On Monday, three days after the publication of an article detailing allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Moonves … CBS said in a statement that its board was ‘in the process of selecting outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation.’ …
The company had announced the planned investigation on Friday, hours after The New Yorker published a report that included six women who said Mr. Moonves had asked them for sexual favors and retaliated when they declined.
(The New York Times, July 30, 2018)
Frankly, this investigation is just a formality. Because, as it did with Harvey Weinstein, The New Yorker has provided all the BOD needs – in this age of #MeToo – to do the right thing.
Unsurprisingly, this analogy extends to claims that, as chairman and CEO, Moonves presided over the same kind of culture of sexual harassment at CBS that prevailed at The Weinstein Company. This caused the latter to file for bankruptcy in the wake allegations against Harvey. Therefore, board members at CBS are surely anxious to excise the cancer Moonves represents.
Not to mention the precedent CBS has already set by firing its star anchor Charlie Rose for behavior that seems relatively tame by comparison.
For a little context, here is an excerpt from “Charlie Rose, Accused Sexual Predator, WAS My Favorite TV Interviewer,” November 21, 2017:
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The phenomenon of women outing powerful and influential men as sexual predators has reached critical mass. More to the point, it has already ended the careers of such closeted creeps as Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, and Kevin Spacey. Never mind its conspicuous failure to end that of Donald J. Trump …
I have written many commentaries on men falling from grace. Many have yet to fall, and I shall welcome the comeuppance for each one. But, truth be told, the confluence of schadenfreude, disgust, and shame (for my gender) became such that, after Weinstein, I decided to write no more.
Then came this:
Eight women have told The Washington Post that longtime television host Charlie Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.
The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the Charlie Rose show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011.
(The Washington Post, November 20, 2017)
Trust me folks, Rose was so revered and respected that this is almost like the pope himself being outed as a pedophile. Nobody who hailed his public face could have imagined that he was showing a private face to women that looked very much like that of the predatory Harvey Weinstein. …
This seems a good time to reprise my clarion call for women to replace men in positions of power and influence in every facet of public life. I sounded it in many commentaries over the years, including in “Men Should Be Barred from Politics,” September 25, 2013, “Women Make Better Politicians than Men,” October 14, 2010, and “Cracking the Glass Ceiling: First Woman to Become President in South America,” December 12, 2005.
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Sorry, Les. But these chicks are coming home to roost.
And, try as she might, your TV-star wife, Julie Chen, can’t hide you behind her skirt.
Related commentaries:
Charlie Rose…
Tom Brokaw – MeToo…
NY AG – MeToo…
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