Let’s call it the “hotline defense.”
That’s the ludicrous idea that a woman who is being sexually harassed, within a company known to be rife with misogyny, would choose to call an internal hotline to make her complaint.
.. “Going to human resources in a company like that is like going to the KGB to complain about Putin.”
O’Reilly-Ailes-Trump: The dirty-old-man triumvirate
Yet this isn’t a two-way back-scratching exercise. It goes three ways.
Roger Ailes was the chief of Fox News, until he was ousted last summer for what appears to be a bottomless sexual-harassment scandal. Ailes denies the claims against him. The list of women who have accused Ailes of sexual harassment exceeds two dozen, and another suit was filedthis week by current Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky. As it turns out, Ailes was accumulating sexual-harassment complainants at the very same time as O’Reilly was accumulating sexual-harassment complainants.
.. And as we’ve written before, they had forged a mutual protection racket. When O’Reilly sustained a scandal in 2015 for either embellishing or lying about his reportorial exploits in various hot spots around the world, Ailes backed him with no qualifications. There was no network investigation of O’Reilly’s ethics and integrity. He squeaked through the criticism and improved his ratings.
One year later, it was O’Reilly’s turn to back Ailes. After former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed her world-changing suit against Ailes, O’Reilly turned up on Seth Myers’s “Late Night” show with some helpful words. “I stand behind Roger 100 percent,” said O’Reilly
.. Starting in spring 2011, Trump began weekly chats with the folks on the unimaginably idiotic “Fox & Friends” morning show. Those sessions persisted all the way up to the moment that Trump, in June 2015, launched his presidential campaign. Trump helped Ailes by giving him a ratings-assisting weekly interview; Ailes helped Trump by giving him a platform to test poorly thought-through stances on politics.
.. These dirty old men stick together.
Kremlin Asks Fox News to Apologize to Putin After O’Reilly Calls Him ‘a Killer’
Mr. O’Reilly: “Do you respect Putin?”
Mr. Trump: “I do respect him.”
Mr. O’Reilly: “Do you? Why?”
Mr. Trump: “Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with them. He’s a leader of his country. I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not. And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS — which is a major fight — and Islamic terrorism all over the world — major fight — that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea. It’s very possible that I won’t.”
Mr. O’Reilly: “He’s a killer though. Putin’s a killer.”
Mr. Trump: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Blaming America First
This weekend, Mr. Trump dismissed a question about why he respected “a killer” like Mr. Putin by drawing a moral equivalency between the United States and Russia.
“You got a lot of killers,” Mr. Trump told Bill O’Reilly of the slavishly pro-Trump Fox News. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?” Mr. Trump also said he respected Mr. Putin, noting: “He’s a leader of his country. I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not.”
.. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has shown little support for America’s traditional roles as a champion of universal values like freedom of the press and tolerance.
.. But on Saturday, Mr. Trump spoke by phone to the Ukrainian president and later issued a statement that did not condemn Russia, played down the conflict as a border dispute and made no reference to sanctions.