Predators Who Get a Pass
Liberal hypocrites shield their own
THE departure of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly over allegations of inappropriate conduct has, predictably, caused a certain amount of exultation from liberal and left-leaning stars and commentators.
Cher tweeted that “O’Reilly and Donald Trump have sexually harassed women 4 years” without providing any concrete examples to back up this claim. Rosie O’Donnell followed suit, calling Trump and O’Reilly “sexual predators of a feather.” (She also failed to expand on this extreme accusation.) And Stephen King said Trump and O’Reilly are both “members of the odious boys’ club where members feel they can abuse and humiliate women at will.” Again, he did not produce a shred of evidence.
The question is, where were these sanctimonious voices when members of their own club were accused of what some might judge to be far more inappropriate behavior than the King of Cable was? And why have they previously been content to see others who have been accused of alleged crimes and misdemeanors potentially elevated to positions of great authority, or watched them receive the most prestigious of awards?
Let’s start with Bill Clinton. The former president has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women (one, Juanita Broaddrick has claimed he raped her), yet this apparently posed no problem for liberals last year. They would’ve been happy for the politico to reenter the White House as “first gentleman,” so his long-suffering wife could be president.
What about Roman Polanski? He was named Best Director at the 2002 Oscars despite having fled the US to Europe in 1978 after being arrested and charged with engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Harrison Ford accepted the Oscar for Polanski and then presented it to him at the Deauville Film Festival in France five months later in a public ceremony.
Woody Allen has a long and deeply uncomfortable history of allegations against him after his exwife, Mia Farrow, claimed he sexually abused their adopted daughter. But, as with Polanski, the liberal establishment was prepared to repeatedly overlook these claims, even giving Allen the Best Screenplay Oscar in 2012 for his film Midnight in Paris.
To this list we should add The New York Times, which aggressively pushed its investigation of O’Reilly and on Wednesday exulted in, as its former media editor tweeted, claiming his “scalp.” Yet the Times’ top dog is dogged by shocking allegations of discrimination and covering up the sexual abuse of children.
A civil lawsuit was launched last year against the paper’s CEO, British former BBC chief Mark Thompson, by two New York Times employees, Ernestine Grant and her colleague Marjorie Walker. They accused their employer of “engaging in deplorable discrimination that has remained largely off the record.”
Papers submitted on their behalf by New York law firm Wigdor LLP explain: “Beginning with the appointment of Defendant Mark Thompson to Chief Executive Officer (‘CEO’) in 2012, the workplace at the Times has become an environment rife with discrimination based on age, race, and gender.”
They go on: “Thompson was in- volved in a highly publicized BBC scandal regarding a decision to bury an exposé of child sex abuse allegedly committed by one the BBC’s most well-known personalities, Jimmy Savile. Not only was Mr. Thompson seemingly involved in attempting to conceal this important piece of journalism from the public, but he also later lied about his role in the affair, which was demonstrated through an irrefutable recording.”
This recording is an October 2012 interview by London Times reporter Ben Webster. The recording, which Heat Street has heard, was broadcast on UK Web site Guido Fawkes in March 2013 and circulated widely.
Interestingly, an interview Thompson gave to the BBC on Sept. 11, 2016 — three weeks after the court papers were filed — dredged up this issue again.
Presenter Andrew Marr asked Thompson about his knowledge of the Savile scandal. And Thompson didn’t deny he was told informally about the existence of the Savile investigation in 2011 by his BBC colleague Helen Boaden.
So what does the liberal establishment have to say about the Times’ chief having been involved (allegedly) in covering up child abuse? It would be fascinating to hear, but I won’t hold my breath.