Top NPR News Chief Resigns After Sexual Harassment Allegations; Previously Worked for New York Times

Why are progressive institutions such cesspools of sexual harassment?

He previously worked for the NYT. NPR was alerted to his behavior in 2015 but apparently decided to cover it up until the Harvey Weinstein Effect made this no longer possible.

Both women claimed Michael Oreskes kissed them and stuck his tongue in their mouths after they had approached him about working at the Times in the late 1990s, when Oreskes was the paper’s Washington bureau chief.

The Times declined to admit if it knew about this:

Jill Abramson, the Times’ former executive editor who was Oreskes’ deputy in the Washington bureau at the time of the alleged encounters, recalled that he also showed special interest in a woman who worked as a news aide.

"If I had to do it again, I would have told him to knock it off," she told the Post. "Maybe confronting him would have somehow stopped him from doing it to another woman."

When asked if Oreskes' conduct had drawn complaints at the Times, a spokesperson said the paper "takes all allegations of sexual harassment seriously and we are looking into it."

Ah. They're looking into it now, after they've been caught covering it up.

He hit on job applicants.

Oreskes came under pressure to step down after The Washington Post reported that he allegedly made unwanted sexual advances toward two journalists who were seeking jobs at The New York Times two decades ago. At least one of the accusers came forward in the wake of the Weinstein scandal. Both accusers told the Post that Oreskes unexpectedly kissed them during career-oriented business meetings while he was working as the Times' Washington bureau chief.

After the Post story came out, a third accuser, who currently works at NPR, said she filed a complaint about him to NPR's human resources department in October 2015, according to NPR's own reporting. The employee's complaint said Oreskes "hijacked a career counseling session into a three-hour-long dinner that delved into deeply personal territory" and included mentions of sex with a former girlfriend.

He confessed at least part of the behavior he's accused of:

"I am deeply sorry to the people I hurt. My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility," Oreskes wrote.

Defund this sexist harassment factory NPR. The Women of America can no longer be exposed to this #Unsafe Patriarchal Culture-of-Rape institution.

Meanwhile, six women have come forward to accuse much-maligned piece-of-shit director Brett Ratner of sexual harassment, including, once again, masturbating in front of them.

I don't get that. I have fantasies about having sex with women while masturbating. I do not have fantasies about masturbating in front of women. This is deeply weird. Talk about aiming low. You really have to be a stunted beta to view unsolicited wacking-off in the proximity of a woman as basically a home run.

Ratner denies these allegations.

Oh, and then there's the 17 year old girl alleging that Dustin Hoffman sexually harassed her when she was a senior in high school working, I guess as sort of an intern, on a Death of a Salesman production.

This is a story I've told so often I'm sometimes surprised when someone I know hasn't heard it. It begins, "Dustin Hoffman sexually harassed me when I was 17." Then I give the details: When I was a senior in high school in New York City, interning as a production assistant on the set of the Death of a Salesman TV film, he asked me to give him a foot massage my first day on set; I did. He was openly flirtatious, he grabbed my ass, he talked about sex to me and in front of me. One morning I went to his dressing room to take his breakfast order; he looked at me and grinned, taking his time. Then he said, "I'll have a hard-boiled egg … and a soft-boiled clitoris." His entourage burst out laughing. I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried.

She published letters she said she wrote contemporanously, adding some support to her claims. She says he groped her -- a lot.

She also wrote in one of the letters to her sister, "Today, when I was walking Dustin to his limo, he felt my a** four times." She wrote in the letters that she was nervous the movie's producer, Bob Colesberry, would fire her for swatting Hoffman's hand away. She said to her sister, "I'm not going to let Dustin have his hands all over me. And I think it sucks if Bob Colesberry expects me to."

Hoffman kinda-admits it, sort of, which is a pattern we're seeing a lot of lately:

Responding to the allegations, Hoffman (80) told the publication: "I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am."

Oh: This is amusing.

It'd be funny to put together a whole deck of Magic: The Gathering cards for all the people accused.

Slate, given that it's following Salon now, of course has to make the case that forcing yourself on to an unwilling 14 year old isn't pedophilia.

It's only pedophilia if they're 13 or under.

Defining deviancy down, indeed.

posted by Ace at 02:27 PM

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