Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

The fedora/Doc Martens combo is a nice touch.

 

I know this is a weird way to process this, but this epidemic we're hearing about now? There is no way I could imagine even 19- or 21-year-old me being confident enough with women to go around grabbing asses and crotches.

 

Scumbag. And, likely another “open secret” in Washington.

A few hours later, I saw him in deep conversation with a number of men I worked with. My gut told me something was up. I worried he was covering his tracks by spreading a rosy version of the night. As many people told me in the course of reporting this story, Thrush is a talker — or, as many put it, “a bullshitter.” He likes to hear gossip, and he likes to spread it.

Gradually, things in the office started to change for me. Certain men in the newsroom, I thought, started to look at me differently. Some of their comments seemed a bit too familiar or were outright offensive. I had a nagging sense that I just wasn’t as respected as I used to be.

I started to think maybe I shouldn’t be in journalism if I couldn’t hang in a tough newsroom. I found myself on edge, nervous and anxious all the time. I started to believe I had brought this all on myself.

In the course of reporting this story, I was told by a male reporter who’d worked at Politico at the time that my instinct was right. He said that the day after that night at the bar, Thrush told him about the incident, except with the roles reversed. I had come onto him, the reporter said Thrush told him, and he had gently shut it down.

In a statement, Thrush denied that he disparaged me to colleagues at Politico. He said that “the encounter described [in this story] was consensual, brief, and ended by me.”

 

Part of the point of these stories, though, is that it's a 50-year-old star reporter doing it to women who are virtually powerless. The 20-year-old reporter isn't sliding his hand up on a women's thigh, it's the veteran in the fedora who knows young women might be in awe of his "star power" enough to acquiesce to sleeping with his fugly ass.

 

And that sort of behavior cuts across all sorts of industries. We hear about the actors and politicians, people whose names are known, but it happens in ordinary offices all the time. People who have a history, a reputation, and a lot of contacts can do a rising young woman a lot of good, or knife her subtly, and they know it. That is an incentive to brush off or keep quiet about behavior which should have had consequences to the person higher on the food chain.

Nothing new, but it's good that it is being talked about - except by the harasser in chief.

 

What about drunk enough?

 

LOL.

 

AKA, "How to Spot a Douche in Less Than 5 Seconds."

 

Restaurant industry, you are on the clock:

Rape in the storage room. Groping at the bar. Why is the restaurant industry so terrible for women?

 

Suspended.

Glenn Thrush, New York Times Reporter, Accused of Sexual Misconduct

 

John Besh and his restaurant organization have already been exposed. Happened almost right after Weinstein, if I remember correctly.

 

A big reason that I think a lot of people have reacted the way they have at these recent scandals is that we all kind of understand the workplace to be sacred from these kind of shenanigans, a "safe space," in the current parlance. You don't have to go to the bar. You don't have to go to the frat party. But, shit, almost everyone goes to work. Not that you should get your ass grabbed at the bar, either, but it feels so much worse happening at work.