Poor Sean Hannity finds it so tough hosting the top Fox show that he has been “offering” sexual assaulter and former number one host Bill O’Reilly his old job back in order to relieve some of the pressure on himself. Not surprisingly, this has enraged some of Fox’s sexual harassment survivors and they’re speaking out.
On Tuesday, multimillionaires O’Reilly and Hannity whined in sympathy with purported billionaire Donald Trump about just how hard life is for them.
O’REILLY: I have never seen a human being able to absorb more punishment than Donald Trump.
HANNITY: So true, it's unbelievable.
O'REILLY: I mean, you and I, we can identify because we've been attacked for more than 20 years, each of us has.
HANNITY: Twenty-four to be exact.
Once you have dried your eyes over this tragedy, do read on because Hannity’s next comments provide some startling insights into his state of mind.
First, Hannity suggested he is in charge of hiring at Fox:
HANNITY: By the way, I keep offering you, go back on Fox …
O’Reilly seemed uninterested in a return. “Why do I want to do that?” he replied. “So I can have security guards go with me everywhere, like I used to?"
Hannity’s explanation was that he wants O’Reilly to take the heat so he (Hannity) doesn’t have to:
HANNITY: No, so that you take the number one slot. I can tell you it's easier being number two because we'll end the --
O'REILLY: Yeah --
HANNITY: We'll end the year again number one in all of cable, and with that comes all the crap associated with it.
Unfortunately for Hannity, three of his former colleagues, each of whom have settled sexual harassment or discrimination claims against Fox or its former CEO, are not feeling his pain. Au contraire, they are speaking out against his “egregious” comments and the onerous provisions of their own settlement agreements that prevent them from getting rehired or even discussing the details of their allegations.
A statement from .@GretchenCarlson @julieroginsky and myself regarding @foxnews pic.twitter.com/Px52OZUyzU
— dianafalzone (@dianafalzone) November 27, 2019
Get out your tiny violins for poor, persecuted Hannity, O'Reilly and Trump as you hear about their hardship and woe below, from the November 26 The Sean Hannity Radio Show, via Media Matters.
(Hannity image via screen grab)
https://twitter.com/BillOReilly/status/1200111194478186496
I had a lot of bad satire prepared but it’s tasteless and the subject is serious. So I’ll leave it at even if Bill-O wasn’t a sexual predator, he’s in a race to the dementia wing of the old folks home with Trump. I’ve seen some of his punditry since he went solo and it’s pitiful. Not bad in an I’m a liberal and don’t like his opinion way. I mean painful to read pitiful if you’re a conservative on his side. He speaks and MAGA hangs its head in embarrassment an establishment Trump poser is their spokesman.
Sorry Bill. You’re past your sell by date. You’ve been replaced by a white nationalist who looks like he just graduated from a New England prep school. The face of the new Republican Party.
O’Reilly didn’t just commit sexual harassment. He was a repeat offender who refused to change his ways, even after Fox News had paid out over 10 million dollars to settle multiple complaints. Granted, this culture started at the top with Roger Ailes, but O’Reilly took full advantage of the opportunity to harass to his heart’s content. O’Reilly wasn’t alone in this (The disgraced Eric Bolling comes to mind), but he appears to have been the most consistent in his terrible treatment of women at the workplace. And all of this was topped off by O’Reilly paying out 32 million dollars to legal analyst Lis Wiehl to settle an egregious harassment situation in 2017. So O’Reilly was no victim here. He was a serial perpetrator who was able to fly under the aegis of Roger Ailes (as Bolling tried to copycat) for 2 decades, but eventually was taken to task. It’s true that his situation with Andrea Mackris got media attention in the early 2000s, but that was actually triggered by O’Reilly himself when he tried to bully her into submission. If anything, O’Reilly learned in the early 2000s that he could get away with his predations if he was willing to pony up a little money sometimes. It wasn’t until 2017 that he was finally pushed out. I have a feeling that Fox News would very much like to rehire O’Reilly but prefers not to deal with the fallout of having more of their former personalities come out in public to denounce them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them wait a few more years and then try to bring O’Reilly back as that “elder statesman” – but I also expect Gretchen Carlson to immediately call them out the second they try it.