The attitudes about women that doomed O’Reilly hid in plain sight for years

When I went on his show, he chastised me for being a victim of sexual assault.

.. And the dismissive way O’Reilly dealt with my own history as a victim of assault made the allegations that finally pushed Fox News to fire him this week feel all too familiar.

.. O’Reilly challenged me about the fact that I decided to go meet this person I didn’t know. He then insisted that at 13, I should have known better than go meet someone

.. he told me I made a huge mistake and appeared to suggest that I deserved to become a victim of sexual assault because I knew I was doing something I shouldn’t have done.

.. in O’Reilly’s mind, meeting a stranger off the Internet who you think is your friend at 13 is a mistake. But sexually harassing your staff as an adult is just fine.

.. how many people watched the night I was on, who saw that in the “no-spin zone,” it was acceptable to blame the victim. I can only wonder how many other victims he blamed when they appeared on his show. (He did it often enough that it became a frequent trope for his critics.)

.. I never said anything to him, because I believed that his hubris and karma would settle the score.

.. at its peak, was earning $178 million.

.. O’Reilly’s bosses only cared when his behavior cost their bottom line

Shattered and the Irritating Consequences of Access Journalism

They agreed to hold all of the quotes, information, and anecdotes from their on-background conversations for the book, to be published long after Election Day. Clinton campaign staffers could vent and speak frankly about all of their serious problems hidden from the public eye, knowing that Allen and Parnes wouldn’t report it and the public wouldn’t know until after their decision had been made.

Except… this means a reporter for The Hill and a columnist for Roll Call knew that the media narrative was wrong, and didn’t tell anyone.

Killing The O’Reilly Factor

.. If you bring up somebody else’s kids in a debate — several times — you’re a bunch of words that the editors don’t want me to use in this newsletter. (Maybe I’ll turn it into an explicit-lyrics rap. “Call your guests a bunch of pinheads and dimwits, but what the f***’s wrong with you? Kids are off limits!”)

We don’t know if Bill O’Reilly really did treat his employees and coworkers as badly as those five women who settled lawsuits or accepted payouts alleged. But we do know that he had no problem being shamelessly obnoxious, insulting, gratuitously personal, and unfair to his regular guests on camera.