HuffPo still won’t report on its own organization’s covering up of sexual harassment

November 16, 2017 • 1:00 pm

Senator Al Franken is the latest person to be accused of groping (there’s even a photo), but HuffPo, which reported on that, still won’t report that its own organization, under Arianna, covered up sexual harassment by transferring the harasser to a new post in India. (They even have a sexual harassment page.)

As I predicted, they’ll call out anybody but themselves.  Let’s see what they do if I ask them in a comment on the Franken post. Ten to one they’ll delete it.  Here it is; check back at the Franken link  (click on the “dialogue bubble” icon to the left) to see if they deleted it:

33 thoughts on “HuffPo still won’t report on its own organization’s covering up of sexual harassment”

  1. We’re in the midst of a full blown moral panic. Anyone who thinks Al Franken is a sexual predator is an idiot.

    2. To be honest, until I read this post, I thought that Al Franken was a comedian, not a politician. But I only heard about the case while making my supper, and was paying much more attention to not burning the food than to the radio. I still don’t know which side of the party he’s a comedian for.

  3. I suggest that we all send the same query to HuffPo . . . I’ll do it now if I can figure it out . . . (I never look at their stuff so may take a while). Will report results, if any.

      1. Posted:
        “I’m wondering why, amidst your spate of reports on sexual harassment in the U.S., you haven’t reported on the reports, which are everywhere but here, that the management of this very site covered up sexual harassment by transferring the harasser to India. https://gizmodo.com/arianna-huffington-ignored-sexual-misconduct-at-the-huf-1820389889
        Also, why did you delete the original post asking this question.
        Asking for a friend.”

        I can keep this up all day. I’ve got cut-n-paste skillz

        1. Just checked and I don’t see a single comment making reference to PuffHo’s hypocrisy. They are diligent little censors, aren’t they?

    1. My understanding is that the women in India are probably anything but unsuspecting. Resigned to it, perhaps.

  7. I am disappointed in Franken. He looked like above political average intelligent and caring. But I checked the groping photo and the alleged ‘humor’ was not only violating another, but at the level of children just having discovered sex.

    HP on the other hand acts as I expected.

    1. I was also disappointed in Franken. I find myself searching for a reason for the behavior – not to find excuses, but just to try to understand. It occurs to me that in the case of someone like Franken or Bill Maher or Louis C K, there is something about the practice of their craft which might lead them to act out beyond what is socially acceptable. Their creativity may depend on staying in touch with their inner child, their “Dennis the Menace” alter ego. They were all probably class clowns and find that to excel at the profession of being funny, they have to draw on some pretty juvenile ways of thinking that on occasion get them into trouble.

  8. I’m glad that this issue has erupted and that it’s now perfectly clear that such behavior is unacceptable. But one has to understand that a few decades ago it was deemed normal behavior for men to force themselves on women. There are movies from the 50’s and 60’s in which the hero does exactly that, and it’s portrayed as a strong man winning over a woman who obviously wanted it. It was part of the culture, at a time when women were still considered subservient to men.

    So it’s not surprising that past incidents are emerging all over. The question yet to be answered then is what is the appropriate punishment?

    There are important distinctions too. Weinstein and Louis CK did it to women over whom they had power. Roy Moore did it to teenagers, some underage. Franken appears to have done it as a gag, to a woman whose career he doesn’t control. Do they all deserve the same level of approbation?

    CK and Franken are the only ones who have taken full responsibility. Does that count for anything?

    1. “There are movies from the 50’s and 60’s in which the hero does exactly that, and it’s portrayed as a strong man winning over a woman who obviously wanted it.”

      Clint Eastwood made a career out of it. Charles Bronson, too. Hell, even Marlon Brando.

      1. With Brando, the two films that immediately spring to mind are Streetcar and Last Tango, but he clearly portrayed an antihero in both.

          1. The locus classicus of the genre would be these two scenes of Clint’s from High Plains Drifter:

    2. I’m old enough to remember when this kind of behavior was no big deal. Men were expected to treat us like possessions.

  9. Given the wide-reaching nature of this scandal, and the level it has reached, where a grope from 15 years ago is a national scandal, shouldn’t there be questions asked of people like Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, who are guilty of far worse than a grope?

      1. Not during the recent discussions, but I have read reports about it in the past. I think there’s a discussion about the “supposed it is impossible” doctrine some have adopted in Patai and Kortege’s _Professing Feminism_. (But I don’t trust my memory completely on this.) If so, that’s more than 20 years ago.

        1. I am also contemplating whether there will be reports of female-on-male sexual harassment (in addition to and other than that regarding female teachers and minor male students). (Or would that possibly be another “impossible”?)

          I’m reminded of a college chum years ago who reported being afflicted with a rather stinging, bracing pinch to his behind by a bold, saucy lassie (with whom he sang in a university choir and with whom up to that point he had been on solely “professional” and arm’s-length terms), not merely of one of his lateral gluteal flanks, but directly at and on (shall one as subtly and clinically as possible describe as) “ground zero,” just dorsal and distal to the perineum.

          He said that, try as he might, he could not muster the least bit of offense at the young lady’s bold gesture, she sporting a wide-eyed ear-to-ear grin when he turned around to investigate the source of this infiltration and violation of his personal space.

          1. There was a film made back in the 80’s I think which had to do with a female manager of a corporation who seduced the male subordinate. I think she had power over his promotions and so he cooperated reluctantly with her advances. I think Michael Douglas played the seduced one.

          2. ” . . . so he cooperated reluctantly with her advances.”

            Well, as specifically regards engaging in standard “congress,” he couldn’t be too reluctant. I.e., his brain might be very reluctant, but something else might inescapably be not much reluctant, despite his best effort to will it reluctant. Seems it would be hard to feign impotence where none exists. Were he impotent, despite her best efforts to render him otherwise, seems she would search elsewhere and leave him be. But such a movie plot won’t rise to the occasion in the view of studio moguls and the public.

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