How Many Women Does It Take To Change A Cable News Host?

Women have been paying for a long time for the misbehavior of men.
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How many women does it take to change a cable news host? Too many, apparently. Bill O’Reilly, like a lot of predators, was allegedly a serial harasser. Fox Network settled lawsuits with almost a dozen women—at the cost of some 13 million dollars— before it gave him the ax. His boss, Roger E. Ailes, had previously been booted for similar offenses, but not before several women came forward with reports of his boorishness. And it was Ailes’s harassment that finally compelled Megyn Kelly, Fox’s brightest star, to flee the network. He hit on her, and she hit him back where it counts: in the pocketbook.

That’s the currency our culture trades in. Only when 60 major companies pulled their advertising dollars from ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ did the network begin to consider the seriousness of O’Reilly’s alleged trespasses, which ranged from lewd suggestions to outright threats. The alleged offenses perpetrated by the 67-year-old host suggest an energy, and ingenuity, evident nowhere else in his career. One woman, a regular guest, said O’Reilly became so enraged when she rebuffed him that he not only threatened her career ― he insulted her purse.

O’Reilly, like Ailes, was responsible for the work trajectory of these women. They couldn’t climb the broadcasting ladder without the support of these men. Yet still they resisted, some leaving the network, others surreptitiously recording the men’s boorish behavior. Several left the field of broadcasting altogether or never got the promised advances in their career.

Women have been paying for a long time for the misbehavior of men: in the workplace, and at home. It’s not surprising that in a vicious custody battle, O’Reilly’s daughter accused him of “choking her mom” as he “dragged her down the stairs by the neck.” O’Reilly told his daughter that her mother was an “adulterer.” Yet according to one complainant, O’Reilly would masturbate during their phone conversations and regale her with details of his trysts with airline stewardesses and Thai sex workers, among others.

One of O’Reilly’s defenders is none other than President Trump, a man famously inured to the sensitivities of women. He drooled over his own daughter, calling her “a piece of ass,” and notoriously bragged about grabbing women’s genitals, inspiring protests and pussy hats. But by and large the electorate didn’t care, or didn’t care enough. Hillary Clinton thinks “misogyny” played a role in her defeat. But the obverse didn’t motivate women to deny Trump their vote. In fact, the number of white educated women who cast their ballot for the abuser-in-chief is one of the most surprising aspects of Clinton’s devastating loss. Maybe, again, economic realities took precedence over any moral calculus.

Or maybe, as has often been the case, men (and some women) discount the oppressive nature of this misbehavior, or expect women to tolerate it. The same seems true at elite private schools like Choate Rosemary Hall, where the sexual abuse of students involved at least 12 former teachers and took place over more than forty years. There was no one to whom the students could bring their grievances, and the same seems true of women at Fox. There was no established protocol for dealing with misbehavior and no apparent consequences.

Until now. Until finally Rupert Murdoch’s sons, who control 21st Century Fox, said enough was enough, based more on lost advertising revenue than any moral qualms or responsibility to their female employees.

Will they institute systematic changes to protect women? Will the elite private schools alter their atmosphere of secrecy and shame? How many women does it take to change the culture? Many too many, it seems. But we’ve got to keep plugging away—for our sake, and for our daughters, and for all the women we are mentoring. It’s not okay for men to touch us, proposition us, demean us, demand sex from us, or use our unwillingness to comply as grounds for punishment. Our bodies are ours, as are the work opportunities we have long fought for and which we deserve.

They may insult our purses, but we’ve got them by the wallet, and that’s what seems to count.

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