to practice discrimination law and spoke about this to a friend who is a director of a group of discrimination investigators who still does tis.
He said that if there isn’t any policy and the transfer doesn’t harm the accuser (lower paying position, burdensome travel to a new worksite), they wouldn’t find it objectionable. The law has never said that an accused person must be fired. Even thought there is a paper trail in this case, we don’t know what they said. Most of the time, these cases are he said/she said, and unlike those of us popping off on the internet, they can’t just accept one person’s word over another’s, if that’s all that’s available.
Also, I’m bothered by the new conventional wisdom that every settlement is an admission of guilt. Most settlement agreements specifically SAY there is no admission of wrongdoing. If accused parties lose any incentive to settle, this system will grind to a halt.
And another thing, which I posted the other day in a dead thread, why is everyone acting like the #metoo folks invented the wheel? It’s different for actors because most of them are independent contractors, and I get that’s a problem, especially now that many putative employers want to avoid calling people employees. Amassing a huge fund to assist women in this situation? There is the EEOC, and most states and even local governments have agencies which investigate, hold hearings and offer free lawyers, as well as those private attorneys who are out to make a few bucks.
Why has Hollywood and the media act like this has just happened? The Supreme Court ruled sexual harassment was actionable in the seventies.
I can see providing funds to women who quit their jobs to avoid harassment and don’t have anything to live on. But geez, lots of attorneys advertise their services in this area.
Bobby Thomson
@schrodingers_cat: allow me to introduce you to General Colin Powell, and thousands of other officers who have lied to the public.
Bobby Thomson
@germy: well, people could always stop feeding the fucking trolls.
Bailey
@James E. Powell:
You said she “kept him around for years.” There is nothing in the article that says that. You made that up, right? The article does not report that she continued to receive his daily bible quotes. You made that up, too.
The article says that he was not fired from the campaign, although as we know, the campaign ended in 2008 eventually.
Contemporaneous interviews with Strider himself shows that he was still sending her verses every day and they were in touch. This is from 2016–from a religious site I would normally not read. He was hired for a Clinton supporting PAC for her 2016 run where he eventually was fired for harassing young staff members.
Why you think I’m making this up is weird. Are you, too, trying to compete in the Mental Gymnastics competition? You could just read some news to get yourself informed.
She rolled out an entire campaign push revolving around the beauty queen that Trump harassed.
It’s a worthwhile story because she is one of the most high-profile women in leadership that didn’t make the right decision but has dedicated a not insignificant amount of time talking about issues of sexual harassment in our culture.
Bailey
@Fair Economist:
She was ahead of her time but totally behind her (female) advisors? Weren’t they living in the same time?
Mnemosyne
@glory b:
Because we’re finally at a place where actresses and other female entertainment employees feel like they can complain without retaliation, and there are a LOT of pent-up stories that people have been holding back for years.
We now know that the reason actresses like Rose McGowan and Mira Sorvino suddenly vanished from movies is that they were blackballed by Harvey Weinstein, and he’s just the one who’s been exposed as doing that. It’s actually an endemic problem throughout an industry where you get jobs based on other people’s opinion about you.
That’s a really, really big problem that the EEOC isn’t really equipped to touch.
Bobby Thomson
@Bailey: It’s a “worthwhile story” because you’ve been instructed to push it.
Meanwhile, even the Trump Times was forced to call out Trump for obstruction after they caught wind WaPo was going to publish.
satby
@WaterGirl: He’s not new, he’s a consistent wilmerite who shows up when it’s Hillary hate time. Or BS fellate time, whichever.
Bailey
@Bobby Thomson:
I’ve been “instructed” to push it? Who is instructing me? Alternately, who is instructing you to consider it irrelevant? Are #metoo stories in general irrelevant or just ones involving Clinton?
Okay.
Mike G
Oh well, I’m sure that was the last time and they’ll never do it again.
Charlie Brown, Lucy, football, etc etc
Mnemosyne
@Bobby Thomson:
This is starting to turn into a “boys will be boys” argument. We know that Trump is a sleaze who has no moral standards, so why bother to punish him? Let’s only punish the people who didn’t do a good enough job of living up to the standards we just dreamed up for them!
Bobby Thomson
@Bailey: unlike Haberman, I have eyes and can see when someone is launching a coordinated campaign. You and your fellow chuckleheads suddenly fall out of the woodwork after really shitty news for Trump and the national Republican party to deflect, deflect, deflect. I’m sure it’s just coincidence.
Aimai
@Bailey: entirely inauthentic is a little judgy for a woman who, like others of her age, probably had to experience and struggle with a shitload of sexual harassment herself.
JPL
@Doug R: Yes!
The reason it wasn’t a story ten years ago was because she did handle the situation. Maybe not by today’s standards, but she did handle it.
Fair Economist
Wynn also forced another woman to give him regular handjobs. And he is CURRENTLY the RNC Finance chair!
glory b
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I honestly don’t know how that gets handled, other than by the public shaming of the men who do it. Not many industries have so many very highly paid independent people who have the money to pay large sums in non disclosure agreements.
But it’s getting translated as there isn’t any recourse for most women, and that’s not true. There are lots of not particularly well paid government employees investigating and civilly prosecuting these cases. Lots of attorneys use their work product as their own. When women go to them, they tell them to file at the state agency, then use the results as the work product they need. I hate that they are getting ignored in this debate.
Fair Economist
@satby: “Wilmerite” *and* participating in a distraction campaign to protect the RNC Finance Chair? I think I know what’s going on here…
(Hint: probably didn’t even vote for Bernie)
Bailey
@glory b:
There are many things that happen at work that aren’t strictly illegal but that will get you fired.
This staffer also had messages and emails sent to her, so it wasn’t exactly he said/she said. I will make the assumption that the staffer shared these messages with her higher ups which made them come to the conclusion that he should be fired.
Agreed, although if you come across someone like, say, Bill O’Reilly who had several (a dozen?) settlements that totally $30 million, you might begin to think there is a pattern reflecting guilt there.
You have far more faith in the EEOC than I do. Beyond that, it doesn’t change the fact that women making claims (and perhaps even getting judgments / settlements) is one thing but the reality is that they are then locked out of their career. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Hollywood actress or an insurance sales person. The result is often the same.
Probably for the same reason that SCOTUS ruled on Brown v. Board of Education in the 50s but schools still had to be forcibly desegregated in the 70s?
satby
@Fair Economist: true enough. Probably.
Doug R
@Bailey: I dunno, maybe not “instructed”.
How about paid or played?
Fair Economist
Another telling point: All the other people swept up in #MeToo have been people who were seriously accused of multiple sexual offenses over many years. So far nobody, absolutely nobody, took action against a harasser and had to suffer because the action, while strict, could have been stricter.
Until it’s Hillary, and then all of a sudden all kinds of new standards heretofore applied to nobody else get applied.
The point is to distract from the very serious and long-continuing sexual harassments of the *current* RNC chair.
Mnemosyne
@glory b:
Entertainment is an edge case because it’s 90 percent contract work and most people work contract to contract, so it’s pretty easy for a powerful person to informally blackball a less powerful person and wreck their career.
It’s different for people who are actual employees of a specific company, and if you’re saying that women who are regular employees and not project hires should remember that they do have recourse, then I agree with you.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amaranthine RBG:
Go stick your head in an oven, junior. The adults are talking.
Bailey
@Doug R:
Yes, this makes total sense. In exchange for a hefty paycheck, I am instructed to head straight to the comments sections of Balloon-Juice where the word would be spread most widely. You’ve uncovered the dastardly plan.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
Sorry, but it’s a distraction from #MeToo if we discuss actual harassment and abuse. We can only discuss HR responses within the DNC and whether or not they were sufficient by 2018 standards.
And, again, I’m still curious to know if the staffer who was transferred feels that she was a victim of retaliation and that it hampered her career. If not, then WTF are we fighting about?
Bobby Thomson
@Fair Economist: they’re stalling to plan a response to the revelations about serial rapist and RNC finance chair Steve Wynn, which are just gross. There is no way the press can stay away from them for long due to their prurience.
Kay
@jeffreyw:
Okay but then why does this keep happening with Trump? The pay off to the girlfriend “was reported” too and for some reason it only became news after the election was over.
Same with the FBI investigation of Trump. It’s supposed to be this 24/7 rapid news and instead it’s like we’re receiving information carried by town criers on horseback. Something seems to be going terribly wrong here.
Fair Economist
@Bobby Thomson: Yeah, I’ll bet Wynn demanded sex from all his massage therapists, not just the one currently in the news. And I’ll bet some of the stories are even grosser than the ones that have already come out.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
Another mystery! Odd that this didn’t come out when they were all outraged and demanding Democrats give back from donations for Weinstein. Oh, well. Too late. Again.
This timing seems to be working out incredibly well for Donald Trump and the GOP. It’s almost like they’re really fucking good at manipulating these people.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
Is this supposed to be a rhetorical question? The media is (mostly) in the bag for the Republicans, because it’s owned by the ultra-rich, and often by ultra-conservative ultra-rich. Even fake scandals for Democrats are front-page, while very serious scandals for Republicans get an occasional column on page 8.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: the Times is corrupt.
Chris
@Kay:
Smells a little bit like the New York Times sitting on the wiretapping story until after the 2004 election was over, doesn’t it?
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: it’s not news that the press sits on news that is bad for Trump, or pursues it halfheartedly.
It’s news that the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal is going after Trump hammer and tongs. They broke the Stormy Daniels story and the Steve Wynn story.
Kay
Nothing, they will do nothing, because unlike with Weinstein there won’t be 100 political reporters demanding they do something.
Note the defensive tone. “It’s a fair question”. They have to preface their questions with apologies or they get punished or something.
Why don’t they try printing photographs of GOP politicians with Wynn and tying them to him? That’s what they did with Clinton and Weinstein. That might work. They’ll have to establish that it’s “fair” first, I guess, an analysis they NEVER bothered to conduct with Hillary Clinton.
catclub
@Kay:
1. From Weinstein.
2. I hope the Democrats had the sense, ( and the lack of ready cash) to ignore all those demands.
Kay
@Chris:
It does. The NYTimes has been bad for a long time. They never should have regained their former lofty position after the Iraq debacle. I mean, Jesus Christ. That was half a million dead Iraqis. It’ll be hard to top that failure.
geg6
@glory b:
Most women don’t see that there is recourse for them. They will lose their jobs. They won’t be able to get another job. They can’t afford an attorney. Their workplace doesn’t back them up. They are intimidated and too busy making a life for themselves and, sometimes, their families.
Sorry, but I was horribly discriminated against in a previous job at the local community college. Not sexually harassed, but discriminated against, due to my marital status and gender. I was told by my immediate supervisor that I wasn’t getting a raise, like most of my other co-workers, despite my stellar annual employee evaluation. The reason? He said that because I was single woman who was living with my boyfriend, who he figured made a good living, I didn’t need a raise. My co-workers were mostly married women and men and, as he said, they needed it more and since our funds were limited because we were a grant program, I was the one that had to sacrifice. I went to HR and they pretty much said I mustn’t care much about my fellow employees. I never got another raise while there, while still getting perfect evaluations, and everyone else did. I got the hell out of there as soon as was humanly possible. At the time (mid-90s), I was making $15,000 a year (despite just having finished my MEd) and couldn’t afford a lawyer, let alone the gas to even drive to one’s office for an appointment. The boyfriend and I didn’t mix incomes, so he wasn’t going to pay for one. There was nothing I could do but leave.
It’s not as easy as you are making it sound.
Kay
@catclub:
You know what will really suck? When it turns out women politicians get more shit for sexual harassment and assault than the men who perpetrate it. That will just be the cherry on top. The big losers will be women. Perfect.
Mnemosyne
@Bobby Thomson:
I wonder if Murdoch is pissed that Trump’s idiots let Michael Wolff free range at the White House even after Murdoch warned them that Wolff had written a scathing book about him.
Various Republican power bases are going to start trying to limit the damage to themselves when Trump falls. We need to not let them get away with it.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Boy, I hope that never happens around here. // ?
Chris
@Kay:
As someone noted with the Weinstein scandal, it didn’t take long for a bunch of people to start talking about “why didn’t Meryl Streep condemn Weinstein?” rather than “why didn’t Weinstein not do what he did?” There are any number of people in Hollywood that the same question could be asked about, of course. But they just had to find a woman to hang it on.
James E. Powell
@Mandalay:
She ran for president while she was in a state of imperfection. Is that a grave offense? Keep in mind, you are slamming her not for anything she did, but for punishing but not firing someone accused of harassment. I don’t know you and I can’t read your mind but that pedestal remark suggests you’ve got some issue with her running for office.
Was Trump, who bragged about sexually abusing women, more honorable in your view? Was he on a pedestal? Was it a different pedestal?
And apart from that, is there any question in your mind that she was the person to support if you cared about the way women are treated? Are you trolling or have you lost your goddam mind?
joel hanes
@Bailey:
attempts to make more-authentic and more-woke-than-thou mudpies out of mud and hatred
and fails miserably
Mandalay
@Kay:
Folks here need to stop coming up with strawmen, bogus arguments and defending the indefensible:
Folks here blindly defending Clinton on this issue aren’t standing up for women – they’re part of the problem.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Wow, you came back and did exactly what Kay was complaining about right to Kay’s face.
That is an amazing lack of self-awareness you have.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne: Like many other posts here, Kay’s chose to come up with a diversion instead of directly addressing the issue of what Clinton actually did. By your reasoning Clinton should be immune from criticism because so many others are far worse.
Defending Clinton on this is not helping women.
Felanius Kootea
@Mandalay: Okay then, thank you for your opinion. Now what do you think of Steve Wynn, the current RNC Finance Chair forcing women to give him hand jobs? And what do you think of Mr. Strider’s actions in harassing women? What should these two men do to atone for their actions and how should society treat these two men?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a Clinton story brings a bunch of trolls back to the yard
I almost said “all”, but a couple, thanks be to The Noodly One, I don’t see
Felanius Kootea
@Mandalay: Yes, I’m eagerly awaiting your opinion of Mr. Strider, who did the actual harassing. I am very aware of your low opinion of Hillary.
James E. Powell
@glory b: @geg6:
I practiced in this area for about five years (late 80s, early 90s) and I agree with geg6.
It was rare that the state agency took up the case. They do have limited resources. I don’t know about more recent times, but the agency would issue a right to sue letter and we got going with discovery. I can recall only one case where my client benefited from the agency’s work product.
Consistent with what geg6 is saying, most of the plaintiff employees struggled with the decision to make a claim or file suit. Most were of the “I don’t want to do this, but I have to” frame of mind and more than a few asked for the matter to be dropped simply in exchange for a good or neutral reference.
schrodingers_cat
Speaking of Steve Wynn, he used to be one of Charlie Rose’s frequent guests. Birds of a feather, stick together.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
The criticism should be apples-to-apples, but you’re doing apples-to-anthrax.
If the current story was that the RNC knew that Wynn was a harasser and covered up for him, then that would be an apples-to-apples comparison. However, the current story is that Wynn himself is at best a serial harasser and at worst a rapist.
You keep comparing Hillary to men who personally harassed and assaulted women and claiming that it’s a fair comparison because harassment is involved at some level in the story, so therefore Hillary is just like Wynn and Trump.
The fact that you’re clueless about why this 10-year-old story about Hillary just happened to drop on the same day that Wynn’s story did says that you’re dangerously naive about the amount of protection the New York Times is willing to provide to Republicans. Your need to see Hillary as a villain is blinding you to the truth of why these stories are being juxtaposed by the NYT.
ETA: You used the word “diversion.” There is an attempted diversion going on, but you have incorrectly identified which story is the one that’s meant to divert from the other. Hint: forcing women to give you workplace handjobs is worse behavior than insufficiently punishing a harasser, at least in the real world.
satby
@Mnemosyne: “Hillary rules” are that Hillary Clinton is always and forever worse than and responsible for the bad acts any male even remotely connected to her commit. Always.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne:
It’s also even more on the edge because actresses can be required to be nude or fake sex acts as part of the job.
dollared
@James E. Powell: If you haven’t seen this, it’s like the biggest echo in history. static.snopes.com/app/uploads/2017/05/santa-fe.png
Tyro
Discussing this with a journalist friend of mine, I have learned that they literally just think they’re writing “the first draft of history.” So their job is to chronicle who said what on the record and later on piece together who was telling the truth.
The idea that they are being deliberately misled by people who both want to hide things from journalists and want to use their articles as propaganda pieces to amplify their claims is considered pretty much not relevant to their work.
They consider lying to be either something completely inconceivable that someone would do to them or something that they’re only reporting on, and what people do with that information that the sources lying is for them to decide.
SteveinSC
I was definitely a Bernie person, not a Hillary supporter, but I voted for her in the end. The alternative was/is too horrible to contemplate. But dragging this bullshit out about her is just flat out baseless and counterproductive. The focus must be on analyzing the release of stories to the press (old or new) so as to be on alert for misdirection efforts by Drumpf, et cie. The press has been somewhat complicit, but probably out of fear of their corporate masters, access and timidity. What pattern, what message and its purpose is being generated by the WH (if any can actually be found) via leaks ought to be the thing the fairly intelligent commentarium here is studying most intensely.
James E. Powell
@satby:
The rule of Respondeat Clinton is hornbook law.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: I beginning to think that the Hollywood trade press is more aggressive than the Washington political press. I’m sure this feeling will pass.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
That has come up again, and again, and again. At this point I think they have a secret society. Not in the formal sense, but I think these people not only know each other, they know *of* each other, and trade tips and intentionally provide assistance.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Exactly, that’s why she was responsible for Bill and Monica.
(Excuse me, while go I strike myself in the head with a ball-peen hammer.)
StringOnAStick
My younger sister is the EEOC person for a certain western state’s corrections division. The higher ups were bragging at a conference recently that things are great because the number of sexual harassment complaints is way, way down. They think it’s because there is less harassment going on, rather than the obvious possibility that with the Mango Moron in office and the general emboldening that’s led to among certain types of individuals, perhaps women (and it is usually women) aren’t feeling safe making a complaint now? Granted they were looking at the numbers for 2017 from before #metoo became a thing. My sister says not only has the amount of harassment stayed the same, it seems to have gotten worse but women are afraid to file a complaint because of the potential impact to their careers. She also told me that as soon as the Moron in Chief won, the amount of white supremacist attacks on the nonwhite prison population jumped significantly. He poisons everything.
gorram
@Turgidson: Aaaah, that explains the purported cause.