Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg

Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Sun Nov 19, 2017 2:20 am

Oregon State Senator Calls For Public Investigation, Says 15 Other Women Inappropriately Touched By Kruse
by Lauren Dake OPB
Nov. 15, 2017 10:30 a.m. | Updated: Nov. 15, 2017 5:49 p.m.

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-- State Sen. Sara Gelser


In her first detailed account of alleged harassment at the Oregon Capitol, state Sen. Sara Gelser says a fellow legislator touched her breasts and placed his hand on her thigh under a dais. And she says as many as 15 other women have also accused Sen. Jeff Kruse of unwanted touching.

Gelser, who has previously accused Kruse, R-Roseburg, of sexual misconduct filed a formal complaint on Wednesday.

Kruse has already been relieved of his committee assignments and had the door removed from his Senate office. Now Gelser is asking for his expulsion from the Senate.

Gelser said she felt compelled to make a formal complaint, which triggers a public investigation, after learning many other women have accused Kruse of similar behavior.

“Unfortunately, most of these women do not experience the privilege or safety I do in filing a formal complaint,” Gelser wrote in her letter to legislative leaders and human resource officials. “I cannot be fired. However, these young women may be concerned about the loss of job opportunities in the future if they are perceived as disloyal to a powerful figure in their party.”

Kruse has denied Gelser’s allegations.

A formal complaint sparks a special conduct committee that will publicly investigate the claims.

Last month, after reports that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was accused of harassing scores of women, Gelser accused Kruse of inappropriately touching her multiple times over a period of years. She initially declined to give details and filed an informal complaint, which does not spark a public exploration of the process.

In the letter, Gelser said the touching started in 2011. While on the House floor that year, Gelser wrote, Kruse approached her from behind her seat.

“He leaned forward from behind my back, and ran both of his hands and arms down my shoulders and across my breasts,” Gelser wrote. “He then crossed his arms over the front of my body and squeezed me in a hug with his hands on my hips. He then rested his head first on my head and then my shoulder.”

Gelser wrote that she was “stunned and frozen.”

After the incident, the Democrat from Corvallis said she tried to avoid Kruse. But that became more difficult in 2015 when she was elected to the state Senate and shared several committee assignments with Kruse, she wrote. She requested a seat change so she was not sitting next to Kruse. She would take the stairs to avoid the elevators and being in a small space with Kruse. She instructed her staff not to meet with him and to never send interns to his office.

“I experienced hugging, whispering that left my ear wet, and on at least one occasion he placed his hand on my thigh beneath the dais during the hearing,” Gelser wrote.

She detailed her colleague sitting so close to her, whispering in her ear that his tongue was in her ear and putting his hand on her shoulder, positioned so the palm was resting on her breast.

The letter states that colleagues, including former Sen. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, intervened on her behalf. She detailed the unwanted touching to legislative counsel so they could ask Kruse to stop the touching. However, she said, the touching continued.


This year, she said she was on the Senate floor one day when Kruse wrapped his left arm around her shoulder but placed his hand so far over that his fingers touched the scar she has from a cardiac device on her left breast.

“He was turned close towards me, and his right hand was positioned on my thigh such that some fingers were on top of my skirt and some were under the hem of my skirt (there was fabric between his fingers). He was pulling me close towards him and again speaking in my ear so closely that my ear was wet. Again, taken by surprise, I was frozen,” Gelser wrote.

Another colleague, Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland intervened, Gelser wrote. Kruse told Burdick that Gelser didn’t mind the touching, according to Gelser’s letter. Gelser wrote she clearly stated to Kruse that the touching made her uncomfortable. This, she said, came after Kruse had already been spoken to by the Legislature’s lawyers.

Initially, Gelser was hoping to avoid a public process and said she simply wanted the touching to stop. But when the media started reporting the allegations generally, she said she heard from others who felt like they were not working in a harassment-free workplace.

“I have watched online and in the media as my integrity, my body, my clothing, my sexuality, my personality and even the sensory characteristics of my intimate body parts have been discussed and debated,” Gelser wrote. “All of this happened simply because I clearly stated that I should be able to go to work and not be touched without my consent.”

Filing a formal complaint sparks a special conduct committee, made up of lawmakers, to publicly investigate. For formal complaints, there is an independent fact-finding investigation by someone unaffiliated with the legislative branch — such as an attorney with the Oregon Department of Justice. Investigators make a report to a special committee on conduct, which exists in both chambers, who then conduct what essentially amounts to a hearing. Both the accused lawmaker and alleged victim present testimony and witnesses to the committee.

Senate Republican Caucus Leader Jackie Winters said now that a formal complaint has been filed, there is a process in place. Winters cited the complaint when declining to comment further.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:15 pm

Bill Clinton: A Reckoning. Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history; is it finally time to make things right?
by Caitlin Flanagan
The Atlantic
November 13, 2017

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The most remarkable thing about the current tide of sexual assault and harassment accusations is not their number. If every woman in America started talking about the things that happen during the course of an ordinary female life, it would never end. Nor is it the power of the men involved: History instructs us that for countless men, the ability to possess women sexually is not a spoil of power; it’s the point of power. What’s remarkable is that these women are being believed.

Most of them don’t have police reports or witnesses or physical evidence. Many of them are recounting events that transpired years—sometimes decades—ago. In some cases, their accusations are validated by a vague, carefully couched quasi-admission of guilt; in others they are met with outright denial. It doesn’t matter. We believe them. Moreover, we have finally come to some kind of national consensus about the workplace; it naturally fosters a level of romance and flirtation, but the line between those impulses and the sexual predation of a boss is clear.

Believing women about assault—even if they lack the means to prove their accounts—as well as understanding that female employees don’t constitute part of a male boss’s benefits package, were the galvanizing consequences of Anita Hill’s historic allegations against Clarence Thomas, in 1991. When she came forward during Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing and reported that he had sexually humiliated and pressured her throughout his tenure as her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it was an event of convulsive national anxiety. Here was a black man, a Republican, about to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and here was a black woman, presumably a liberal, trying to block him with reports of repeated, squalid, and vividly recounted episodes of sexual harassment. She had little evidence to support her accusations. Many believed that since she’d been a lawyer at the EEOC, she had been uniquely qualified to have handled such harassment.

But then something that no one could have predicted happened. It was a pre-Twitter, pre-internet, highly analog version of #MeToo. To the surprise of millions of men, the nation turned out to be full of women—of all political stripes and socioeconomic backgrounds—who’d had to put up with Hell at work. Mothers, sisters, aunts, girlfriends, wives—millions of women shared the experience of having to wait tables, draw blood, argue cases, make sales, all while fending off the groping, the joking, the sexual pressuring, and the threatening of male bosses. They were liberal and conservative; white collar and pink collar; black and white and Hispanic and Asian. Their common experience was not political, economic, or racial. Their common experience was female.

For that reason, the response to those dramatic hearings constituted one of the great truly feminist events of the modern era. Even though Thomas successfully, and perhaps rightly, survived Hill’s accusations, something in the country had changed about women and work and the range of things men could do to them there.

But then Bubba came along and blew up the tracks.

How vitiated Bill Clinton seemed at the 2016 Democratic convention. Some of his appetites, at least, had waned; his wandering, “Norwegian Wood” speech about his wife struck the nostalgic notes of a husband’s 50th-anniversary toast, and the crowd—for the most part—indulged it in that spirit. Clearly, he was no longer thinking about tomorrow. With a pencil neck and a sagging jacket he clambered gamely onto the stage after Hillary’s acceptance speech and played happily with the red balloons that fell from the ceiling.

When the couple repeatedly reminded the crowd of their new status as grandparents it was to suggest very different associations in voters’ minds. Hillary’s grandmotherhood was evoked to suggest the next phase in her lifelong work on behalf of women and children—in this case forging a bond with the millions of American grandmothers who are doing the hard work of raising the next generation, while their own adult children muddle through life. But Bill’s being a grandfather was intended to send a different message: Don’t worry about him anymore; he’s old now. He won’t get into those messes again.

Yet let us not forget the sex crimes of which the younger, stronger Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s. Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said that she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied. At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones said, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his penis to her and told her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.

It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism. The movement had by then ossified into a partisan operation, and it was willing—eager—to let this friend of the sisterhood enjoy a little droit de seigneur.

The notorious 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of her life. It slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused. Moreover (never write an op-ed in a hurry; you’ll accidentally say what you really believe), it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party.


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The New York Times published Gloria Steinem’s essay defending Clinton in March 1998 (Screenshot from Times Machine)

Called “Feminists and the Clinton Question,” it was written in March of 1998, when Paula Jones’s harassment claim was working its way through court. It was printed seven days after Kathleen Willey’s blockbuster 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley. If all the various allegations were true, wrote Steinem, Bill Clinton was “a candidate for sex addiction therapy.” To her mind, the most “credible” accusations were those of Willey, who she noted was “old enough to be Monica Lewinsky’s mother.” And then she wrote the fatal sentences that invalidated the new understanding of workplace sexual harassment as a moral and legal wrong: “Even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.”

Steinem said the same was true of Paula Jones. These were not crimes; they were “passes.” Steinem revealed herself as a combination John and Bobby Kennedy of the feminist movement: the fair-haired girl and the bare-knuckle fixer. The widespread liberal response to the sex-crime accusations against Bill Clinton found their natural consequence 20 years later in the behavior of Harvey Weinstein: Stay loudly and publicly and extravagantly on the side of signal leftist causes and you can do what you want in the privacy of your offices and hotel rooms. But the mood of the country has changed. We are in a time when old monuments are coming down and men are losing their careers over things they did to women a long time ago.

When more than a dozen women stepped forward and accused Leon Wieseltier of a serial and decades-long pattern of workplace sexual harassment, he said, “I will not waste this reckoning.” It was textbook Wieseltier: the insincere promise and the perfectly chosen word. The Democratic Party needs to make its own reckoning of the way it protected Bill Clinton. The party needs to come to terms with the fact that it was so enraptured by their brilliant, Big Dog president and his stunning string of progressive accomplishments that it abandoned some of its central principles. The party was on the wrong side of history, and there are consequences for that. Yet expedience is not the only reason to make this public accounting. If it is possible for politics and moral behavior to coexist, then this grave wrong needs to be acknowledged. If Weinstein and Mark Halperin and Louis C. K. and all the rest can be held accountable, so can our former president and so can his party, which so many Americans so desperately need to rise again.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:30 am

Feminists and the Clinton Question
by Gloria Steinem
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages
March 22, 1998

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If all the sexual allegations now swirling around the White House turn out to be true, President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy. But feminists will still have been right to resist pressure by the right wing and the media to call for his resignation or impeachment. The pressure came from another case of the double standard.

For one thing, if the President had behaved with comparable insensitivity toward environmentalists, and at the same time remained their most crucial champion and bulwark against an anti-environmental Congress, would they be expected to desert him? I don’t think so. If President Clinton were as vital to preserving freedom of speech as he is to preserving reproductive freedom, would journalists be condemned as inconsistent” for refusing to suggest he resign? Forget it.

For another, there was and is a difference between the accusations against Mr. Clinton and those against Bob Packwood and Clarence Thomas, between the experiences reported by Kathleen Willey and Anita Hill. Commentators might stop puzzling over the President’s favorable poll ratings, especially among women, if they understood the common-sense guideline to sexual behavior that came out of the women’s movement 30 years ago: no means no; yes means yes.

It’s the basis of sexual harassment law. It also explains why the media’s obsession with sex qua sex is offensive to some, titillating to many and beside the point to almost everybody. Like most feminists, most Americans become concerned about sexual behavior when someone’s will has been violated; that is, when “no” hasn’t been accepted as an answer.

Let’s look at what seem to be the most damaging allegations, those made by Kathleen Willey.



He can tell that something is wrong. I am on the verge of tears. My adrenaline has gotten the better of me and I am trembling. He greets me with a hug. I know -- he hugs everyone. But at this moment, it is sincere and just what I need. A flurry wells up in my stomach, a mixed rush of fear and solace, all raw, all at the surface. He is my friend -- the most powerful man I know, the most powerful many anyone knows. Surely he can help me, give me some hope, maybe a job, anything to help me out of this crisis. A hug is a good start. Then he looks into my face, into my eyes.

"What's going on?"

"I just really need to talk with you about something," I start to explain as we sit at his desk. "I've got some real problems." I have helped him for a long time, worked for him, supported him when other people didn't. I figure a relationship like that goes both ways, and I don't think twice about asking him for help. But I don't want to cry in front of him, and I try not to let go of the tears. "I don't know what will happen with Ed and me. He's gotten himself into real financial problems and we need help."

"I can see how upset you are," he said. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"Oh, yeah, okay."

"Well, come on," he says. "Let's go back to my kitchen."

He opens a side door that's discreetly integrated in the paneling of the office wall, and I follow him through it into a narrow hallway. There's a small bathroom on the right and just past it, a little galley kitchen. A steward starts to ask what we would like but he is quickly dismissed and we are alone.

"I will fix you a cup of coffee," he says. "Decaf?"

"No, high test."

We stand in the hallway for a minute or two. He pulls down a Starbucks cup and pours my coffee into it, mentioning that he only takes decaf.

"How do you like it?"

"Um, cream."

He hands me my cup. My hands are shaking and I worry about spilling, so I quickly taste the coffee.

"Come on back here to my study," he says, "where it's easier to talk."

I follow him through a narrow hallway into his private study. He rests on the back of a chair while I stand, leaning against the doorjamb. At six feet two, he is a big man, but half-sitting he no longer towers above me and we are at eye level with each other. It's subtle, yet I wonder if he knows that this makes me feel a little more at ease. Still, I tremble. Holding the full cup of coffee, my hands are shaking. I think, Now just calm down! I grip the warm mug to steady myself.

"I can tell you are really upset," he says, looking at his watch. "Are you okay? Tell me more about what's going on."

"I'm frightened," I said. "And worried about my family and where this is going to all end."

My voice trembles as I quickly tell him about my crisis, passing over the details. I have a serious problem. I don't know what's going to happen with my husband. I don't know if we're going to get divorced, and I don't know what's going to happen to us. I only know that Ed is in trouble, owes a lot of money, and I have to do something. I am scared to death. I've got to rise to the occasion. I have not had a paying job in twenty years, but my volunteer days are over.

I've got face time with a very powerful friend who only has a few moments for me, so I'm going to make the most of it. Tears well up in my eyes. I try to maintain my dignity. I don't want to lose it in his office. I just need him to point me in the right direction. That's basically how I look at it. I want him to know that times are bad and this is very serious. With all this desperation and nervous energy, I run my mouth for five or ten minutes. He looks at his watch again. His assistant said he would see me before a three o'clock meeting, and I cam in at about two forty-five, so I should finish talking and get out of his way. "I hope you can give me assistance because I desperately need a job. Please, send me anywhere."

"We'll see what we can do."

But my coworkers wanted me to tell him about some office problems, so I tag them on as an aside. "And you really need to know this too," I add. Still on the verge of tears, I think talking about work will help me to level out the conversation and distract me from my panic. "The office is just chaos. It's a mess. There's no protocol, no rhyme or reason, no organization. There's no language code, and it's very inappropriate." Finally, I conclude, "You really need to do something about that." I know it's nervy of me to tell him what to do. But that's just who I am!

Again he looks at his watch. I'm not paying much attention to the time but I know it's close to three o'clock and time to leave. We move back into the small hallway. I set my coffee cup on a shelf to steady myself again.

He promises to help.

There is a loud knock beyond the door from the outer office, and an assistant calls out, "It's time for your meeting!"

He ignores this. He doesn't say anything, not one word. I'm thinking, How can he ignore this? But he does not answer at all. He doesn't even say "Give me a minute," or "Hold on." Why don't they just come in? What must they think if he doesn't answer?

Again he looks at his watch. Obviously, he's trying to show me he needs to get to that meeting, so I should go.

"Well," I say, "I'll be going."

"No, you don't have to rush."

"But you have an important meeting here, and I know you have a lot to do that's more important."

"No, it's all right."

But again he looks at the watch. I think that contradicts his words and my time is up. "Okay, well, I'm open to any possible job, and I could go anywhere," I conclude. "I've taken enough of your time, so I should leave."

The assistant beyond the door resumes knocking. "You're late!"

Somebody's got to move to the door here, and obviously it's not going to be him. You'd think it would be him -- or that somebody would come through the door and say, "Okay, it is time to move along." Yet there's no such person. Instead, he looks at the watch. It crosses my mind: Why does he keep looking at that watch if he's not going to usher me out?

The assistant bangs on the door again. I decide to ease myself out of there.

"Well, thank you for listening. I'd better go, and if you could help me, I'd really appreciate it." I retrieve my coffee cup. I have no idea why, just that I was so full of distracted, nervous energy. I move to the door and head back toward his office. He follows me and moves closer. I turn around and he is right next to me, but it's a narrow hallway, so I don't really feel like he's crowding me. I finish the conversation, "So, you know, whatever you can do for me ..."

"I'm so sorry this is happening to you."

He reaches around to hug me but I'm holding my coffee cup at my waist, with both hands. He presses into the cup between us.

"I'm going to spill my coffee."

He takes the cup and puts it on a shelf, then gives me a big hug. But this hug lasts a little longer than a hug should. I pull back. All of a sudden, his hands are in my hair and around the back of my neck. What the hell? And then he kisses me on my mouth. Somehow, before I know it, I'm backed up in the corner by the little bathroom, against the wall behind his office. I am trying to maintain my space but he's all over me, just all over me. And all I can think is, What the hell is he doing?

I try to twist away. He is a foot taller than I am and nearly double my weight. I can barely think. What do I do? He is my friend, my boss. He is a very powerful man. And I am trying to be a lady.

"What are you doing?" I finally manage.

"I've wanted to do this since the first time I laid eyes on you."

I am totally unprepared for this. I have been off on this other plane -- terrified for my husband, for my family, for our future -- and he says, "I've wanted to do this ..."

What?

He takes my hand and places it on his genitals, on his erection -- perhaps to show me how much he's "always wanted to do this." What is he doing? I am shocked! I yank my hand away but he is forceful. He is all hands -- just all hands. His hand goes up my skirt, he touches me everywhere, pressing up against me and kissing me. His face is red, literally beet red. It is as though this bizarre scene gives him a different kind of rush.

My mind is racing. I should slap him. That would shake it out of him. Can I slap him? I don't know if I can slap him! I'm pinned in the corner against the bathroom door and the wall, and his hands are all over me, up my skirt, over my blouse. I think he is trying to unhook me ...

"Aren't you afraid that somebody's going to walk in here?" This should give him pause.

He doesn't miss a step. "No. No, I'm not."

"What if your wife or daughter walks in here?"

"I know where they are," he says, "all the time."

The aide outside the office is frantic, banging on the door and yelling from the other side, "You're late for your three o'clock meeting." But the assistant doesn't come in. Why doesn't he come in? Where is everybody? Where is that steward? What about security? Why doesn't someone come in?

I realize why they don't come in. They've been told to stay out. Oh, God! I've got to get out of here! I just have to get to that door. I have to get out!

-- Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton, by Kathleen Willey


Not only was she Mr. Clinton’s political supporter, but she is also old enough to be Monica Lewinsky’s mother, a better media spokeswoman for herself than Paula Jones, and a survivor of family tragedy, struggling to pay her dead husband’s debts.

It’s not harassment and we’re not hypocrites.


If any of the other women had tried to sell their stories to a celebrity tell-all book publisher, as Ms. Willey did, you might be even more skeptical about their motives. But with her, you think, “Well, she needs the money.”

It took a while but the news crews eventually abandoned the house in Midlothian and swarmed my cottage at the end of the mile-long dirt road. Most of the reporters stayed up on the road and never passed the "No Trespassing" signs on to my gravel driveway.

But one afternoon, in the high heat of a humid August, I had all my windows open when the dogs heard a noise outside and started barking. I was upstairs in the guest bedroom and I got down on the floor below the window and peeked outside. My beautiful German shepherd, Tess, was lying next to me. We saw a man standing on the gravel driveway across from my yard, smoking a cigarette. He came down to my front door and knocked. I didn't answer. He banged on the door and walked around to the kitchen and banged on that door as well. "Hello? Hello!" He smoked one cigarette after another. He must have thought someone was home since my car was parked in the driveway, so he persisted. But I didn't want to talk, so Tess and I just watched him. Finally, he left the side of my house, walked along my walkway and up the steps to where my car was parked and lingered there. Tess and I walked out onto my front porch. I held her collar. He was twenty-five or thirty feet from us. I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted to talk to me.

"Who are you?"

He said he had been sent to get my story and asked if I would talk to him.

"I have nothing to say to you," I said. "Did you see the 'No Trespassing' sign at the top of my driveway?"

"I really need a story," he said.

"Well, I really need you to leave."

"My editor is going to be real mad if I don't come back with a story," he pleaded.

"Really," I said with more urgency in my voice, "you need to leave. This dog is trained to attack on command and if I were you I would just turn around very, very quietly and go away."

He finally turned and started to tiptoe on up my driveway. "And take your cigarette butts with you," I added. "She doesn't like them, either!"

So, before long, they all knew where I was and they knew my phone number too. My phone started to ring and it didn't stop. Everybody wanted me to talk. The tabloids called and told Dan me I could name my price. They were talking about obscene amounts of money. A product of Catholic guilt, I thought only one thing: I cannot do that!

Of course, I could have used the money. Here I was, still in the middle of the lawsuits with judgments against me, still afraid I was going to lose my house. And with everything I went through, I racked up legal bills. What's more, with my notoriety, it was harder than ever to find a job. Though I eventually gave a few interviews to try to clear my name, I never made a dime doing them because reputable reporters do not pay for stories.

When the story first broke, the White House denied that I had ever worked there. How could they think they could just say things like that and get away with it? These things are all documented. Of course in the Clinton White House such documents often disappeared, but I was a White House volunteer for years and I had a pass. Hounded by the press, Clinton finally had to acknowledge that he knew me. "Yeah, I kind of remember her," he said. "She was always real nice." It went from that to, "Oh, yeah, I guess she was in the Oval Office."

A reporter asked a question about me and it was the most bizarre experience to be sitting on my sofa and watching her ask whether "Kathleen Willey" was a potential witness in the Jones case. I thought, This is weird. This is really weird! And then I watched as Clinton froze and glared at her while answering her question. "There was a request to be left alone and not harassed" -- by me, incidentally! -- "and we're just trying to honor it." [8]

My mailbox was up at the top of my little hill, where my driveway met the road, and I walked up there every day to get my mail. Invariably, somebody was waiting to pounce on me, so I didn't even pick up my mail, but turned around and came home. Sometimes I even sneaked up there in the middle of the night to get my mail, which made me nervous. One Friday, at five in the afternoon, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see my mail carrier standing there with a post-hole digger.

"How about I move your mailbox down here, closer to the house?" he offered.

I couldn't believe it. "But then you'll have to drive down here to bring my mail and turn around," I said. "It'll be a pain in the neck."

"I don't mind," he said. "I really don't care."

That Friday night, he moved my mailbox for me. That's how nice some people are.

Some people.

The day after Drudge ran the story, Dan called. "Well, you're going to be in the Enquirer," he said. "You got sold out."

"Julie Steele?" I said.

And he said, "Julie Steele."

I knew. I just knew it.

Julie was my best friend of twenty years. That's how desperate she was for money. She had mortgaged her house, had a baby, couldn't get a job, and was in a real financial bind. And David Kendall, a fop who represented Clinton, also just happened to represent the National Enquirer at that time. With a streak of luck -- and no doubt a little help from her friends -- Julie sold my story to the Enquirer. The article, published on August 19, 1997, called me a conniving woman who was obsessed with Clinton. Without naming Julie Steele, it said I launched my scheme when Isikoff asked me about the incident and I called Julie, asking her to lie to him. Supposedly, I had come up with the story in order to sell a novel with the same plot, and I allegedly felt that "snaring Clinton in a real-life romantic disgrace would generate huge public interest in the book." [9] This is the only time Julie expressed this book concept. But it did come up again in 1998, when Uncle Bob accused me of seeking publicity to promote another book -- this time a nonfiction account. (For the record, this is the first book I have ever written and I am doing so only to tell what I know about Hillary Clinton because I believe it is relevant to her presidential bid.)

Julie had wanted to sell this story to Isikoff but Newsweek doesn't pay for stories. Julie, of course, found out that the Enquirer does. Only days after my story broke, they arranged an all-expenses-paid trip to Palm Beach, Florida, for Julie with her grown daughter and her son, Adam, who was seven. The tabloid put them up at a posh resort, The Breakers, and bought the photo and her story. Julie sold me out for ten thousand dollars. Later, Time magazine also bought Julie's story for another $5,500. That's what our friendship was worth to Julie -- fifteen grand.

The sad thing is that Julie had asked for the picture of me with the president so that she could put it in Adam's room when he was just a baby. After I gave her the photo, she hung it in her kitchen and it stayed there for years. It was never for her son. And it was that picture that I had given to Julie as a gift for her child that she sold to the Enquirer.

-- Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton, by Kathleen Willey


For the sake of argument here, I’m also believing all the women, at least until we know more. I noticed that CNN polls taken right after Ms. Willey’s interview on “60 Minutes” showed that more Americans believed her than President Clinton.

Nonetheless, the President’s approval ratings have remained high. Why? The truth is that even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took “no” for an answer.

In her original story, Paula Jones essentially said the same thing. She went to then-Governor Clinton’s hotel room, where she said he asked her to perform oral sex and even dropped his trousers. She refused, and even she claims that he said something like, “Well, I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Her lawyers now allege that as a result of the incident Ms. Jones described, she was slighted in her job as a state clerical employee and even suffered long-lasting psychological damage. But there appears to be little evidence to support those accusations. As with the allegations in Ms. Willey’s case, Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection.

PAULA JONES'S DEPOSITION WHICH THREW A PRESIDENT INTO CRISIS

We talked for a few minutes. Mr. Clinton asked me about my job. He told me that Dave Harrington (who at that time was in charge of the AIDC) was his 'good friend'.

Mr. Clinton then unexpectedly reached over to me, took my hand, and pulled me toward him, so that our bodies were close to each other. I removed my hand from his and retreated several feet.

Mr. Clinton approached me again, saying 'I love the way your hair flows down your back' and 'I love your curves.'

While saying these things, Mr. Clinton put his hand on my leg and started sliding his hand toward my pelvic area. I did not consent to him doing this. He also bent down to kiss me on the neck, but I would not let him do so.

I exclaimed, 'What are you doing?' and escaped from Mr. Clinton's reach by walking away from him. I was extremely upset and confused and I did not know what to do. I tried to distract Mr. Clinton by asking him about his wife and her activities, and I sat down at the end of the sofa nearest the door.

Mr. Clinton then walked over to the sofa, lowered his trousers and underwear, exposed his penis (which was erect) and told me to 'kiss it'.

I was horrified by this. I jumped up from the couch and told Mr. Clinton that I had to go, saying something to the effect that I had to get back to the registration desk. Mr. Clinton, while fondling his penis, said: 'Well, I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do.'

Mr. Clinton then stood up, pulled up his pants and said: 'If you get in trouble for leaving work, have Dave call me immediately and I'll take care of it.'

As I left the room, Mr. Clinton detained me momentarily, looked sternly at me and said: 'You are smart. Let's keep this between ourselves.'


This is very different from the cases of Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood. According to Anita Hill and a number of Mr. Packwood’s former employees, the offensive behavior was repeated for years, despite constant “no’s.” It also occurred in the regular workplace of these women, where it could not be avoided.

The women who worked for Mr. Packwood described a man who groped and lunged at them. Ms. Hill accused Clarence Thomas of regularly and graphically describing sexual practices and pornography. In both cases, the women said they had to go to work ever day, never knowing what sexual humiliation would await them – just the kind of “hostile environment” that sexual harassment law was intended to reduce.

As reported, Monica Lewinsky’s case illustrates the rest of the equation: “Yes means yes.” Whatever it was, her relationship with President Clinton has never been called unwelcome, coerced or other than something she sought. The power imbalance between them increased the index of suspicion, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ms. Lewinsky’s will was violated; quite the contrary. In fact, her subpoena in the Paula Jones case should have been quashed. Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.


And when the story broke in January, 1998, it broke online. It was the first time the traditional news was usurped by the Internet for a major news story.

A click that reverberated around the world. What that meant for me personally was that overnight I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.

This rush to judgment enabled by technology led to mobs of virtual stone-throwers.

Granted, it was before social media, but people could still comment online, email stories, and of course email cruel jokes.

News sources plastered photos of me all over to sell newspapers, banner ads online, and to keep people tuned to the TV.

Do you recall a particular image of me, say, wearing a beret?

[Laughter]

Now I admit I made mistakes, especially wearing that beret. [Laughs] But the attention and judgment I received, not the story, but that I personally received, was unprecedented.

I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and of course, "that woman." I was seen by many, but actually known by few.

And I get it! It was easy to forget that that woman was dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken.

When this happened to me 17 years ago, there was no name for it. Now we call it cyberbullying and online harassment.

-- Monica Lewinsky (TED Talks), by Monica Lewinsky


The real violators of Ms. Lewinsky’s will were Linda Tripp, who taped their talks, the F.B.I. agents who questioned her without a lawyer and Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor who seems intent on tailoring the former intern’s testimony.

What if President Clinton lied under oath about some or all of the above? According to polls, many Americans assume he did. There seems to be sympathy for keeping private sexual behavior private. Perhaps we have a responsibility to make it O.K. for politicians to tell the truth – providing they are respectful of “no means no; yes means yes” – and still be able to enter high office, including the Presidency.

Until then, we will disqualify energy and talent the country needs – as we are doing right now.

Gloria Steinem is a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and Ms. magazine.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:38 am

I Believe Juanita
by Michelle Goldberg
New York Times
November 13, 2017

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Juanita Broaddrick, center, who has accused Bill Clinton of raping her, at the second presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press

On Friday evening the MSNBC host Chris Hayes sent out a tweet that electrified online conservatives: “As gross and cynical and hypocritical as the right’s ‘what about Bill Clinton’ stuff is, it’s also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him.” Hayes’s tweet inspired stories on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, Breitbart and The Daily Caller, all apparently eager to use the Clinton scandals to derail discussions about Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in Alabama who is accused of sexually assaulting minors.

Yet despite the right’s evident bad faith, I agree with Hayes. In this #MeToo moment, when we’re reassessing decades of male misbehavior and turning open secrets into exposes, we should look clearly at the credible evidence that Juanita Broaddrick told the truth when she accused Clinton of raping her. But revisiting the Clinton scandals in light of today’s politics is complicated as well as painful. Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have. At the same time, looking back at the smear campaign against the Clintons shows we can’t treat the feminist injunction to “believe women” as absolute.

Writing at Crooked.com, Brian Beutler warns that in future elections, right-wing propaganda will exploit the progressive commitment to always taking sexual abuse charges seriously. It’s easy to imagine an outlet like Breitbart leveraging the “believe women” rallying cry to force mainstream media coverage of dubious accusations.

The Clinton years, in which epistemological warfare emerged as a key part of the Republican political arsenal, show us why we should be wary of allegations that bubble up from the right-wing press. At the time, the reactionary billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife was bankrolling the Arkansas Project, which David Brock, the former right-wing journalist who played a major role in it, described as a “multimillion-dollar dirty tricks operation against the Clintons.” Various figures in conservative media accused Bill Clinton of murder, drug-running and using state troopers as pimps. Brock alleges that right-wing figures funneled money to some of Clinton’s accusers.

In this environment, it would have been absurd to take accusations of assault and harassment made against Clinton at face value.


David Brock, the conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire-builder, is sitting in a conference room in the Park Avenue South offices of the MWW Group, a public-relations firm owned by Democratic mega-donor Michael Kempner. Fifty-two years old with a silver pompadour, and wearing round glasses with wire frames, he’s barely recognizable as the skinny, dark-haired operative who, during the Clinton administration, had an answering-machine message that said, “I’m out trying to bring down the president.”

That, of course, was before he publicly repented, first in a 1997 Esquire article, “Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man,” and then in 2002’s self-flagellating book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. It was before he founded Media Matters for America, which monitors the right-wing media, in 2004, and American Bridge, an unprecedented Democratic opposition-research organization, in 2010. It was before he became a favorite of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the very couple he’d spent his years as an enfant terrible trying to destroy....

These days, Brock has moved well beyond the repentance phase of his political turnaround. He’s no longer trying to ingratiate himself with the Democratic establishment—he’s now a part of it, employing hundreds of people at organizations with budgets in the tens of millions. Recently, his network has been experiencing a spurt of growth—one that’s likely to continue as the Democrats ramp up their efforts on the 2016 race after the disastrous midterm elections.

An avid Hillary Clinton supporter, Brock is already deeply engaged in the presidential contest. His group American Bridge captures almost every public utterance by prominent Republican politicians, using both DC-based researchers and a national network of professional trackers; it currently has people following all of the even remotely plausible contenders for the Republican nomination. Complementing that operation is Correct the Record, a subsidiary of American Bridge that Brock launched last year to push back against misinformation about Democratic presidential candidates, which so far has meant defending Clinton constantly and consistently.

-- How David Brock Built an Empire to Put Hillary in the White House: The Clintons’ former nemesis created an apparatus to fend off their enemies—right and left, by Michelle Goldberg


On Monday, Caitlin Flanagan, perhaps taking up Hayes’s challenge, urged liberals to remember some of what Clinton is said to have done. “Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch,” Flanagan wrote, recalling the charges Willey first made in 1998. It sounds both familiar and plausible. But Willey also accused the Clintons of having her husband and then her cat killed. Must we believe that, too?

Bullseye

On Election Day in November, a month before I was to give my deposition, I opened my front door and let Bullseye out. A sweet old cat, he was thirteen years old. He didn't go out much anymore and, when he did, it wasn't for long. He never went far and he always came right back. But not that day. That day, I watched Bullseye jump off the porch and I never saw him again.

I watched election returns and wondered where he was. The next day, I called a few neighbors to see if they'd seen a yellow tabby, a big guy with a red collar. If you lose an animal, the people around here will look. We're all animal lovers, and they knew how I felt. But all the homes were spread far and wide, surrounded by many acres of woods. No one had seen my cat.

I felt bad for Patrick, because he always thought of Bullseye as his cat. Eventually, I had to tell him and he got really angry at the thought that someone had harmed our old cat.

I was shocked when people later mocked me for being upset about Bullseye. People made terrible jokes about him, as if a cat isn't just as much a family pet as a dog. People would have been outraged if he had been a dog! Lucianne Goldberg, for one, made a really snotty remark on a talk show. I was incensed. I tracked her number down and called her. "You know, you don't have any right to make fun of my poor cat like you did today," I said. "Really! He was our pet!" She backed down and apologized right away.

***

Skull

On Monday, two days after I was deposed, I was home alone. Just as the sun was coming up, I opened my front door to let my dogs out. On the porch in front of me was a new horror. A small animal skull was lying on the bricks staring at me. It was bare bone, empty, dry, sitting a few feet from the door. It was the size of a cat's skull.

I thought of Bullseye. Had they had killed my wonderful old cat?

It was payback.

I didn't know what to do with it, and I thought, "I just can't deal with this." I got so mad, I went around to my backyard and I threw it into the woods as far as I could throw. I was really angry -- about the cat specifically, but generally about the scare tactics. I thought, I will not give in to these people!

But I was afraid to tell anybody. I was fearful that it was Bullseye and I didn't want to know. I didn't want to think that somebody would kill a cat -- kill my cat -- to intimidate me. So I didn't tell any officials about the skull right away.

When I finally did tell them about the skull, the FBI came out and found it. "We looked for shoe prints," said FBI investigator Dennis Alvater. "We looked around in the woods for any evidence of people watching the house. I wasn't able to find anything ... " But they did learn that the skull was not Bullseye's. It was a raccoon.

Cats, of course, sometimes drag small rodents to the porch, or bring home similar little gifts. But before this incident and since, not one of my animals has ever brought home any animal bones, and a dog or cat certainly couldn't present a raccoon skull with its face perfectly facing my front door. Besides, my habit is to have all the animals inside the house with me at night. I knew my pets did not put it there.

Later, I watched The Insider, a movie about a witness in a case against "Big Tobacco" and the reign of terror aimed at getting the witness to back away from testifying. The witness opened his mailbox and there was a bullet sitting there. It was a constant campaign of weird things going on. The witness felt like he was being watched. He just knew it. Jack Paladino, one of the Clintons' infamous private investigators, played himself in that movie, doing background research on the witness. I watched that movie with the hair standing up on the back of my neck and thought to myself, Boy, do I know about this!

***

Blarney

After staying in the Keys for most of the spring, I returned home to Virginia for the summer. When I went out in public, people recognized me and every single person who stopped me was kind, comforting, and supportive. To a person, they were compassionate. Their words meant so much to me, but I still felt uneasy in public. I was constantly checking my rearview mirror, looking over my shoulder. I knew they were following me, but where were "they"?

On the Fourth of July, I went out to a baseball game and party. I'd been gone all day and came home after dark. Once inside my house, I realized the door to my deck was open. A second-floor deck, it had no access to the yard. As I went to close the door and turn on the outside light, I saw my black and white cat, Blarney, on the deck. He was dead. A beautiful, longhaired cat with poochy white cheeks, Blarney was the prettiest cat I had ever owned. He was young and strong, healthy, and not quite full-grown. He was a sweetheart. And he was dead.

I called the FBI once again. "Well, now I've got a dead pet on my porch."

The veterinarian did a necropsy on Blarney but could never find the cause of his death. There was no reason why this one-year-old cat should have died. There was no pneumonia, no heart attack, no stroke, no feline leukemia, nothing. No reason. Cats don't just up and die, but they could find no reason for this cat to have died.

It scared me. It was so traumatic and painful that I buried it deep inside myself. I was emotionally overwhelmed, and part of me needed to shut down. I kept thinking, These people are not doing this to me. This cannot be. I don't think I was naive. Rather, it was more like denial. I refused to believe that people existed out there who did things like that, who would take Bullseye and Blarney and kill them. How could they do that? But there were just too damned many bad things happening, and I had to start believing. It was an awful realization.

That same day, my best friend's new kitten died suddenly, too.

As I ended the summer, I looked forward to the close of this long and grizzly saga. It could not last forever, and I looked forward to its resolution. And it was coming. Bill Clinton would give his deposition in mid-August, which would open the final chapter in the drama. Ken Starr would release his report in September. Everything was moving toward a conclusion. I eagerly awaited its arrival.

-- Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton, by Kathleen Willey


Similarly, there are reasons to be at least unsure about Paula Jones’s claim that Clinton exposed himself to her and demanded oral sex. Jones was championed by people engaged in what Ann Coulter once proudly called “a small, intricately knit right-wing conspiracy” to bring down the president. She described “distinguishing characteristics” of Clinton’s penis that turned out to be inaccurate. Her sister insisted to Sidney Blumenthal, then a New Yorker writer, that she was lying. Should feminists have backed her anyway? I’m still not sure, but the evidence was less definitive than that against Harvey Weinstein, Trump or Moore.

Of the Clinton accusers, the one who haunts me is Broaddrick. The story she tells about Clinton recalls those we’ve heard about Weinstein. She claimed they had plans to meet in a hotel coffee shop, but at the last minute he asked to come up to her hotel room instead, where he raped her. Five witnesses said she confided in them about the assault right after it happened. It’s true that she denied the rape in an affidavit to Paula Jones’s lawyers, before changing her story when talking to federal investigators. But her explanation, that she didn’t want to go public but couldn’t lie to the F.B.I., makes sense. Put simply, I believe her.

What to do with that belief? Contemplating this history is excruciating in part because of the way it has been weaponized against Hillary Clinton. Broaddrick sees her as complicit, interpreting something Hillary once said to her at a political event — “I want you to know that we appreciate everything you do for Bill” — as a veiled threat instead of a rote greeting. This seems wildly unlikely; Broaddrick was decades away from going public, and most reporting about the Clinton marriage shows Bill going to great lengths to hide his betrayals. Nevertheless, one of the sick ironies of the 2016 campaign was that it was Hillary who had to pay the political price for Bill’s misdeeds, as they were trotted out to deflect attention from Trump’s well-documented transgressions.

And now they’re being trotted out again. It’s fair to conclude that because of Broaddrick’s allegations, Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society. But we should remember that it’s not simply partisan tribalism that led liberals to doubt her. Discerning what might be true in a blizzard of lies isn’t easy, and the people who spread those lies don’t get to claim the moral high ground. We should err on the side of believing women, but sometimes, that belief will be used against us.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:42 am

Bill Clinton should have resigned: What he did to Monica Lewinsky was wrong, and he should have paid the price.
Updated by Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com
Vox
Nov 15, 2017, 9:15am EST

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Win McNamee/Getty Images

Many years ago, when I was a high school student making my first visit to Washington for a two-week summer camp for weird politics dorks, the dominant news story was then-President Bill Clinton’s August 17, 1998, admission that despite earlier denials, he “did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate.”

“In fact,” Clinton conceded, “it was wrong,” and it “constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”

In the days before the admission, there was considerable conviction in the chattering classes that the allegations, if true, would end up leading to Clinton’s resignation. That proved to be incorrect. Clinton was not shamed into resigning, and senior leaders of the Democratic Party did not pressure him into resigning.

At the time I, like most Americans, was glad to see Clinton prevail and regarded the whole sordid matter as primarily the fault of congressional Republicans’ excessive scandal-mongering. Now, looking back after the election of Donald Trump, the revelations of massive sexual harassment scandals at Fox News, the stories about Harvey Weinstein and others in the entertainment industry, and the stories about Roy Moore’s pursuit of sexual relationships with teenagers, I think we got it wrong. We argued about perjury and adultery and the meaning of the word “is.” Republicans prosecuted a bad case against a president they’d been investigating for years.

What we should have talked about was men abusing their social and economic power over younger and less powerful women.

The United States, and perhaps the broader English-speaking world, is currently undergoing a much-needed accountability moment in which each wave of stories emboldens more people to come forward and more institutions to rethink their practices. Looking back, the 1998 revelation that the president of the United States carried on an affair with an intern could have been that moment.

It was far from the most egregious case of workplace sexual misconduct in American history. But it was unusually high-profile, the facts were not in dispute, the perpetrator had a lot of nominal feminist ideological commitments, and political leaders who shared those commitments had the power to force him from office. Had he resigned in shame, we all might have made a collective cultural and political decision that a person caught leveraging power over women in inappropriate ways ought to be fired. Instead, we lost nearly two decades.

We didn’t even have the right argument

In the midst of the very same public statement in which he confessed the error, Clinton also mounted the defense that would see him through to victory — portraying the issue as fundamentally a private family matter rather than a topic of urgent public concern.

"I intend to reclaim my family life for my family," he said. "It's nobody's business but ours. Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.”

To this line of argument, Republicans offered what was fundamentally the wrong countercharge. They argued that in the effort to spare himself from the personal and marital embarrassment entailed by having the affair exposed, Clinton committed perjury when testifying about the matter in a deposition related to Paula Jones’s lawsuit against him.

What they should have argued was something simpler: A president who uses the power of the Oval Office to seduce a 20-something subordinate is morally bankrupt and contributing, in a meaningful way, to a serious social problem that disadvantages millions of women throughout their lives.


But by and large, they didn’t. So Clinton countered with the now-famous defense: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Ultimately, most Americans embraced the larger argument that perjury in a civil lawsuit unrelated to the president’s official duties did not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.

But looking back through today’s lens, this whole argument was miscast. The wrongdoing at issue was never just a private matter for the Clinton family; it was a high-profile exemplar of a widespread social problem: men’s abuse of workplace power for sexual gain. It was and is a striking example of a genre of misconduct that society has a strong interest in stamping out. That alone should have been enough to have pressured Clinton out of office.

The affair itself was seriously wrong

In Clinton’s defense, of course, the wrongdoing at hand was different in degree from some of the more recent cases in the news.



In her 2014 Vanity Fair article looking back on the scandal, Lewinsky wrote, “I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.”

As Clinton himself said, it was “not appropriate,” “wrong,” and a “critical lapse in judgment” — phrases that could easily have appeared in the introduction to a resignation message. Alternatively, one could easily imagine Democrats’ then-leaders in Congress Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle — joined perhaps by prominent Cabinet members such as Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno — repeating them back to Clinton in an Oval Office meeting the next day urging him to resign.

Instead, Democrats embraced the narrative that the wrongdoing, though real, was ultimately not serious — or at a minimum, not a matter of public concern.

This was a mistake. Clinton admitted he was wrong but stayed tellingly cagey as to what exactly was wrong about it, before implicitly sliding to the stance that the problem was marital infidelity. Marriages, of course, really are private and, as they say, complicated. By the broader issue of men in general abusing positions of power to obtain sexual gratification is most certainly not a trivial issue or a private matter. If word had gotten back to the White House of an unmarried Cabinet secretary having a clandestine affair with one of his interns, the administration might have taken action or (perhaps more likely) might have tried to cover it up. But they certainly wouldn’t have played dumb and pretended not to see that there was a problem.

“My boss took advantage of me,” Lewinsky writes in the same article, a piece in which she correctly argues that the ensuring debate ended up entirely slighting highly relevant issues including “the balance of power and gender inequality in politics and media.”

Had Clinton resigned in disgrace under pressure from his own party, that would have sent a strong, and useful, chilling signal to powerful men throughout the country.

Instead, the ultimate disposition of the case — impunity for the man who did something wrong, embarrassment and disgrace for the woman who didn’t — only served to confirm women’s worst fears about coming forward.

Democrats had a good alternative to Clinton

Politics ain’t beanbag, and oftentimes political actors have very good reason to stand by problematic actors. If New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez is convicted of the corruption charges for which he’s currently on trial (the jury is deliberating as I write), Republicans will argue that he ought to resign his seat. Democrats will strategically resist this, knowing that if Menendez steps down today, the vacancy will be filled by Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, while if he hangs on until mid-January, the state’s Democratic governor-elect, Phil Murphy, will fill it.

But in the case of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, there were no real policy stakes. Had Clinton left office, Al Gore would have become president and pursued essentially the same policy.

It’s not a coincidence that when The West Wing did its fictionalized version of the Clinton impeachment drama, it went out of its way to establish Vice President Hoynes as dislikable and ideologically unreliable (“the guy practically has corporate sponsorship,” Josh Lyman quips at one point before dismissing him as the “Tostitos vice president”), in order to make Bartlett’s effort to cling to office seem sensible and honorable.

Reality provided no such convenient plot contrivance. Gore was a centrist DLC Democrat just like Clinton, one who could easily have stepped into his shoes.

Had Gore become president, perhaps he would have run and won as an incumbent. Or perhaps, as in the real world, he would have lost. Either way, to admit that the Republicans had uncovered something genuinely scandalous would not have entailed making any crucial ideological or policy concessions. It would, instead, have required Democrats to look past knee-jerk partisanship. And, more importantly, it would have required them to acknowledge that what Clinton did was seriously wrong.

The time is right for a reevaluation

Over the past 18 months, the combination of an excellent profile by Katie J.M. Baker and a cynical stunt by the Trump campaign has prompted a reconsideration of Juanita Broaddrick’s allegation that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978.

This is an important conversation to have, due to both the serious nature of the charges and their interplay with the commonplace progressive idea that we should “believe women” when they come forward with allegations of sexual assault.

Hillary Clinton
@HillaryClinton
Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported. http://hrc.io/SexualAssault
6:09 PM - Nov 22, 2015
Campus sexual assault - The Office of Hillary Rodham Clinton
hillaryclinton.com


The Lewinsky case, however, is important precisely because the facts are not in dispute. Cases that involve unprovable, years-old allegations of assault pose an inherently difficult problem for almost any institution. But what’s striking about the charges leveled in recent months against Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Leon Wieseltier, and so many others is the extent to which misconduct was an “open secret” in the relevant communities.

They kept getting away with it not because nobody knew, but because the people who knew treated it just how the American public treated Clinton’s abusive behavior — as something that was maybe wrong but fundamentally unimportant compared to an important man’s work.

In Clinton’s case, of course, part of the endgame is that a few months after his acquittal on impeachment charges, his wife launched her first Senate campaign. Once Hillary Clinton threw her hat into the ring, she immediately became America’s presumptive first woman president, creating a kind of reputational vortex that shielded her husband’s behavior from scrutiny. Attacking Bill was, by extension, an attack on Hillary — an attack that most people in leading positions in American progressive politics had no desire to make.

“She is the war on women, as far as I’m concerned, because with every woman that she’s found out about—and she made it a point to find out who every woman had been that’s crossed his path over the years—she’s orchestrated a terror campaign against every one of these women, including me,” said Willey.

One of those women was Juanita Broaddrick, who says Hillary Clinton threatened her in person two weeks after she claimed Bill Clinton raped her.

Hillary’s aggressive attitude was not limited to those who accused her husband of sexual misconduct: other men received the benefit of the doubt from Hillary when she needed their support politically. When former Sen. Bob Packwood was accused of sexual harassment, Clinton told her friend Blair that she was “tired of all those whiney [whiny] women,” and that she needed Packwood on health care.

Hillary has also suggested that Bill’s problems with women are the fault of a woman: his mother.

Clinton attempted to explain to Lucinda Franks that Bill’s infidelity is rooted in his abused childhood, stating during an interview that he was abused and that “when a mother does what she does, it affects you forever.”

-- Hillary Clinton’s Long History of Targeting Women, by Brent Scher


But now that Hillary is out of electoral politics and has emerged as a bigger draw and more potent political force than her husband, there’s no excuse for Democrats not to look back on these events with more objectivity. Fifty-something leaders of organizations shouldn’t be carrying on affairs with interns who work for them regardless of whether the affair is in some sense consensual.

We can’t change the past, but we should be clear about it

Building a firm line around that kind of activity would give any organization a stronger, healthier culture. Our expectations for the conduct of the president of the United States should be high, and we should treat men’s abuse of authority over younger female subordinates for sexual purposes as a serious, endemic social problem, not a private marital issue between the boss and his wife.

My guess is that in the years to come, most left-of-center people born in the 1980s will say that if they’d been old enough to have a view on the matter back in 1998, they would have favored pressuring Clinton to resign. I hope that is the case, at least. Most young Democrats backed Bernie Sanders over Clinton in 2016 and are accustomed as a result to the idea of an emotionally and intellectually hostile attitude toward “the Clintons.”

Unfortunately for me, I’m a little too old to get away with claiming to have had no opinion on this at the time. My version of a sophisticated high schooler’s take on the matter was that the American media should get over its bourgeois morality hang-ups and be more like the French, where François Mitterrand’s wife and his longtime mistress grieved together at his funeral.

As a married 30-something father, I’ve come around to a less “worldly” view of infidelity. As a co-founder of Vox, I’d never in a million years want us to be the kind of place where men in senior roles can get away with the kind of misconduct that we’ve seen is all too common in our industry and in so many others.

Most of all, as a citizen I’ve come to see that the scandal was never about infidelity or perjury — or at least, it shouldn’t have been. It was about power in the workplace and its use. The policy case that Democrats needed Clinton in office was weak, and the message that driving him from office would have sent would have been profound and welcome. That this view was not commonplace at the time shows that we did not, as a society, give the most important part of the story the weight it deserved.

As the current accountability moment grows, we ought to recognize and admit that we had a chance to do this almost 20 years ago — potentially sparing countless young women a wide range of unpleasant and discriminatory experiences, or at a minimum reducing their frequency and severity. And we blew it.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:50 am

Transcript of Interview With Kathleen Willey [Ed Bradley, CBS 60 Minutes]
National Politics
The New York Times
March 16, 1998

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Following is an interview conducted with Kathleen Willey by correspondent Ed Bradley on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" and broadcast on March 15, as transcribed by the Federal Documents Clearing House:

BRADLEY: The significance of Kathleen Willey's account of her incident with President Clinton is that -- if true -- it is more than just a case of inappropriate behavior.

It leaves the president wide open to charges of perjury -- an impeachable offense -- that he lied repeatedly when he testified under oath in the Paul Jones case about his encounter with Kathleen Willey.

In addition, her story could also shed light on another issue being looked at by the special prosecutor: Did the White House seek to obstruct justice -- which is also a crime -- by pressuring Willey and others to alter her story?

Kathleen Willey is 51-years-old and lives in Richmond, Virginia. A loyal democrat, she campaigned hard for Bill Clinton in 1992.

Along with her late husband Ed, she volunteered her time and contributed thousands of dollars to Mr. Clinton's bid for the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

In your mind back then, what stood out for you about Bill Clinton?

WILLEY: His sincerity.

I -- liked the fact that -- he was my age -- our age. I -- liked the things that he believed in. He was a contemporary of mine.

BRADLEY: How -- would you characterize at that time, your relationship with the president?

WILLEY: We were friends.

We had had the occasion to speak with him on election night. He had called us right after the election -- called me, just to thank us for our help. I would say good friends.

BRADLEY: Once Bill Clinton became president, Kathleen Willey continued her volunteer work at the White House, in the correspondence office, where she helped respond to the huge volume of mail coming in for the new president.

In this job, did you have much interaction with the president?

WILLEY: At that time? No.

BRADLEY: She says all that changed right after she saw the president, one day, on the White House lawn, and then got a call from the president's scheduler, Nancy Hernreich.

WILLEY: I saw the president at the White House Easter Egg roll, where I was helping out, and he asked where I was.

And, when I got home that afternoon, there was a phone call from -- from Nancy Hernreich, asking me if I would come up and meet with her, that the president had an interest in my working someplace else other than correspondence.

BRADLEY: Kathleen Willey was given a job in the White House social office, located in the East wing, near the Oval office.

Did you see the president more often in this job than you did in the -- the other one?

WILLEY: Yes.

I was in the East Wing at that point, yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: But Kathleen Willey's life was about to fall apart. Her husband, a lawyer, was in deep trouble.

He was under investigation for embezzling money from his clients, and the Willey family's finances were in a shambles. Kathleen Willey told her husband she needed to do something about it, and that she was going to see her "good friend," President Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLEY: And I told him that I was going to go to Washington and ask the president for a full-time paying job.

BRADLEY: And -- and you felt comfortable doing that?

WILLEY: Yeah.

Absolutely.

BRADLEY: What you are about to hear is what Kathleen Willey says happened behind closed doors that day, between her and the President of the United States, inside the Oval office.

So, let me ask you to take me through it, step by step, what happened when you went into the Oval office?

WILLEY: I went in, and the president was at his desk, and I sat down in the chair across from him, and I obviously looked very distraught.

He asked me what was wrong. I told him I had a really serious problem and that I needed his help. And, he said, "Would you like a cup of coffee?" And I said, "Yes, I would."

So he -- he walked to another -- a door on the other side of the Oval office, which led into a hallway, into his small galley kitchen, and there was a -- a steward in there, I remember.

And the president took a -- a coffee cup down out of the pantry, and -- a Starbucks coffee cup, I remember -- and, he poured me a cup of coffee, poured himself a cup of coffee, and we started walking back down the hall towards the Oval office and he said, "why don't you come in here into my study? We can talk better in here."

And, I stood and leaned -- I was leaning against the door jam. He was in the office.

We were standing facing each other, and I told him what had happened. I -- I didn't give him all the details. I just told him that my husband was in financial difficulty, and that things were at a crisis point, and that my volunteer -- volunteer days were over, that -- that I needed a -- a regular paying job, and could he help me?

BRADLEY: And, did he seem sympathetic? Did he say...

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: ... he could help you?

WILLEY: Yeah, well, he did seem sympathetic.

He -- he -- he was listening. I -- I had the feeling that he was somehow distracted when I was talking to him, but -- but he was not really -- really listening, but I know that he did. I know he knows how distraught I was and how upset I was, because I -- I was -- I was very worried. I was worried about my husband, and -- and -- and what as going to happen.

BRADLEY: And what happened next?

WILLEY: Well, he -- he said he would do everything that he could to -- to -- to help, and I turned around and -- out of the -- out of the office, and he followed me to -- I thought he was going to open the door to the -- to the Oval office, and right as we got to the door, he stopped and he gave me a big hug and said that he was very sorry that this was happening to me.

And -- I had -- had no problem with that, because when I saw -- every time I saw him, he would hug me.

He use -- just does that, is like that.

And, I remember I had -- still had this coffee cup in my hand, and it was kind of in between us, and I didn't want it to spill on him or me, and -- and it just was this -- it was just very strange. And he -- he took the coffee cup out of my hand and he put it on a bookshelf, and -- and -- he -- this hug lasted a little longer than I thought necessary, but at the same time -- I mean, I was not concerned about it. And then he -- then he -- and then he kissed me on -- on my mouth, and -- and pulled me closer to him. And -- I remember thinking -- I just remember thinking, "what in the world is he doing?" I -- it -- I just thought, "what is he doing?" And, I -- I pushed back away from him, and -- he -- he -- he -- he -- he's a big man.

And he -- he had his arms -- they were tight around me, and he -- he -- he touched me.

BRADLEY: Touched you how?

WILLEY: Well, he -- he -- he touched my breasts with his hand, and, I -- I -- I -- I was -- I -- I was just startled.

I was -- I was just...

BRADLEY: This -- this wasn't an accidental grazing touch?

WILLEY: No.

And -- then he -- whispered -- he -- he -- said in -- in my ears that, "I -- I've wanted to do this ever since I laid eyes on you." And -- I remember -- I remember saying to him, "aren't you afraid that somebody's going to walk in here?" The -- and, he said -- he said, "no. No, I'm -- no, I'm not." And -- and then -- and -- and then he took my hand, and he -- and he put it on him. And, that's when I pushed away from him and -- and decided it was time to get out of there.

BRADLEY: When you say he took your hand...

WILLEY: Right.

BRADLEY: ... and put it on him...

WILLEY: Hum-hum.

BRADLEY: Where on him?

WILLEY: On -- on his genitals.

BRADLEY: Was he a -- aroused?

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: He was.

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: What were you thinking?

WILLEY: Well, I -- I was -- there was -- I -- there were all kinds of things going through my mind.

I -- I think as -- when I think back on it, it was kind of like I was watching it in slow motion, and -- and thinking surely this is not happening. And, at the same time, I -- I wanted to -- I thought, "well, maybe I ought to just give him a good slap across the face." And then I thought, "well, I don't think you can slap the President of the United States like that." And -- and I just decided it was just time to get out of there.

BRADLEY: Did you say anything to him, or was there anything about your behavior that invited an advance?

WILLEY: I -- I -- I have gone over this so many times, so very many times, because I think that your natural instinct is to wonder, "Did I bring this on? Did I send a -- a -- the wrong signal?" The only signals that I was sending that day, was that I was very upset, very distraught, and I needed to help my husband.

BRADLEY: Did you feel intimidated?

WILLEY: I didn't feel intimidated.

I just felt overpowered.

BRADLEY: Did you ever say, "stop.

No. Get away from me?"

WILLEY: I just -- I -- I pushed him away.

I pushed him away, and -- and I said, "I think I -- I'd better go."

BRADLEY: And what did he say?

WILLEY: He -- he -- he kept looking at his watch, 'cause he told me that he had a meeting, and he said -- he said -- that he could -- he said they could wait.

And I said, "Well..." I said, "well, I'm leaving."

BRADLEY: When you walked out of there, what -- what were you thinking?

WILLEY: I just could not believe that that had happened in that office.

I -- I just could not believe -- the recklessness of that act.

BRADLEY: Recklessness? What do you mean "recklessness"?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: The FBI is now investigating charges that this man -- Nathan Landow, a major Democratic Party contributor with close ties to the White House, tried to pressure Kathleen Willey to keep her story secret.

60 Minutes has learned that this past week, the grand jury heard testimony from a key witness who said Landow had done just that. But his story is that he hardly knew her.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Nate Landow -- you -- you know him?

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: Would it be fair to say that this is someone you'd seen more than a couple of times? This wasn't just a casual acquaintance?

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: You had discussed, with Nate Landow, the incident that took place in the White -- in the White House...

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: ...in the Oval office?

WILLEY: Extensively, yes.

BRADLEY: It's been reported that he has brought pressure on you, not to talk about it publicly.

Is that true?

WILLEY: I can't say at this point, because it's a -- all that's going on.

BRADLEY: All of these ongoing investigations.

WILLEY: Investigations, yes.

BRADLEY: Willey's lawyer advised her not to say any more about Landow; that's probably because Willey is cooperating with Kenneth Starr, who may not want to reveal his hand before Landow is called to testify before the grand jury.

Landow declined our request for an interview and, as we said, he says they hardly knew each other, and that he'd never had a detailed conversation with her about any of her relationships.

While Kathleen Willey did not want to talk about Nathan Landow, she did tell us other people close to the president have tried to influence her.

Have you ever been pressured?

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: How? Tell me about it.

WILLEY: I felt pressured by Mr. Bennett.

BRADLEY: The president's attorney?

WILLEY: Yes.

We -- we were together at some point before our court hearing, and he mentioned that he had just left -- he had just been at the White House, and -- and the -- the president asked for me and told him just -- that he just thought the world of me. And, he said, "now, this -- this was not sexual harassment, was it?" And, I didn't answer him.

And he said, "well -- and it wasn't -- not -- it wasn't -- it -- it wasn't unwelcome, was it?" And I said to him, "it was unwelcome and unexpected."

BRADLEY: Did you feel intimidated by Bennett?

WILLEY: I -- I felt pressured.

Especially when he threw in the -- the business about, "well, the president just feel -- thinks the world of you," and it -- it -- I found that a little laughable, though.

BRADLEY: Why?

WILLEY: Well, because if the president thought the world of me, why did he do what he did?

BRADLEY: Willey says she did not find it laughable when, she says, Bennett suggested she find herself a criminal lawyer.

WILLEY: It -- the insinuation to me was that Mr. Bennett was implying that I was going to face some kind of a criminal charge for perjury or -- or something else, and that I would need an inside dilute -- an inside Washington criminal lawyer, and -- and I -- I didn't, and I don't.

BRADLEY: Bob Bennett says that isn't so and insists that, if Willey says that, she is lying.

For her part, Willey says if there are any perjury charges to be filed, they should be directed at the president.

He said under oath, that the meeting stands out in his mind because you were so distraught, you were so...

WILLEY: Right.

BRADLEY: ... emotional that day, and that he may have kissed you on the forehead in a consoling way...

WILLEY: Right, right.

BRADLEY: ... but it was not a sexual advance.

If the president said that under oath, is he lying.

WILLEY: Yes.

BRADLEY: He is lying?

WILLEY: Yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: When the story first emerged last summer, the president's lawyer, Bob Bennett, said that Clinton had no specific recollection of ever meeting Willey in the Oval office. The president's lawyer also said then, that it was preposterous to suggest that Clinton made a sexual advance toward Willey.

But in a sworn deposition two months ago, the president contradicted his own lawyer, saying he remembered, "very well," an Oval office meeting with Kathleen Willey.

Still, Clinton denied emphatically any sexual encounter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

What do you make of the conflict? I mean, there's a clear contradiction there.

WILLEY: I know.

BRADLEY: What do you make of that?

WILLEY: I -- I think that he probably realized that, completely disavowing any meeting was -- was just ludicrous.

When I came out of the Oval office, the first person I saw was -- was Lloyd Benson, and it has since been reported that, yes, indeed, he was there for a 3:00 meeting. I mean, these things can be documented.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: Kathleen Willey says looking back on it now, the incident that day in 1993, was not the first time the President had shown an unusual interest in her.

She remembers a day in 1992, when then Governor Clinton made a campaign trip to Richmond, Virginia, where Willey was volunteering to help get him elected.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLEY: I was at the airport to welcome him.

And, while I was out there meeting him, he -- he spotted me, and -- and we waved because we had -- I had seen him before at previous fund-raisers, and he sent someone over to get my telephone number.

BRADLEY: Did he ever use it?

WILLEY: He called me when -- when he got to Williamsburg, and when I got home he called me, and he asked me if -- if I could -- he -- he had lost his voice, and he was worried about that for the -- for the next -- for the -- the debate the next evening.

And he asked me how far I was from Williamsburg, and I told him. And I, kiddingly, told him -- I just jokingly said, "it sounds like you need some chicken soup." And, he said, "well, would you bring me some?" And I said -- I -- I don't really think I answered him because I thought he was just... being facetious.

And then he told me that he was surrounded by Secret Service agents, and that he would -- he would try to get rid of them, and -- if I would come down. And he said he would call me back later, which he did. And I declined to go.

BRADLEY: You declined to go because...

WILLEY: Because my instincts told me he wasn't interested in chicken soup.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: In an effort to raise questions about Kathleen Willey's credibility, the president's lawyers obtained a sworn affidavit from a woman who used to be one of Willey's closest friends.

Her name is Julie Steele. And she initially confirmed Kathleen Willey's story, saying that Willey went to Julie Steele's house on the night of the incident, with president Clinton; and then Willey told her what had happened. But in that affidavit, Steele now maintains that she lied at Willey's request.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Why would she say that?

WILLEY: My own personal belief is that she was pressured.

I think that in -- I think that the White House wanted to try to discredit me, and they found a pawn in her.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: The affidavit Steele signed at the request of the White House lawyers said Steele had, quote, "never heard any allegations of improper conduct by President Clinton" until Willey asked her to lie, but Steele told Newsweek magazine that Willey had told her of an incident between Willey and the president.

And there's yet another woman in this story -- Linda Tripp; that's the same Linda Tripp, who secretly tape-recorded Monica Lewinsky, talking about an affair Lewinsky claimed she had with President Clinton.

What does Linda Tripp have to do with Kathleen Willey?

They worked together at the White House, and Tripp was there when Willey emerged from the president's office that day, in 1993.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Did you say anything to her?

WILLEY: I remember saying to her -- I -- saying, "you are just not going to believe this." And we went outside, and I told her what had happened.

BRADLEY: You say that you were angry, you were upset, you were distraught.

Yet, she says you were joyful.

WILLEY: I -- I think probably -- in defense of her -- I think -- when I am in -- if I get into a very tense -- tense situation, I try to -- I fall back on my sense of humor.

I think when I said, "you are not going to believe this one," maybe she took that as joyful.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: A few months later, Kathleen Willey, shown here in a White House photograph with the president, had received a part-time paying job, and Linda Tripp was moved from the White House to the Pentagon.

According to Willey, Linda Tripp was furious.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLEY: She said, "Don't you think for one minute that I don't know what's going on around here." And I said, "I don't know what you mean." And -- and she said, "I know you're here because the president wants you here.

And -- and they want me out of here because I -- because I know what happened." And I said, "that's just absolutely, positively, not true."

She was very angry.

Very upset. Very bitter. And she -- she ended the conversation by saying, "I'm going to get you, and every place -- everyone else in this place, before this is all over."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRADLEY: Linda Tripp, through her lawyer, denies saying she was out to get anyone.

But somehow Willey's name came to the attention of Paula Jones's lawyers, and Willey -- who says she intended to take her story to the grave -- was ordered by a judge to give her deposition.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

You -- you were a reluctant witness.

You didn't want your story to go public?

WILLEY: No.

BRADLEY: Why not?

WILLEY: I just knew that -- it was just a bad story.

It was just horrible behavior on the part of the president. And I did not think it was my place to make it public knowledge.

BRADLEY: You didn't walk away.

You didn't lodge a complaint anywhere.

WILLEY: No.

That's right. That was the choice I made.

BRADLEY: Because?

WILLEY: That was the -- the choice that I thought was the best one.

I -- I was -- I was embarrassed for the president's behavior. And, I saw no benefit whatsoever, in filing a compliant, or -- or -- or -- I mean, who do you file a complaint with anyway, when it's the president? Where do you go?

BRADLEY: Then, why did she decide now to go public?

WILLEY: I just think that it's time to tell this story.

I think that there -- too many lies are being told. Too many lives are being ruined. And, I -- I think it's time for the truth to come out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:55 am

Game Change Author Suspended From MSNBC Over Sexual Assault Allegations
by Ben Mathis-Lilley
October 26, 2017 11:44 AM

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Image
Mark Halperin in Washington on May 3.
Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Showtime


MSNBC has suspended best-selling author and political pundit Mark Halperin after a CNN report in which five women accused him of sexual harassment and assault:

"We find the story and the allegations very troubling. Mark Halperin is leaving his role as a contributor until the questions around his past conduct are fully understood."


Oliver Darcy
@oliverdarcy
Replying to @oliverdarcy
NEW: Halperin leaving his role as NBC analyst, per network statement
4:17 AM - Oct 26, 2017


The allegations in CNN’s piece describe a repeated pattern of inappropriate and aggressive sexual behavior in workplace settings:

The stories of harassment shared with CNN range in nature from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one’s breasts against her will. Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed. Halperin denies grabbing a woman’s breasts and pressing his genitals against the three women.


Emily Miller of One America News Network said on Twitter after CNN’s piece was published that she was not one of CNN’s sources but that Halperin also “attacked” her when she worked with him at ABC.

Earlier this week, longtime New Republic editor and writer Leon Wieseltier admitted to “offenses against some of my colleagues in the past” after the backers of a new magazine he was set to edit canceled the project after learning about sexual harassment allegations against him. News also broke that the United Talent Agency has dropped Bill O’Reilly as a client after a report that he’d paid a staggering $32 million to settle one of several known sexual harassment suits against him. New accusations also continue to emerge against Harvey Weinstein, the powerful movie producer who was fired from his own company earlier this month after a New York Times report detailed numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him. Donald Trump remains president.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:59 am

Top NPR News Executive Mike Oreskes Resigns Amid Allegations Of Sexual Harassment
Heard on All Things Considered
November 1, 20174:53 PM ET

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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with NPR CEO Jarl Mohn about how NPR has handled allegations of sexual harassment against NPR's Senior Vice President for News Michael Oreskes, who resigned Wednesday.

Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

And we are reporting on news from inside the NPR newsroom today. Our top editor, NPR Senior Vice President of News Mike Oreskes, has resigned following accusations of sexual harassment. Three women have filed complaints, one a current NPR reporter, the other two alleging harassment from two decades ago when Oreskes was at The New York Times. [EDITOR'S NOTE on Nov. 8: Since this interview was broadcast, NPR CEO Jarl Mohn has revealed that another woman who works at NPR filed a complaint against Michael Oreskes in the fall of 2015, and that Oreskes was disciplined “for both incidents.” There is more about that revelation here .] Mike put out a statement this afternoon saying, quote, "I am deeply sorry to the people I hurt. My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility," end quote. NPR CEO Jarl Mohn says he asked for Oreskes' resignation this morning, and Jarl joins me now in the studio. Hi there.

JARL MOHN: Hi, Mary Louise.

KELLY: When did you first learn of an allegation of sexual harassment in connection with Mike Oreskes?

MOHN: Well, the first situation was the one you just referred to, was the - I guess in the fall of '15.

KELLY: So just to be clear, nothing had come to your attention, no allegations at the point when you hired him in the spring of 2015.

MOHN: None, none.

KELLY: You knew nothing.

MOHN: None.

KELLY: There have been a lot of questions about the timeline of when NPR knew what. So what I'd love to do is start there and just tick through my understanding of events as they unfolded, and please jump in and stop me if there's something...

MOHN: Sure.

KELLY: ...That doesn't square with events as you understand them. So in 2015, NPR staffer Rebecca Hersher alleged that Oreskes made her deeply uncomfortable at a three-hour dinner and that he asked personal and invasive questions. She complained, and Oreskes was reprimanded that same year, 2015, correct?

MOHN: That's correct.

KELLY: A year later, October 2016, NPR learned about a woman complaining of harassment by Oreskes at The New York Times nearly two decades ago. This complaint involved physical contact. She says he kissed her. He forced his tongue into her mouth, correct?

MOHN: Well, that's what we heard. And that would have been, I think, in the fall of '16, yes.

KELLY: Fall of '16. And then last month, a second woman complained of Oreskes' behavior during his time at The New York Times, a similar complaint that he kissed her...

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: ...Without being - having been invited to do so.

MOHN: Correct.

KELLY: If that is the sequence, if you knew of these multiple allegations, did it cross your mind that leaving Mike in his job might put other women, might put our colleagues at risk?

MOHN: Yes. Well, let's look at those three examples that you gave, Mary Louise. The first, which occurred in the fall of '15 - that was an internal situation that happened here. It was a terrible situation. I condemn his actions. They were unacceptable. They're deplorable. We investigated. We did it immediately. We involved our HR department. We involved our general counsel. We sat with Mike. We confronted him about that situation and put him on notice that this could not occur. My understanding is - and again, it was reported here. David Folkenflik reported yesterday that that employee felt that we satisfactorily addressed that issue. And there's a whole range - I mean, there's a whole range of what is unacceptable behavior. This was...

KELLY: But that issue you knew about...

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: ...When a year later a second allegation came in.

MOHN: You're referring to The New York Times, yes.

KELLY: The New York Times - from his tenure at The New York Times.

MOHN: Again, the important distinction here is, first, that did not happen at NPR. It was not an NPR employee. It was at The New York Times, and it occurred 20 years ago. Had that happened at NPR, we would have had a very different reaction to it. It happened 20 years earlier. One of the things we wanted to do as a result of that is make sure that that did not happen here. And I will tell you up to this moment sitting here and talking with you, Mary Louise, I'm not aware of anything that he's done or that happened that bears any resemblance to those issues that occurred 20 years ago while he was at The New York Times.

KELLY: Our media correspondent David Folkenflik has talked to five more women since last night on top of the three cases that we've already discussed, five more women alleging inappropriate conduct by Oreskes over a period of years. Has any other claim reached your office?

MOHN: I would say as a result of the published reports within the past 24 hours, we have heard of one other that has surfaced. I would say when the second New York Times story from...

KELLY: The second woman...

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: ...Who dealt with Oreskes in his time at The Times.

MOHN: We felt very strongly that we needed to - and there had been rumors circulating around the building here about his behavior - rumors and gossip. We can't act on that. We have to act on facts. I put out an email. I put out a memo, a statement asking for anyone that has experienced or witnessed any of this behavior to please come forward. We laid out a whole array of ways that they could contact us. There must have been seven or eight ways in. Over that two-week period of time, we got no complaints. No one stepped forward. Unfortunately, it took the published reports to have something surface.

KELLY: But when you say it took published reports for this to surface, we're a news organization.

MOHN: Yeah.

KELLY: There's a few hundred reporters out there. Why are we getting scooped by The Washington Post on this?

MOHN: Why are we - are you - you're talking about The New York Times story? When we, you know...

KELLY: I'm talking about The Washington Post story quoting two New York Times woman. And I'll add to that. I learned that Mike Oreskes had resigned when I checked my phone in the line in the NPR canteen today. And the way I learned about it was via an AP news alert - Associated Press. Why did they know and we didn't?

MOHN: Well, because that's not from us. We did not release it. We had a clear timeline of how we were going to release this information. While we were in our meeting planning how we were going to release that information, the AP got the story. I suspect Mike released his statement to the AP. It was not from us.

KELLY: You said you can't act on rumors and gossip. But were you concerned that these accusations were creating a toxic environment in the newsroom?

MOHN: Absolutely, of course. As bad as...

KELLY: Should that not prompt action then?

MOHN: Well, it did, ultimately. We informally were asking questions. Clearly we didn't do everything we could because it didn't result in the right answer. But to suggest we were not doing anything or we were not acting appropriately is not - or that we were doing nothing is false.

KELLY: Let me push you again then on what did push you to act and put Mike on leave as of last night and then ask for his resignation this morning. The Washington Post published his story. He was put on leave within a couple of hours. Was that because new information came to light, came to you?

MOHN: Yes, yes.

KELLY: But you can't elaborate on what that is.

MOHN: I cannot.

KELLY: A new case, a new allegation?

MOHN: New case.

KELLY: Internal?

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: Current employee?

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: May I ask the severity of the allegation?

MOHN: Again, I hate...

KELLY: I know, but you've talked about a range, and there's a big range and it matters.

MOHN: I understand, but I'm going to be lambasted for any specificity here. And again, I want to get to the confidentiality of the complaint. I would say on this - on the range of, you know, Harvey Weinstein being on one extreme and the other internal issue that - the complaint that you referred to earlier...

KELLY: Conversation that made a woman feel uncomfortable.

MOHN: Yes. I would say it was clearly in that range.

KELLY: In the uncomfortable conversation range.

MOHN: Yes, yes.

KELLY: Jarl Mohn, our boss, NPR's CEO, talking about the resignation today of our top editor, Mike Oreskes, following accusations of sexual harassment. Jarl, thank you.

MOHN: Thank you, Mary Louise.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:04 am

Louis C.K. on Sexual Misconduct Allegations: “These Stories Are True”
by Sam Adams
The-21st-Annual-Webby-Awards--Inside


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Image
C.K. in May.
Bennett Raglin/Getty Images


In response to a New York Times article alleging that Louis C.K. exposed himself to and masturbated in front of several unwilling women, C.K. has issued a statement.

I want to address the stories told to the New York Times by five women named Abby, Rebecca, Dana, Julia who felt able to name themselves and one who did not.

These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.

I have been remorseful of my actions. And I’ve tried to learn from them. And run from them. Now I’m aware of the extent of the impact of my actions. I learned yesterday the extent to which I left these women feeling badly about themselves and cautious around other men who would never have put them in that position.

I also took advantage of the fact that I was widely admired in their community, which disabled them from sharing their story and brought hardship to them when they tried because people who look up to me didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t think that I was doing any of that because my position allowed me not to think about it.

There is nothing about this that I forgive myself for. And I have to reconcile it with who I am. Which is nothing compared to the task I left them with.

I wish I had reacted to their admiration of me by being a good example to them as a man and given them some guidance as a comedian, including because I admired their work.

The hardest regret to live with is what you’ve done to hurt someone else. And I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them. I’d be remiss to exclude the hurt that I brought on people who I work with and have worked with and who[se] professional and personal lives have been impacted by all of this, including projects currently in production: the cast and crew of Better Things, Baskets, One Mississippi and I Love You Daddy. I deeply regret that this has brought negative attention to my manager Dave Becky who only tried to mediate a situation that I caused. I’ve brought anguish and hardship to the people at FX who have given me so much[,] The Orchard who took a chance on my movie[,] and every other entity that has bet on me through the years.

I’ve brought pain to my family and friends, my children and their mother.

I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.

Thank you for reading.
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Re: Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenbe

Postby admin » Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:15 am

Barbara Boxer recounts harassment on Capitol Hill: ‘The entire audience started laughing’
by Avery Anapol
11/15/17 03:35 PM EST

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Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Wednesday shared her experience with sexual harassment on Capitol Hill, saying it was a "shaming" and "belittling" incident.

Boxer said on MSNBC that when she was a member of the House in the 1980s, she was humiliated by inappropriate comments from her colleagues at a hearing after she presented a bill.

"One of my colleagues said after I spoke, 'I want to associate myself with the comments of the congresswoman from California,’ which is exactly the right thing to say," Boxer said.

"But then he went on and said, 'In fact, I want to associate with the congresswoman from California,' at which point the entire audience started laughing."

The committee chairman added, “I want to associate with her, too," Boxer recalled. She said that she "turned bright red."


Boxer joined a number of current and former lawmakers speaking out this week about their experiences with sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. Several lawmakers introduced a bill Wednesday that would overhaul congressional sexual harassment policies.

“This doesn’t compare to some of the dreadful stories we’re hearing,” Boxer said of her experience, comparing it to stories of physical attacks.

“But it was so humiliating and disempowering, and luckily I’m a strong person.”
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