Occupy and BLM Were Symptoms Of A Broken System Too

theglobeandmail |  The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn't get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next? The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall, and also a lot of asteroids.

If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers? It won't be the Bad Feminists like me. We are acceptable neither to Right nor to Left. In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.

The UBC Accountable letter is also a symptom – a symptom of the failure of the University of British Columbia and its flawed process. This should have been a matter addressed by Canadian Civil Liberties or B.C. Civil Liberties. Maybe these organizations will now put up their hands. Since the letter has now become a censorship issue – with calls being made to erase the site and the many thoughtful words of its writers – perhaps PEN Canada, PEN International, CJFE and Index on Censorship may also have a view.

The letter said from the beginning that UBC failed accused and complainants both. I would add that it failed the taxpaying public, who fund UBC to the tune of $600-million a year. We would like to know how our money was spent in this instance. Donors to UBC – and it receives billions of dollars in private donations – also have a right to know.

In this whole affair, writers have been set against one another, especially since the letter was distorted by its attackers and vilified as a War on Women. But at this time, I call upon all – both the Good Feminists and the Bad Feminists like me – to drop their unproductive squabbling, join forces and direct the spotlight where it should have been all along – at UBC. Two of the ancillary complainants have now spoken out against UBC's process in this affair. For that, they should be thanked.

Once UBC has begun an independent inquiry into its own actions – such as the one conducted recently at Wilfrid Laurier University – and has pledged to make that inquiry public, the UBC Accountable site will have served its purpose. That purpose was never to squash women. Why have accountability and transparency been framed as antithetical to women's rights?

A war among women, as opposed to a war on women, is always pleasing to those who do not wish women well. This is a very important moment. I hope it will not be squandered.

Fifty Shades of Gov. Smackahoe Greitens...,

LATimes  |  The Missouri political establishment seemed surprised when the story broke.

In an audio recording broadcast Wednesday by KMOV-TV in St. Louis, a hairstylist told her ex-husband that she’d had an affair in 2015 with Eric Greitens — then philanthropist, now governor — and that he had tied her to home exercise equipment, taken a photo of her naked and threatened to publicly release it if she ever told anyone about him. She said Greitens later apologized and said he’d deleted the photo.

Greitens, 43, who has been married since 2011, acknowledged having an affair but denied blackmailing or abusing the woman.

The news raced across the internet and through the state’s halls of power. Several of Greitens’ fellow Republicans expressed serious concern about the allegations and urged the governor to be honest about his conduct; some Democrats said he should resign. St. Louis Circuit Atty. Kimberly Gardner said Thursday that she was launching an investigation.

But maybe the biggest surprise is how long it took for the story to go public.

Behind the scenes, many state political figures and journalists had been aware of rumors about Greitens’ affair with the woman, some of them for months and even more than a year.

“This is the worst-kept secret in the world,” said St. Louis attorney Albert S. Watkins. He represents the woman’s ex-husband, who made and released the recording.

"National media outlets, local media, local newspapers … political operatives calling,” Watkins said. “It became clear that this was a story that was going to get out at some point.”

Shitty Media Men

thecut |  In October, I created a Google spreadsheet called “Shitty Media Men” that collected a range of rumors and allegations of sexual misconduct, much of it violent, by men in magazines and publishing. The anonymous, crowdsourced document was a first attempt at solving what has seemed like an intractable problem: how women can protect ourselves from sexual harassment and assault.

One long-standing partial remedy that women have developed is the whisper network, informal alliances that pass on open secrets and warn women away from serial assaulters. Many of these networks have been invaluable in protecting their members. Still, whisper networks are social alliances, and as such, they’re unreliable. They can be elitist, or just insular. As Jenna Wortham pointed out in The New York Times Magazine, they are also prone to exclude women of color. Fundamentally, a whisper network consists of private conversations, and the document that I created was meant to be private as well. It was active for only a few hours, during which it spread much further and much faster than I ever anticipated, and in the end, the once-private document was made public — first when its existence was revealed in a BuzzFeed article by Doree Shafrir, then when the document itself was posted on Reddit.

A slew of think pieces ensued, with commentators alternately condemning the document as reckless, malicious, or puritanically anti-sex. Many called the document irresponsible, emphasizing that since it was anonymous, false accusations could be added without consequence. Others said that it ignored established channels in favor of what they thought was vigilantism and that they felt uncomfortable that it contained allegations both of violent assaults and inappropriate messages. Still other people just saw it as catty and mean, something like the “Burn Book” from Mean Girls. Because the document circulated among writers and journalists, many of the people assigned to write about it had received it from friends. Some faced the difficult experience of seeing other, male friends named. Many commentators expressed sympathy with the aims of the document — women warning women, trying to help one another — but thought that its technique was too radical. They objected to the anonymity, or to the digital format, or to writing these allegations down at all. Eventually, some media companies conducted investigations into employees who appeared on the spreadsheet; some of those men left their jobs or were fired.

None of this was what I thought was going to happen. In the beginning, I only wanted to create a place for women to share their stories of harassment and assault without being needlessly discredited or judged. The hope was to create an alternate avenue to report this kind of behavior and warn others without fear of retaliation. Too often, for someone looking to report an incident or to make habitual behavior stop, all the available options are bad ones. The police are notoriously inept at handling sexual-assault cases. Human-resources departments, in offices that have them, are tasked not with protecting employees but with shielding the company from liability — meaning that in the frequent occasion that the offender is a member of management and the victim is not, HR’s priorities lie with the accused. When a reporting channel has enforcement power, like an HR department or the police, it also has an obligation to presume innocence. In contrast, the value of the spreadsheet was that it had no enforcement mechanisms: Without legal authority or professional power, it offered an impartial, rather than adversarial, tool to those who used it. It was intended specifically not to inflict consequences, not to be a weapon — and yet, once it became public, many people immediately saw it as exactly that.

Recent months have made clear that no amount of power or money can shield a woman from sexual misconduct. But like me, many of the women who used the spreadsheet are particularly vulnerable: We are young, new to the industry, and not yet influential in our fields. As we have seen time after time, there can be great social and professional consequences for women who come forward. For us, the risks of using any of the established means of reporting were especially high and the chance for justice especially slim.

What #MeToo Tells Us About The "Liberal" World...,

Counterpunch |  I wrote an Op-Ed for The Washington Post^[1] about the Thomas Hill case in which Thomas was accused of accosting Anita Hill with ugly sexist language. I suggested that it would be a boon for corporate feminists who had co-opted the feminist movement. Instead of exposing the hands-on assaults against them by their employers upon whom they depended  for their prosperity, they could blame Black guys for sexism in the workplace. It was Maureen Dowd who pointed to the hypocrisy of some of Hill’s White feminist supporters. When Bill Clinton’s hands-on sexism came to light, she noted that some of those liberal and progressive feminists who condemned Clarence Thomas defended Clinton’s offenses against women. 

Clarence Thomas has been ridiculed for years for pleading that he was subjected to a “hi-tech lynching.” But now that powerful corporate White men, among them predators, who, for decades, have been shielded by corporate feminists, their defenders are insisting upon due process, which is what Thomas was demanding. To cross examine his accusers. Timesman Bret Stephens complains about hi-tech lynchings now that the shoe is on the other foot and outfits like NPR, The New Republic, MSNBC, The New York Times and other media outlets, which have competed for revenue from what could be called “The Black Boogeyman” racket, have uncovered predators among their personnel.  Now that they’re feeling the heat from feminists they’ve come up with something called “a spectrum of behavior.”

In the Post article, I also pointed out that regardless of Thomas’s right-wing views, in the Anita Hill vs. Thomas case, Blacks supported Thomas. White progressives didn’t pay attention to this fact. For them, Blacks are to be interpreted. Not listened too. Maybe they agree with Jeffrey Toobin, who has made a fortune from a slipshod examination of the Simpson case. Toobin says that Blacks can’t deal with reality and shouldn’t be patted on the head,^[4] like the reward that a dog receives after retrieving a ball for his owner.

DOJ Sex Harassment: Deep State Swamp Comprised Of Phuktards About To Drain Themselves...,

WaPo |  The Justice Department has “systemic” problems in how it handles sexual harassment complaints, with those found to have acted improperly often not receiving appropriate punishment, and the issue requires “high level action,” according to the department’s inspector general.

Justice supervisors have mishandled complaints, the IG said, and some perpetrators were given little discipline or even later rewarded with bonuses or performance awards. At the same time, the number of allegations of sexual misconduct has been increasing over the past five years and the complaints have involved senior Justice Department officials across the country.

The cases examined by the IG’s office include a U.S. attorney who had a sexual relationship with a subordinate and sent harassing texts and emails when it ended; a Civil Division lawyer who groped the breasts and buttocks of two female trial attorneys; and a chief deputy U.S. marshal who had sex with “approximately” nine women on multiple occasions in his U.S. Marshals Service office, according to investigative reports obtained by The Washington Post under a Freedom of Information Act request.

[Read some of the DOJ Inspector General’s reports on sexual misconduct]

“We’re talking about presidential appointees, political appointees, FBI special agents in charge, U.S. attorneys, wardens, a chief deputy U.S. marshal, a U.S. marshal assistant director, a deputy assistant attorney general,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said in an interview. 

On May 31 — before the issue exploded into the national consciousness — Horowitz sent a memo about sexual harassment to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

“When employees engage in such misconduct, it profoundly affects the victim and affects the agency’s reputation, undermines the agency’s credibility, and lowers employee productivity and morale,” Horowitz wrote. “Without strong action from the Department to ensure that DOJ employees meet the highest standards of conduct and accountability, the systemic issues we identified in our work may continue.”

Rosenstein said he would review the IG’s memo and consider whether additional guidance to Justice employees was required to ensure all misconduct allegations are handled appropriately.

“It is fortunate that there are relatively few substantiated incidents of sexual harassment, but even one incident is too many,” Rosenstein said in a statement at the time.

Just Like Ballers - Peasant Rustlers Immune To Pound Me Too...,

Like I said a month ago, it'll never reach up to snatch down a real baller - and by that exact same token - it'll never bend down to ease the working and living conditions of peasant women, either.

theatlantic |  The man who Sandra Pezqueda says sexually harassed her and ultimately got her fired has never been disciplined for his actions. That’s even though the man, who was her boss when she worked as a dishwasher and chef’s assistant at the luxurious Terrenea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, beginning in 2015, persistently switched her schedule so she’d be working alone near him, repeatedly offered to give her more hours if she’d go out with him, and twice tried to kiss her in a storeroom at work, according to Pezqueda. That’s even though, when she complained about his behavior to the staffing agency that employed them both, Pezqueda says supervisors began seeking reasons to fire her, eventually letting her go in February 2016. “I knew if I spoke up there would be retaliation,” Pezqueda, now 37, told me. “That’s why other women never speak up about what happened to them.”

For all the Harvey Weinsteins, Al Frankens, and Russell Simmonses who have lost their jobs after allegations surfaced of sexual harassment, there is a sobering truth often lost in the #MeToo movement—the push for accountability has class dimensions. Many other less famous men, who have harassed women in less high-profile fields, have not been held accountable. Virtually all of the men who have been publicly excoriated for their conduct have worked in industries like Hollywood, or politics, or law, that the public tends to study with laser-like focus. “If an employer isn’t worried that there’s going to be some huge public-relations issue stemming from harassment, then that is one less reason for the employer to take it seriously,” Emily Martin, the general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told me.

Sexual harassment happens just as frequently—if not more frequently—in industries dominated by low-wage workers, according to analysis of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data by the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Half of women working in the restaurant industry experienced “scary” or “unwanted” sexual behavior, according to a 2014 report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center, a nonprofit that advocates for workers in the food-services industry. Around 40 percent of women in the fast-food industry have experienced unwanted sexual behaviors on the job, according to a 2016 study by Hart Research Associates, and 42 percent of those women felt that they needed to accept it because they couldn’t afford to lose their jobs. Harassment is frequent in these industries because of the wage and power differences between the women and the men who supervise them, according to ‎Sarah Fleisch Fink, the senior counsel for the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. “An imbalance of power in people in two different positions is a big part of sexual harassment occurring, and I think that there’s probably nowhere that occurs more than in lower-wage jobs,” she said. According to the Center for American Progress, the most sexual-harassment charges filed by workers from any one industry between 2005 and 2015 were in one sector: accommodation and food services.   

Pound Me Too - The Fruit of Macktivism...,

WaPo  |  Donald Trump didn’t do it.

Nor did Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes or Bill O’Reilly.

None of these famous men, each publicly accused of sexual harassment or assault, touched off the cultural reckoning that has swept America and other parts of the world over the past three months.

The honor, or perhaps dishonor, goes to a far more obscure and unlikely figure: Harvey Weinstein. The Hollywood producer’s alleged predations unleashed the outpouring of #MeToo revelations on social media along with echoing volleys of claims against more than 100 prominent men in news, entertainment, government and other fields.

Why Weinstein? Why did his story inspire a cultural eruption, particularly given that most people probably couldn’t identify him before the New York Times and the New Yorker revealed his secret history in articles that became the spore of the anti-harassment movement?

There’s no hard and fast explanation. But there are a few theories.

The DNC's Third Wave Circular Firing Squad Continues In Kansas...,

WaPo  |  In the federal complaint about sex discrimination and retaliation, Funkhouser accused Ramsey, then Andrea Thomas, according to the Star, of making “unwelcome and inappropriate sexual comments and innuendos” when he was a human resources manager for LabOne.

Funkhouser alleged that he had suffered consequences at work because he had rebuffed an advance he said she made during a business trip in 2005.

“After I told her I was not interested in having a sexual relationship with her, she stopped talking to me,” he wrote, according to documents filed in court. “In the office, she completely ignored me and avoided having any contact with me.”

The EEOC closed its investigation in 2005, saying that it was “unable to conclude that the information obtained establishes violations of the statutes.” Though Ramsey was not charged directly in the lawsuit, she had been named in the complaint. It was settled by the company after mediation in 2006 and had begun to be discussed in political circles recently, the Star reported.

Without naming Funkhouser, Ramsey said that a man decided to bring a lawsuit against the company after she eliminated his position.

“He named me in the allegations, claiming I fired him because he refused to have sex with me,” she wrote. “That is a lie.”

She said she would have fought to clear her name had the suit been brought against her.

[With Moore’s defeat, #MeToo movement forces a reckoning] 

 

“I would have sued the disgruntled, vindictive employee for defamation,” she wrote. “Now, twelve years later this suit is being used to force me out of my race for Congress. Let me be clear: I never engaged in any of the alleged behavior. And the due process that I love, that drew me to the field of law, is totally denied.”

Pank Wymyn Systematically Destroyed Shame..., Too Bad!

NYTimes |  “I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.”

This irony reveals the limits of the #MeToo movement. This week, Time magazine named those who’ve spoken out against sexual harassment — collectively called “The Silence Breakers” — as its Person of the Year. “When multiple harassment claims bring down a charmer like former ‘Today’ show host Matt Lauer, women who thought they had no recourse see a new, wide-open door,” the cover article says. In truth, however, this new door is open for only some people — those whose harassers are either personally or professionally susceptible to shame.

Since October, when the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was outed as a serial sexual predator and shunned by the social worlds he once ruled, an astonishing number of powerful and famous men have been fired and disgraced. It sometimes feels as if we’re in the midst of a cultural revolution where the toll of sexual harassment on women’s lives and ambitions will finally be reckoned with. 

But the revolution is smaller than it first appears. So far, it has been mostly confined to liberal-leaning sectors like entertainment, the media, academia, Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party. It hasn’t rocked the Republicans, corporate America or Wall Street — with some exceptions — because these realms are less responsive to feminist pressure.

Harold Ford Jr. Clipped For Being An Overpriced Underperforming Token

CNBC |  Finally, it's important to remember that the actions that constituted serious misconduct several years ago are not the same as they are now. The resignations of Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Trent Franks on Thursday seem to be much more the result of something closer to a new zero-tolerance policy on harassment and lower-level assault.

That doesn't excuse Franken, Franks, Ford or anyone else recently ensnared in this wave of scandals. And there's a lot to be said for holding our elected leaders to a much higher standard on this issue. But it's also fair to say that Wall Street may have only purged itself from the most egregious examples of bad behavior toward women based on standards from the 1990s or even the early 2000s.

That's the assessment financial journalist Susan Antilla, author of the groundbreaking book, "Tales From the Boom-Boom Room: The Landmark Legal Battles that Exposed Wall Street's Shocking Culture of Sexual Harassment." Antilla has recently spoken out about how she believes Wall Street has made strides to battle harassment over the past two decades, but adds that bias still very much exists. 

In a world where sitting senators and congressmen can be forced out in a matter of days over unproven allegations, that means Wall Street is still very vulnerable. This is something everyone from the lawyers fighting for Goldman Sachs in federal court to the H.R. departments at every other big firm need to realize.

Getting back to Ford, it's important to note he isn't going quietly. "I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life," Ford said in a statement released Thursday. In an even more telling comment, a lawyer for Ford said that, "Morgan Stanley has still not told Harold directly of his termination, and unlike every other circumstance I've been in, the company has refused to provide me with a reason. This all demonstrates how this was a matter of convenience during a hyper-sensitive time and not based on real facts."

Those comments stand as very strong proof that rules are already starting to change on Wall Street. If the standards for Ford are extended industry wide, expect a dozen or so managing partners and higher-level executives to be ousted in the coming year. 

Once the dust settles from those firings and resignations, Wall Street will have to join Congress, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Main Street in a major re-evaluation of its workplace rules. Anyone who thinks we're even halfway through this process is fooling themselves. 

SMDH@Creepy Old Harelips Tryna Bust...,

CNN | What did Franks do, you ask? Let's let Franks tell you himself. Here's an excerpt from his statement announcing his resignation:

"Due to my familiarity and experience with the process of surrogacy, I clearly became insensitive as to how the discussion of such an intensely personal topic might affect others.

 

"I have recently learned that the Ethics Committee is reviewing an inquiry regarding my discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable. I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress."

 

Um, what?

 

So, here's how the Franks statement -- in meticulous detail -- casts how this whole thing came about:

1. He and his wife had problems conceiving and carrying a baby to term. (Franks notes in the statement his wife had three miscarriages.)

2. Eventually they found a woman to be a surrogate. That woman gave birth to twins.

3. He and his wife wanted more children. So did their kids. ("We continued to have a desire to have at least one additional sibling, for which our children had made repeated requests," writes Franks.)

4. He discussed the possibility of surrogacy with two women who worked for him.

 

Simple enough!

 

One Casket-Ready, Useless Old Sac of Pus Down, Four Hundred Thirty Four Left To Go....,

thesoundingline |  The logical next question that sprung to mind was:  “how has the average age of members of Congress changed since its inception?”

The cynic might suspect that, in addition to being increasingly disliked and out of touch, Congress may be getting increasingly old. It should come as little surprise that that is exactly the case. The two charts below show the average age of serving members of the House of Representatives and the Senate every year since 1789 (the few members whose birth dates are unknown were excluded).  Both charts show the unmistakable trend toward an older and older Congress. Remarkably, the average age in the House of Representatives has surged from around 52 in 1995 to its all-time high of nearly 60 today and the average age in the Senate is even higher at nearly 65.

It would be baseless to say that seniority, and the experience that it brings, should be viewed negatively across the board as there have been great leaders much older than 65. Yet, when taken within the context of Congress’s dismal approval rating, the overwhelming feeling of Americans that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and the fact that members of Congress are serving for longer and longer, the aging of Congress does not seem emblematic of a healthy institution. To the contrary, it seems symptomatic of an insular and out of step group that is failing to create a relevant vision for America.

In nearly all ways: technological, social, and economical, we are living in a rapidly changing world. It seems that perhaps the only thing that isn’t changing is the people’s representation in Congress.

One Long-Winded, Expendable Gasbag Down, Only Ninety Nine Left To Go...,

thesoundingline |  Perhaps most principle on the list of grievances against Congress is the sentiment that they simply don’t get anything done. Any bill, no matter how routine, is hijacked by an increasingly insular, partisan, and corrupt political class. Bills are so full of divergent add-ons, riders, and pet projects that they become so long that it is often physically impossible for any single person to read them before the vote is held. If one could read them, it would be impossible to reconcile the opposing elements of the bill to permit anything resembling a principled vote. It has often been said that it is the fate of republics to devolve into oligarchies as power is consolidated by a few corrupt families who hold it for too long.

This begs the following question whose answer may explain the increasingly insular, partisan, and unproductive nature of Congress. Are members of Congress trending to serving longer terms?

To answer that question, we have compiled a database of every member of Congress every year since 1789. Using this database it is possible to determine, for every year, the number of years each member of Congress had previously served.

Having accounted for the careers of over 13,000 Congress men and women, over a period of 227 years, we are able to chart the average years served, or ‘tenure’, of the House of Representatives and the Senate every year from 1789 until today.

As you might suspect, and as the charts below testify, there has been an unmistakable trend towards Representatives and Senators serving more and more terms. Until the start of the 20^th century, the average years served in the House was typically less than four years, equivalent to about two terms. After that, the average tenure started to rise dramatically, hitting a high of 12 years or six terms in 2008. The Senate follows a similar trend going from four to five years (a single term is six years) for the first 100 plus years of American history to a high of about 15 years (nearly three terms) in 2008.

A Hot Mess of Pound Me Too Stew...,

Counterpunch |  Now, there is something else being obscured in all this hashtag outrage. And that is the criminality and coercion of all labor under capitalism. Remember, too, that there is silence thus far from the most vulnerable women working in the West; au pairs, maids, factory workers and the like. Many of whom are immigrants or from immigrant families. Also, the most acute violence directed at the working class can be found in the near servitude of citrus pickers and migrant workers in states like Florida, California and Texas. There is very little media attention given to this.

And one could also examine the actual rape conditions of American prisons and county correctional facilities (see below). The clear rape by proxy of young people intentionally put into cells with sexual predators. This is the disciplining of the underclass via sexual violence.

The 1% (or ruling class) are there to distract the populace from the growing economic chasm between themselves and the rest of us. And this is done by providing cheap satisfactions. The system grants the illusion of reform but simply repackages the same. White male power will now adjust to present itself as caring and sensitive to causing offense. Or will there be genuine structural and substantive change? The odds are against change if it challenges the ruling class. I also have noticed a new sort of white male subject position that insists on being thee most feminist man in any discussion, and publicly self lacerates as evidence of his personal evolution. The confessional element in public discourse today looms over all of this.

And today, in an age of electronic media and mass marketing of everything, including lingerie for five year olds (see Victoria’s Secret) this eruption of anger and outrage at the behavior of privileged white men, feels oddly linked to that shadow guilt and resentment of the white ruling class. The white patriarchy needs to abuse the help. And if the slave is now too much of a threat, then women will suffice. And, this is Capitalism after all, where everything is for sale. And much of the language of this anger at white patriachy takes on the quality of self help books and the therapy culture that favors empowerment over organizing. It also manufactures a kind of theatre of grief, in which the word “feelings” is used quite a bit. This is anger predicated upon an identity consensus. And the massive hashtag response speaks to a shared world view. There is a progressive aspect to it all, and that is clear. I think, anyway. The boorish and abusive and humiliating — a key word — behavior of men like Harvey Weinstein, and their default belief that they can do what they want, with women, with anyone under them, is being exposed. 

Pound MeToo In The HBCU's

NYTimes | The fliers appeared suddenly on a crisp morning in early November. They were scattered among golden leaves on the grounds of Spelman and Morehouse, the side-by-side women’s and men’s colleges that are two of the country’s most celebrated historically black schools.

“Morehouse Protects Rapists,” some of them read. “Spelman Protects Rapists.”

Some of the documents accused prominent athletes and fraternity members by name. Though workers quickly made the fliers disappear, students were already passing photos from cellphone to cellphone. Before long, the names were on Twitter.

And the next morning, students at Morehouse woke up to another unnerving sight: graffiti marring the chapel, a spiritual gathering place dedicated to a revered alumnus, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scrawled in red spray paint, the message read: “Practice What You Preach Morehouse + End Rape Culture.”

In a letter to the campus on Oct. 29, the provost, Michael Quick, announced he was convening a series of forums and task forces. “There is no place on our campuses, or in our society, for abuse of power,” it said.

And in Atlanta, the issue is gripping two campuses, and exposed a deep fissure between schools closely linked by history and geography.

Neither Spelman nor Morehouse would disclose how many complaints it has received, and in interviews, Spelman students and professors said they did not believe sexual assault was any more common there than elsewhere.

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But most said they believed the colleges had not been taking the issue seriously enough. Now their pent-up frustration has burst into the open during a national moment of reckoning.

“I don’t believe our students would be doing what they’re doing if things like this hadn’t been happening nationally,” said Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a women’s studies professor who was one of more than 70 Spelman professors who signed an open letter supporting students who said they had been assaulted.

In a three-minute speech on Nov. 9, the day the graffiti was found on the King chapel, Harold Martin Jr., the interim president of Morehouse, said there was “clearly a belief that there is a population that does not feel heard.”

Pound Me Too Among The Kansas City Roos...,

progressivekc |  UMKC administration once again failed to take concrete action against sexual assault at the last town hall. They talked about meetings, and committees and procedures – but when have those accomplished anything? Their mouths made the same motions they did during last semester’s sexual assaults, while their actions are still absent.

In face of such incompetence, PYO has taken a stand! We pasted fliers with the names and faces of two known rapists on campus, in order to warn the student body, while letting rapists know that they are not welcome here. During the flyering, we were pleased to discover that other rebellious youth had decorated the Bloch School of Business.

This is only the beginning – more actions will come. The end goal of this campaign is to build a revolutionary counter-culture on campus that will empower the student body to annihilate rape culture ourselves!

Such a goal is a high order, and will require dedicated, protracted struggle. If you wish to keep in touch with our future efforts, like our Facebook, and/or keep watching this website.

Wonder Why Weaponized #MeToo Hasn't Snatched A Real Baller Yet...,

pagesix |  A source familiar with the purchase said: “While everyone in New York wants a doorman, Eric specifically said he didn’t want one. He doesn’t want anyone to see him and his guests coming in and out. He insisted on his own elevator.” 

Schmidt has also spent millions getting the 6,250-square-foot duplex — which has four bedrooms and a large entertainment area with a wet bar opening onto a 3,300-square-foot terrace — soundproofed, claiming he “doesn’t sleep well,” but also affording him complete privacy.

Other sources say that earlier this summer, the tech mogul was embarking on a tour of the French Riviera and asked his aides to find alluring female companions to “decorate his yacht.”

Schmidt, who’s worth $8.2 billion, bought the 195-foot Oasis for about $72.3 million in 2009. The source said, “He had one of his aides approach beautiful and intelligent women that Schmidt never met before, saying, ‘Eric would like to invite you to his yacht,’ which was cruising around the Riviera.”

He was spotted in St. Tropez earlier this month, and later sailed to the Cap d’Antibes, and we’re told that some of the women approached by his aides had agreed to join Schmidt onboard.

Wendy Schmidt, who lives in Nantucket, said in an interview last year that they started living separate lives because she felt like “a piece of luggage” following him around the world. 

A rep for Schmidt didn’t respond last night. 

In case y'all forgot exactly who this is...,

Unintended Consequences or Tightly Scripted Political Theatre?

newyorker |  We have witnessed a theatre of accountability insidiously refine itself, quite quickly, in the past few months. Louis C.K.’s statement, for example, following the exposé in the Times of his sexual harassment of female comics, was not as passionate as, but was more coherent than, Harvey Weinstein’s ramblings about Jay-Z and the gun lobby. The opportunistic finesse of Kevin Spacey’s coming-out certainly tripped some social alarms, but he nonetheless garnered some sympathy. Power brokers like the Pixar animation baron John Lasseter have even scooped long-labored-over articles by preëmpting them altogether. (Lasseter is taking a six-month leave of absence.) No display was savvier than NBC’s orchestration on Wednesday.

The “Today” show’s artful transposition of grief where there would naturally be scrutiny continued into the 10 A.M. slot, in which the veteran host Kathie Lee Gifford spoke of how much she, too, loved Lauer and how sad she was. It continued on this morning’s program, with Guthrie and Kotb again at the helm. Not since Bill Cosby—or Bill O’Reilly, depending on one’s television diet—has the scourge of sexual assault so acutely infiltrated the righteous perimeter of the American home. (President Trump, also affiliated with NBC and accused of assaulting women, never quite depended on a family-man image.) The influence of a behind-the-scenes figure like Weinstein can feel diffuse, removed from our everyday cultural consumption; Lauer was, and is, synonymous with the family feel of “Today.” Part of this comes from the network’s bloated investment in Lauer—he reportedly earns between twenty million and twenty-five million dollars a year. (In 2014, a source told Page Six that the company chartered helicopter rides for Lauer from his Hamptons compound to its Rockefeller Center studios at his request.) When, in 1996, Lauer wrested the anchor chair from Bryant Gumbel, gossip magazines swooned over his geometric jaw and feathery hair; twenty years later, he was transforming comfortably into a smug but wise paternal figure. His tenure at the “Today” show was the longest in its history. Now instances of Lauer’s public pettiness toward women seem like the exertions of a holistically awful campaign. In 2012, he admonished the actress Anne Hathaway for photographs that the paparazzi had taken of her exiting a car. “Seen a lot of you lately,” he said. And, famously, Lauer was an architect of “Operation Bambi,” a plan that succeeded in getting his former co-anchor Ann Curry fired from the show that same year. (“ ‘Chemistry,’ in television history, generally means the man does not want to work with the woman,” Curry said, according to Brian Stelter’s insider anatomy, “Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV.”) On her final show, Curry wept and Lauer pretended to soothe her. His interview of Hillary Clinton last year was intrusive and aggressive when compared with his handling of Trump. How a man thinks of women dictates how he works with them.

You Already Know What Truth Looks and Sounds Like...,

gabbard.house.gov |  Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) held a press conference and spoke on the House floor today urging Congress to overhaul the broken system of sexual harassment and assault in Congress and across the country. The congresswoman called for an end to taxpayer-funded settlements which total more than $17 million in 268 Congressional settlements over the past two decades, according to recent reports. 

 

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard was joined by Reps. Ron DeSantis (FL-06), Marsha Blackburn (TN-07), Jim Cooper (TN-05), and Kathleen Rice (NY-04) to introduce the Congressional Accountability and Hush Fund Elimination Act. This bipartisan, comprehensive legislation would ensure that perpetrators are held personally and financially accountable for their actions by ending taxpayer-funded harassment settlements and require any individual who has settled such a claim using taxpayer funds to fully reimburse the Treasury.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said:
“For too long survivors of sexual harassment and assault have been isolated, shamed, and bullied into silence, while their abusers walk away scot-free with the privilege of anonymity and without personal or financial accountability.

“This has been happening right here in Congress, in the media, and in many other sectors of our society. No one, whether it be a Capitol Hill staffer, a Hollywood actor, a school teacher, or a soldier or anyone in any profession, at any time should have to choose between their job and personal safety.

“Congress needs to act now to end the practice of taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlements, expose perpetrators of sexual harassment and assault, and provide a fair and transparent path to justice for survivors. This behavior is absolutely unacceptable. It has no place in Congress or in our society. It must end."

Nancy Pelosi The Embodiment of Democratic Hypocrisy and Double-Standards

NationalReview |  The rules of society should be fair to everybody, not based on tribal identity. 

It’s amazing how complicated simple principles can become when they’re inconvenient to your team. On Sunday, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi created a mess for herself by insisting on NBC’s Meet the Press that Representative John Conyers deserves “due process” in the face of a series of accusations of improper conduct. Politically, Pelosi’s performance was a gift to her many critics. 

For liberals who think she’s passed her sell-by date as a Democratic leader, her hapless effort will now be Exhibit A in the brief against her, despite her subsequent efforts to clean up the mess. For populists on the left and right who think the political establishment is rigged to protect members of the club, Pelosi’s effort to protect Conyers — and Senator Al Franken, who has also been accused of several sexual transgressions — while at the same time insisting that we know all we need to know about President Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore is simply a naked partisan double standard.

“We are strengthened by due process,” Pelosi insists when the topic is Conyers. But Moore is “a child molester.” This raises the most dismaying gift that Pelosi lobbed to the mob. 

 

By circling the wagons around Conyers and Franken (and Bill Clinton to some extent), Pelosi is all but guaranteeing the election of Moore. It is difficult to exaggerate the anger among many Republicans who believe that liberals use the rules selectively, shamelessly invoking standards of conduct to delegitimize and destroy their enemies while exempting their own. 

 

“Zero tolerance” for thee, “it’s complicated” for me. It was this belief — hardly unfounded — that let millions of Republicans dismiss allegations of sexual abuse against Trump and now Moore. 

 

Every day, conservatives angry at my opposition to Moore tell me “we” can’t “unilaterally disarm.” If they won’t play by the rules, why should we?