New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman has reported on five more women who claim to have been sexually harassed by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.
As I’ve previously reported, former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson has filed a lawsuit accusing Ailes of sexual harassment. Ailes has denied the charges and 21st Century Fox, FNC’s parent company, has launched an independent investigation. A number of current and former Fox hosts and personalities, have come forward to defend Ailes: Greta Van Susteren, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Maria Bartiromo, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Kiran Chetry, Geraldo Rivera, Jedediah Bila and Sandra Smith. Also, as Media Matters notes, Ainsley Earhardt, Jeanine Pirro, Harris Faulkner and Martha MacCallum, plus Bret Baier, Brit Hume, Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity. As Gretchen Carlson has pointed out, most of them are "still being paid by Fox."
But a steady drip of accusers keeps coming forward, too. I previously noted that Sherman interviewed six women who reported sexual abuse. Two of them were on the record.
Now, Sherman’s sources have told him that three former Fox anchors are among the victims. He has talked to two more who claim to have been harassed by Ailes during his time as a daytime television producer. From Sherman's latest report:
According to sources I spoke with, at least three former Fox anchors have been harassed. One former rising star at the network has said that Ailes approached her during a barbecue at Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy’s house in New Jersey while she was bouncing on a trampoline with children and said, “Are you wearing any panties? I wish you weren’t.” Another recently departed Fox host has claimed Ailes made her turn around in his office to show him her figure.
Meanwhile, more women from Ailes’s years as a daytime television producer have come forward. This week, I spoke with Judy, a 67-year-old former model who says that during an audition for The Dennis Wholey Show in 1969, when she was 19 years old, Ailes asked her to lift up her skirt and lie facedown on a bed at the Sheraton Gibson Hotel in Cincinnati. “I totally freaked,” she said, on the condition that I would only use her first name for fear of retribution. “I got up and ran to the door. He stood in front of the door and locked it.” Judy managed to escape and tell her parents, and they took her to the police. “I remember Ailes being manipulative and sweet-talking my parents out of pressing charges,” she says. “Afterwards, he called my mom and said, ‘If you ever need anything, you call me.”
Another former model, now 74 and speaking anonymously because she never told her husband about her experience, said Ailes propositioned her during her interview for The Mike Douglas Show in 1967, promising, “If you sleep with me, all these things will happen.” She says they did have sex several weeks later at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. “Then I started getting calls from an agency — I think they got my number from him. I got asked to go on interviews in New York City, but they weren’t jobs at all. I was sent to different places where you’d go into a room and some guy would be there thinking you have to give him a blow job. It was horrifying. I wasn’t a prostitute.” Later, she said, she tried to kill herself with pills.
Stay tuned!
Roger Ailes caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license.
These female frauds defending Ailes is still getting paid by this cafeteria Catholic. Of course, they will defend him. These same broads would defend pedophile priests to keep their job at Fox “News.”
Coming down the pipeline:
1. Bye Ailes.
2. Bye male mouthpieces (and you know who you are).
3. Bye suits ( and you know who you are).
4. Forced retirements.
5. A new leader at the Foxies.
6. Big, big, big shakeup at Fox “News.”
7. Internal turmoil at Fox “News.”
8. Inside moles take down staffers and on-air male mouthpieces.
NOTE TO AILES
We are planning your retirement party. Except, you are not invited.
To Hasselbeck’s comments about how much help Daddy Douchey and Kilmeade were to her, I see her as needing more help than Carlson did. Carlson had more experience in a news-ish setting, was better spoken and I don’t don’t recall her looking as lost and incoherent as Hasselbeck was when she first started F&F. IMHO, Hasselbeck got more of what she calls “respect” and “kindness” from Douchey/Kilmeade because she needed them more than Carlson did and the guys of the curvy couch liked that.
Because Carlson wasn’t so in need of the guys’ help, it rubbed them the wrong way (especially Douchey) and, in return, she was on the receiving end of some resentment that resulted in “belittling”, “shunning” and attempts “to put her in her place”. Unfortunately, I can relate to exactly that in the workplace.
http://www.etonline.com/news/193052_elisabeth_hasselbeck_speaks_out_on_sexual_harassment_claims_against_fox_news_ceo_roger_ailes/
And, regarding a couple of the FOX “news” women saying that Ailes was like a “father” figure (Ainsley) and “Dad-ish” (Jedediah), on another news site I read a comment from a female poster who made an excellent point. She said that employees don’t need a parent-type figure at work as that’s inappropriate. Employees are adults who need a professional mentor and a role model in their bosses – not a mommy or a daddy. The more I thought about what that poster said, I agree. Maybe Ainsley, Jedediah should question themselves as to why it is they think Ailes being a so-called father figure to them is a good thing.
