A former Fox News regular, Professor Caroline Heldman, has come forward as another O’Reilly accuser. According to attorney Lisa Bloom, Heldman called in a complaint to Fox News’ hotline today.
Heldman, a political science professor, was a one-time regular guest on Fox but seems to have been absent of late.
We don’t have a lot of details about Heldman’s complaint beyond a brief mention in Bloom’s “victory statement” (found via LawNewz) that Heldman had made one:
Here is my victory statement. pic.twitter.com/TQLC6Oz9gk
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) April 19, 2017
Meanwhile, Heldman just happened to turn up on Fox again last night, this time on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Carlson is the man chosen to replace Bill O’Reilly, who was forced out of Fox today after multiple allegations of harassment were uncovered by The New York Times.
Carlson was hardly respectful to Heldman.
Heldman was on Carlson's show, on Tax Day, to argue that taxes on the one percent are too low. In case anyone in the conservative viewing audience found her argument (which was cogent and feisty, as always) persuasive, she was identified on the screen throughout as “socialist professor.”
Not long into the discussion, Carlson asked, “You’re from an affluent family. What does your Mom think of this?”
Really? Heldman is not a little girl. She looks to be in her 40s. She also has a Ph.D.
Predictably, Carlson used that sneer as a launch pad to suggest that Heldman is some kind of hypocrite who doesn’t “practice what you preach.” Even though Heldman repeatedly told him that she is not in the one percent and donates a lot of her income to charities.
In a final effort to demean and denigrate her, Carlson laughed derisively as he closed the interview, snarking, “Call me when you start sending all your money to the government and then I’ll follow suit.” He could barely get out the words from laughing so hard at her.
Watch it below, from the April 18, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight and see why there’s no reason to expect any real change in the kind of poisonous rhetoric Fox spews any time soon.
This clip is his typically vicious approach. He sets up a completely false premise, sneaks in his biased narrative in a setup question that is intended to immediately knock the guest into a sidetrack, and then repeatedly interrupts her with irrelevant jabs to try to distract her from saying anything.
Carlson and Hannity appear to be vying for who can win the title of Bully of the Year for the Year of the Bully.
I frankly see no point in having any educated liberal appear on Carlson’s show if he is not going to even allow them to say anything without cutting them off, talking over them or making a point of laughing derisively at them when they do manage to actually get six words out without an interruption.
The top tax rate back then was 85%.
There’s no point in arguing with these people.
