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

Power is relative. I'm certain that among the worst victims, we will eventually find out, are hotel and healthcare workers. The guy in charge of the mail room is in position to potentially abuse that power.

 

'He Was Masturbating… I Felt Like Crying': What Housekeepers Endure To Clean Hotel Rooms | HuffPost

Last year, Unite Here surveyed roughly 500 of its Chicago area members who work in hotels and casinos as housekeepers and servers, many of them Latino and Asian immigrants. The results were disturbing:

• 58 percent of hotel workers and 77 percent of casino workers said they had been sexually harassed by a guest.
  
• 49 percent of hotel workers said they had experienced a guest answering the door naked or otherwise exposing himself.
  
• 56 percent of hotel workers who’d reported harassment said they didn’t feel safe on the job afterward.
  
• 65 percent of casino cocktail servers said a guest had touched or tried to touch them without permission.
  
• Nearly 40 percent of casino workers said they’d been pressured for a date or a sexual favor.
  

 

The alcoholism excuse has been wildly underplayed, IMO, in these past few months.

 

Meanwhile, his book deal partner NYTer Maggie Haberman has been silent on the news.

 

She is probably still working on a thoughtful response to my Aug. 18 email to her:

Mr. Shear and Ms. Haberman:

I am no supporter of President Donald Trump. At all.

However, as a former journalist and author myself, and current attorney whose job is trafficking in the precise use of language, I have to take issue with the Times consistently asserting as settled fact this week that President Trump "defended white supremacists." This is not settled fact. It's an inference that the Times has taken wide liberties with. I assume that the Times has Tuesday's press conference in mind. Although he was typically incoherent, the President actually explicitly attempted to distinguish the white supremacists and neo-Nazis from the "fine people" he believed were at the rally to protest the removal of a statue. And yet in your piece this afternoon, "Defiant Trump Laments Assault on Culture and Revives a Bogus Pershing Story," your lede reads as follows:

WASHINGTON — Despite ongoing rebukes over his defense of white supremacists, President Trump defiantly returned to his campaign’s nativist themes on Thursday. He lamented an assault on American “culture,” revived a bogus, century-old story about killing Muslim extremists and attacked Republicans with a renewed vigor.

To me, unless strongly qualified, the President's remarks simply do not support the way the lede is worded, and he and his supporters would be well-supported in asserting as much. The President has been clumsy with his language. And his handling of this entire matter has been an outrage on many levels. But stating as a settled fact in a straight news story that he "defen[ded] white supremacists" provides ammunition to the people who are already convinced that the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly.

I felt the same way about a straight news lede this week by Glenn Thrush that stated, again as a settled fact, that the President had "bow[ed] to overwhelming pressure" when he issued a revised statement on Monday afternoon. Although that is 99 percent likely, I am extremely uncomfortable with the unqualified assignment of motive without attribution in that, or any, case.
I wish the paper would start playing these stories straighter.

Thank you.

(Emphasis added.)

 

I can’t believe many fine people march alongside white supremacists.

 

I'm sure she never gets any mail regarding her coverage of Trump. Probably the only one that week.

 

I can't believe he wrote it.

 

Yep, he was almost certainly wrong about that.

But he didn't defend white supremacists.

The doof says and does so many stupid things, the impulse to reach baffles me.