Now that no fewer than five high-level players within the elite media — power brokers connected to ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and the New Republic — stand accused of various forms of sexual misconduct, we are being led to believe that over the course of decades, nobody knew.
And yet, in at least three of those cases, that claim stretches credulity.
Mark Halperin, whom NBC News just fired, is accused of appalling behavior towards female subordinates. Somewhere around a dozen women have made various claims about the Morning Joe mainstay rubbing his clothed erection up against them, masturbating under his desk in their presence, and even physically manhandling them. Without detailing which, Halperin has both admitted to and denied the allegations.
Almost as shocking as Halperin’s fall is that we have three of the most plugged-in members of the elite media claiming they had no idea about any of this. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the co-hosts of Morning Joe, who have spent years positioning themselves as the ultimate media and political insiders, claim total ignorance.
Until last week, left-wing journalist John Heilemann was tied to Halperin for ten years as the two men reaped wealth and fame co-authoring books, making movies, and hosting cable news shows. Heilemann claims he was gobsmacked by the Halperin accusations.
NBC News, Bloomberg News, and ABC News have all claimed total ignorance. And yet…
Others within the media, those with nothing to lose by saying so, report that Halperin’s alleged behavior was well known throughout the industry.
“Everyone knew this was the way he was,” CNN producer Eleanor McManus revealed Friday. She further claims that over the years she told all kinds of people, but Halperin kept “getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
CNN’s Clarissa Ward also says Halperin’s behavior was “an open secret when [she] was at ABC for years.”
Nevertheless, Joe, Mika and John tell us they knew nothing. The whole of ABC, NBC, and Bloomberg News tell us they knew nothing. So which is true: are they nowhere near as insider-insider as they claim, or did they know about Halperin and chose to associate and do business with him anyway — you know, while piously lecturing everyone else about the war on women?
It has to be one or the other.
Another “open secret” the left-wing Morning Joe duo chose to do business with, was Harvey Weinstein. But again, Mr. and Ms. Plugged-In claim total ignorance of the allegations surrounding the disgraced mogul who awarded Mika a three-book deal.
Then there is the matter of Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, whose disgusting behavior was detailed in a 2000 memoir co-written with Mark Ames.
Taibbi’s book is advertised as non-fiction and declaratively says that “all of the characters and events depicted in this book are real.” The book is also full of the co-authors’ bragging about a year in Moscow when they treated young women like disposable playthings. This included getting a 15-year-old girl drunk before having sex with her and threatening desperate female employees with termination if they did not agree to “blowjobs” and unprotected anal sex.
Taibbi now claims this stuff was made up … in his non-fiction book.
Well, whether Taibbi is a fabulist or misogynist monster, while this horrific book was his calling card, he was welcomed at the Nation, Playboy, and Rolling Stone.
Equally disturbing is three whole decades of alleged sexual misconduct by two powerful editors at the left-wing New Republic. Between 1983 and 2014, literary editor Leon Wieseltier did not deny numerous allegations of systemic misconduct towards female staffers.
Just a little over a year after Wieseltier’s exit, Hamilton Fish was brought on as publisher. This week, the oldest left-wing publication in America suspended Fish for a whole other series of harassment allegations.
“According to the women, male staff members routinely witnessed Mr. Wieseltier’s behavior and did nothing,” the New York Times reports.
According to Wikipedia, male staff members during this era include Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan, Peter Beinart, Jacob Weisberg, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, Sidney Blumenthal, Robert Kuttner, Ronald Steel, Michael Walzer, and Irving Howe, among others, including left-wing Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who wrote last week, “How could I possibly have missed all of this?”
If we are to believe what the elite media are telling us, the only people who knew about these alleged predators were those who have nothing to lose by saying so.
The people who do have something to lose by admitting they knew, did not know.
How convenient.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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