Let’s imagine for a moment what you would have to have done to pay another person $32 million to go away and forget the whole thing? I don’t know what it was, and Bill O’Reilly, as usual, is screaming “bull[bleep]” and claiming that he is the real victim. But if a pig like Harvey Weinstein was in the habit of tossing $150,000 of chicken feed to shut up women he sexually harassed, it’s reasonable to think O’Reilly is into “either a dead girl or a live boy” territory.
Says Debra Katz, a D.C. attorney in a Huffington Post story this morning,
” ‘This is unprecedented’, she said. ‘It’s a shocking figure’. The settlement, Katz said, indicates that O’Reilly ‘felt extremely exposed’. ‘There was obviously strong and compelling evidence that had to be of a very embarrassing nature that he did not want to become public, and that’s why he’s paying this extraordinary sum’, she said. ‘You don’t pay a $32 million settlement if you’ve engaged in no wrongdoing’.”
The astonishing boorish-to-criminal behavior of guys like O’Reilly and his boss Roger Ailes, a mob of other Fox executives, Weinstein, movie director James Toback, Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski and on and on (and on and on) may actually have ignited something that produces real change … just when you thought progress and improvement were quaint notions held only by sweet nattering aunts. The #metoo movement has the feel of a cathartic event that if it doesn’t put an end to O’Reilly/Weinstein-ism, (of course it won’t), will at least continue to embolden women (and their lawyers) to drop the hammer more often than they have in the past.
I mean, when the astonishing machine gun slaughter of 58 people at a music concert In Las Vegas rates only a week’s worth of attention, because no one expects anything to change, the power of so many women collectively calling out the arrogant, diseased-by-power dudes who regularly make their lives miserable seems a far better bet for forward movement.
But back to O’Reilly, and the toxic, consistently misogynistic culture promoted in the right-wing media environment. $32 million is the kind of money you pay to someone who has the kind of irrefutable proof of behavior so heinous it guarantees your existential ruin. Not murder, and maybe not actual rape, but … well there was the, um, unusual mention of O’Reilly sending the woman in question gay pornography. I have no statistics on how many desperate guys get anywhere with the women of their desires by impressing them with their gay porn collection, but I’m thinking it’s in the low single digits.
Bill O’Reilly unmasked as a bona fide bi-sexual/closeted gay predator would be really … really … tough on the macho, “No Spin” branding campaign, wouldn’t it?
Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones wrote a fascinating piece last winter that bored into the psychology of the target audience for FoxNews, O’Reilly and Trump. (A comment on Weinstein in a moment.)
“Revelations of Trump’s sexist comments and his bragging about grabbing women’s genitals only helped forge stronger ties between the racist and sexist wings of the alt-right. After the bombshell revelation of the Access Hollywood tape, Spencer said it was ‘ridiculous’ and ‘puritanical’ to call Trump’s behavior sexual assault, adding, ‘At some part of every woman’s soul, they want to be taken by a strong man’. Far-right blogger RamZPaul responded to the Trump tape by saying, ‘Girls really don’t mind guys that like pussies, they just hate guys who are pussies’.”
His colleague, Kevin Drum, quoted that graph and reacted to it saying,
“A big chunk of the alt-right is populated by social misfits who have been repeatedly rejected by women and are bitter about it. This makes them suckers for leaders who assure them they aren’t misfits. What’s really happening—and this can be a very beguiling story—is that women toy with them and laugh at them as part of a deliberate ploy to emasculate strong men and keep them from their rightful leadership positions. Because of this, a bitter resentment of women runs through almost every strain of the alt-right.
“I don’t know if the alt-right is a truly important new development or just a passing fad—a new name for a lot of the same old resentments that have been around forever. But to the extent the alt-right is important, it’s worth knowing how central this particularly toxic brand of sexism is to the whole movement—even if it doesn’t often get a lot attention. This is also why it’s not right to simply call them racists or neo-Nazis. A lot of them are indeed that, but they’re so, so much more.”
Hollywood’s Weinstein problem is bad. The movie/TV industry in general has too few qualms about relating masculinity to violence and selling sexual stereotypes marinated in a lot of pretty juvenile male fantasies. #metoo will have a tougher time adjusting corporate/studio calculations of “what the public wants”. But I’ll bet gross-pig behavior will get more immediate and louder blowback than before.
But toxic masculinity — based on victimhood, grievance and domination — is a staple of The O’Reilly Diet Plan. A staple so lucrative and satisfying Bill-O and “scores” of other boys at FoxNews apparently became addicted to it.
Which leads me to Steve Bannon. Given everything we know about this manifestly damaged, bitter personality, how long do you think before we find out what or who was dissolved in acid in his hot tub in Florida?
Bonus link: A (possibly bogus) site claims Bannon’s joint, (supposedly occupied by his third ex) was used to cook meth and shoot porn videos.
You want to say, “That’s crazy.” But with this crowd everything is plausible.
Dude, didn’t you read Bill’s comments? He didn’t pay $32 million to buy off the victim of his horrific behavior, that money was paid so that his kids wouldn’t have their sensitive ears sullied with negative comments about their old man. He was just being a good dad and being protective of his kids.
On that basis…Bill, if you’re reading this…please get ahold of me. I’m feeling the need to call you a hypocritical, contemptuous bully who is a serial philanderer and abuser. I think a million or two might encourage me to focus on other things. At least until the new year. We should talk about a regular maintenance contract to keep me feeling mellow and your kids feeling secure to go out in public without worrying about hearing hurtful things from me.
I don’t disagree with this analysis of a certain segment of the ultra-right. I have seen and heard it directly when talking to guys I worked with and others I meet in the course of my street-corner politicking; and of course this neurosis fits perfectly into their addiction to guns, especially pistols (“Glock” rhymes with “cock,” if you hadn’t noticed.) I recall two Trumpites from 2016: one a grotesquely obese middle-aged guy on a motorized personal scooter; another, a vacant-eyed, skinny-armed, scrawny young white man wearing an especially belligerent Trump t-shirt. Each trying to borrow some machismo from the Boss Bullshitter—as the Big Lie morphed into Big Myth–and each appearing as a pathetic self-parody. But they got the last laugh, didn’t they?
BUT and it’s a significant BUT—this is scarcelty the whole picture. There are lots and lots of women in the Maggot’s camp—it was pro-Trump women who were more conspicuous, and vociferous, towards me outside the State Fair this summer! So how do all those pro-Trump women fit into any generalization about the insecure, frustrated Trump-worshipping males?
Also, it’s a fact that Trump’s role as the “Fuehrer of Resentment” brings him the support of real working folks, mainly men, productive workers who keep the systems of our civilization humming—equipment operators, truck drivers, mechanics, electricians, engineers, skilled tradesmen, etc.
These aren’t necessarily sad sacks with neuroses, they are often salt-of-the-earth people who have no special difficulty attracting mates and raising families, and are the opposite of the stereotype of the neurotic Trump fanatic.
But a steady diet of Fox News for 30 years directs them into the ranks of fascism and keeps them there. Al Franken spotted the problem with his “Rush Limbaugh” and “Lying Liars” books, but the political and corporate leaders who might have taken corrective action in time just didn’t understand the ultimate seriousness of the threat. Now it’s too late. These elements in Trump’s base of support are not breaking ranks when they think they’ve won.
And, since no one else will dare to say it I will:
The sexual weirdness of the frustrated, neurotic right-winger looks almost normal compared to the bizarre sex-linked nonsense that is being passed off all the time now as supposedly “progressive”—ranging from an insistence on making the purported rights of purported trans-sexual or trans-gender persons the litmus test of liberalism, on to various other confusions—such as on the one hand wanting to “abolish gender,” or on the other hand asserting that there are a dozen varieties of “gender identity” that must be recognized and catered to as protected categories of human rights. Good grief! I don’t know how it happened, or who decided to make “transgenderism” into the trendy fad of the 21st century—but if that’s where the defining political line is going to be drawn, as seems to be the situation now, then it’s no wonder that any reactionary political figure, no matter how vicious or sexist or dishonest, would find an easy field ahead. It is unlikely that any sensible society would voluntarily abandon the basic binary arrangement of the human race, and the sooner that the so-called “progressives” figure that out, the better. Gender blur and gender blending have nothing intrinsically political about them—notice that ex-Bruce Jenner insists on being a Republican!—and to embrace these deluded or degenerate cultural dead ends as a test of political principles would be the height of folly. I wish Bill O’Reilly nothing but the absolute worst in the way of embarrassment, bad publicity, exposure, and out-of-pocket expenses . . . just to be clear about that.