After defending Roger Ailes from allegations of sexual harassment, Greta Van Susteren reportedly now says she was uncomfortable with Ailes’ management.
According to CNN’s Brian Stelter, Van Susteren’s sudden and somewhat mysterious departure from Fox News was the result of a failed attempt to renegotiate her contract with a big pay raise. “Fox executives refused to negotiate,” he reported.
But Stelter also added some details to Van Susteren’s enigmatic “explanation,” that, “Fox has not felt like home to me for a few years.” Stelter wrote:
Van Susteren was motivated to leave in part because she had been unhappy and uncomfortable with the way Ailes ran the network the past few years, and with the way the network was perceived, two of the sources said.
Even while vocally defending Fox in public, she had concerns in private.
“It didn’t appear it was getting better” after Ailes left, one of the sources said, so she looked to the exit.
Really? Then why did Van Susteren go to such lengths defending Ailes from accusations of sexual harassment by Gretchen Carlson just two months ago? Especially when Fox has now tacitly acknowledged Ailes’ guilt? To People, Van Susteren didn’t just say she never knew of any sexual harassment, she praised Ailes’ professionalism, declared she wouldn’t be working at Fox if there were harassment and said she felt “bad” for Carlson “because it’s sort of a weird thing that she’s done.”
So what perception of the network was Van Susteren not happy with? If it wasn’t sexual misconduct then it had to be Fox’s political agenda, right? But Van Susteren did her part as much as anyone at Fox to promote Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Republican causes.
Look, I understand that sometimes you have to do and say things you’d prefer not to in order to keep a job. And I do not mean to vilify Van Susteren who seems like an ethical, kind person who was trying to be a team player. But the fact is that her “going along” (assuming she didn’t mean it) helped legitimize propaganda as news.
And here’s the other thing: there was nothing, apparently, that Van Susteren was so bothered by at Fox that a bigger paycheck wouldn’t have made palatable.
So, yeah, it’s better late than never that Van Susteren kinda, sorta admitted there’s something rotten in the state of Fox News and I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that her admission came from the heart and not a calculation that she’d be better off distancing herself from the network during such "chaos." And it does appear that Fox treated her shabbily by yanking her off the air with barely any notice, as Stelter reported.
But she that lieth down with Fox wakes up with fleas.
Watch Stelter discuss Van Susteren’s departure below, on September 6, 2016, via CNN.
Why Greta Van Susteren is leaving Fox News so suddenly
A courier arrived at Van Susteren's Washington, D.C. home at 9 a.m. Tuesday, hand-delivering two letters that said that Van Susteren "was being taken off the air" immediately, according to her husband, John Coale, who is a high-profile Washington lawyer. Van Susteren was already planning to leave, but she thought she would be hosting her 7 p.m.
I didn’t think we needed the same comment three times.
As for the substance, I agree with d d.
Get it through your head, Will, employees should NOT have to put up with sexual harassment in the workplace. Period. If the bosses, executives, co-workers, etc. choose to harass in the workplace, there can be (and should be) big consequences as this case has shown.
Still, she’s a BFD in the Scientology world and rolling in slightly off-smelling dough, so I guess she has plenty of options. ‘The Real Housewives of Salem’, maybe?
