How many of those women who work at Fox News actually have blown him?I was driving. My boss was in the front seat and an old friend of mine-- a young old friend of mine-- was in the back seat. He was applying for a job and my boss was taking us out to lunch (on his company credit card). He said something shocking with the clear implication that my friend could only get the job if he would have sex with him. My friend and I tried to laugh it off. The boss turned around and lurched at him-- going in for a crotch grab. My friend was agile and fast and escaped the lunge. He then rolled up a copy of BAM magazine and when my boss lurched at him again he swatted him across the snout, hard enough to make him stop. He then told my friend he would never work at the company.A few months later, another friend of mine then hired him at another division of the same company. (He was also gay and persisted in trying to molest my friend, who always deflected his advances, and never made his advancement in the company dependent on acquiescing. It was probably annoying but not career-threatening.) Eventually my friend excelled and went on to great accomplishments-- as well as fame and fortune. My boss continued trying, sometimes successfully, more often not, in trying to use his position to force young men into having sex with him. He's writing an autobiography now but he's leaving those episodes out.My first reaction to reading about ex-Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson's suit against her lecherous one-time boss, Roger Ailes, was to think that men would tend to dismiss this kind of thing with a chuckle and probably never "get" the true horror of this kind of behavior. Ailes is an extremely ugly-- to the point of deformity-- man. His fat face is dripping blubbery chins and jowls. I tweeted out his photo and asked men to consider how they would react if a man threatened their livelihood and career by making it conditional on allowing him to mount them and penetrate them. The tweet didn't go viral.Saturday, Ailes' biographer Gabriel Sherman, writing for New York reported that Ailes and his chins didn't just use his power to try to force himself on Carlsen. There have been many women he's imposed on in this way and his behavior wasn't just repulsive, but compulsive.
In recent days, more than a dozen women have contacted Carlson’s New Jersey-based attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, and made detailed allegations of sexual harassment by Ailes over a 25-year period dating back to the 1960s when he was a producer on The Mike Douglas Show. “These are women who have never told these stories until now,” Smith told me. “Some are in lot of pain.” Taken together, these stories portray Ailes as a boss who spoke openly of expecting women to perform sexual favors in exchange for job opportunities. “He said that’s how all these men in media and politics work-- everyone’s got their friend,” recalled Kellie Boyle, who says Ailes propositioned her in 1989, shortly after he helped George H.W. Bush become president, serving as his chief media strategist.Six of the women agreed to speak with New York publicly for the first time. Two spoke on the record; the others requested anonymity for reasons that include shame and fear of retribution. “I didn’t tell my husband, it was so mortifying,” said Marsha Callahan, a former model who says Ailes harassed her in the late ‘60s, shortly before he became Richard Nixon’s media adviser.Ailes is clearly trying to keep these stories out of the press and the courts. Late on Friday, his lawyers filed a motion in federal court in New Jersey seeking to move Carlson’s lawsuit to arbitration, which would prevent witnesses from being called in court. “Plaintiff’s ploy of filing in Superior Court to justify her shameless publicity campaign against Roger Ailes should not be countenanced,” Ailes’s lawyers argued. Carlson's lawyers responded in a statement: "Roger Ailes is trying to force this case into a secret arbitration proceeding...Gretchen never agreed to arbitrate anything with Mr. Ailes.”
Ailes told one RNC employee-- a married woman whose husband Ailes knew-- that if she wanted to succeed at the RNC she would have to suck seed-- first his and then other men's. Fellas, before you laugh, try to picture Ailes putting his shriveled old cock in your mouth and dribbling his slime into you. Or you could just give up your career. "Well you might have to give a blowjob every once in a while," he told her and when she punted and played for time to get away from him he shot back, "No, if you don’t do it now, you know that means you won’t." She refused and Ailes called the RNC guy she was seeing about a promotion and killed the meeting.
Back in New Jersey I got a call from Roger Ailes. He said, ‘How’d your meeting go?’ I said, ‘Actually he wasn’t available and I’m hoping to hear back from him.’ He said, ‘Ah, well, I’m sure you will. Have you changed your mind yet?’ I said, ‘I’ll have to pass, Roger. I’m married and really committed to my husband. No offense.’ He said, ‘Well, we’ll be in touch.’ And that was that. A couple weeks later, I called a friend who was very high up in the RNC and I asked him what happened. He said, ‘Word went out you weren’t to be hired.’
Do you consider that part of the Republican War Against Women? Half a dozen other women recounted their Ailes stories for Sherman for his article. I was, literally, too sickened to read them. Those women were our mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, friends. Gretchen Carlson is incredibly brave to bring it up in public, knowing full well that scumbags like Ailes and Murdoch and their Republican and media allies will do all they can to destroy her now.
