Allegations Against Bill O’Reilly Piled Up for Years Before His Demise

As the saying goes, better late than never.  That phrase certainly sums up yesterday's decision by Fox News to fire Bill O'Reilly who has sexually harassed women for years.  It should be lost on no one that just recently Donald Trump, a/k/a Der  Trumpenführer,  another perennial sexual predator, lauded O'Reilly.  Many on the far right and Fox News devotees will likely take the stance that O'Reilly's demise was the result of some sort of liberal conspiracy.  The fact that there is a long list of foul deeds by O'Reilly simply doesn't matter to these people, especially since O'Reilly regularly played to their prejudices and bigotry.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at some of the disgusting behavior of O'Reilly.  It does not make for polite reading and is certainly not what you would want your children to read much less experience.  Here are some article highlights (read the entire piece to understand the depth of O'Reilly's nastiness):

The reign of the most-watched host on the right-wing cable news network is coming to an end after two full decades, brought down by a perfect storm of newly unearthed sexual-harassment accusations, a massive advertiser boycott, and the absence of Roger Ailes, a fellow serial harasser of women, to protect him.

21st Century Fox confirmed the end of O’Reilly’s tenure in a Wednesday statement: “After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the Company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel.”

Even though this latest spate of accusations were what led to his on-air demise, O’Reilly has had a long, troubling history with women in both the workplace and at home.

In October 2004, the O’Reilly Factor star was hit with possibly the greatest lawsuit in the history of cable news: then-associate producer Andrea Mackris accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment, quoting the famed gasbag verbatim from phone calls she surreptitiously recorded.

According to the suit, the at-times “tyrannical and menacing” O’Reilly would masturbate while on the phone with Mackris, at other points suggesting she purchase a vibrator; engage in phone sex or a threesome with him; and listen to lurid details of his alleged sexual encounters with a cabana masseuse, airline stewardesses, and Thai sex-show workers.

Perhaps most famously, O’Reilly fantasized to Mackris how he’d like to shower with her and fondle her with a loofah, which he mistakenly called a “falafel thing” later in the call, according to a transcript.

Mackris also alleged that the then-married O’Reilly threatened to make any woman who complains about his behavior “pay so dearly that she’ll wish she’d never been born.” Two weeks later, he settled the case with a payout around $9 million.

Two years earlier O’Reilly settled with a junior producer named Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, according to the New York Times. Bernstein accused him not of sexual harassment but of belligerent, bullying behavior, including storming into the newsroom to scream at her.

At home, O’Reilly’s temper was no less a problem.

According to court documents from his vicious custody battle with ex-wife Maureen McPhilmy, O’Reilly may have engaged in domestic violence. As Gawker reported at the time, the ex-couple’s teenage daughter told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she witnessed O’Reilly “choking her mom” as he “‘dragged her down some stairs’ by the neck.”

Meanwhile, the sexual-harassment allegations from co-workers continued to pour in. As the Times unearthed last month, former Fox Business Network anchor Rebecca Gomez Diamond had also secretly recorded phone calls in which O’Reilly made unwanted advances on her.

O’Reilly has vociferously denied all of the accusations made against him, with his lawyer often issuing overwrought statements about how the volcanic host “has been subjected to a brutal campaign of character assassination that is unprecedented in post-McCarthyist America.”

But with Ailes gone and the younger sons of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch asserting greater control of the company, O’Reilly has no one left to protect him.

Bill-O can rest easy, however, knowing he has one defender: President Donald Trump, who said, “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

Good riddance to one foul individual.  Now we need to be rid of his cheerleader in the White House.

Republicans Abandon Fox News

One of the problems with American society today is the fact free bubble in which much of the far right exists.  Many of the right have literally no knowledge of what is really happening in the world and the causation behind events.  One of the main purveyors of this embrace of ignorance and deliberate refusal to objective reality has heretofore been been Fox News - or Faux News on this blog.  Now, Republicans appear to be abandoning Fox News, because the network is not sufficiently un-tethered to reality.  What is frightening is that many of those walking away from Fox News will likely gravitate to even more ignorance based "news" outlet.  Perhaps these people fleeing from Fox News will opt to make Storm Front or perhaps The Crusader, the KKK's official newspaper as their preferred source of "news."  Salon looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Since January, Fox News has seen a precipitous drop in its reputation amongst its mostly conservative viewership — falling to 50th place on a list of brands most trusted by Republicans over the past two years.

In 2014, the most dominant cable news channel was the 10th best-perceived brand by Republicans, according to AdAge. But in a YouGov Brand Index survey released at the end of February 2016, the perception of Fox News among Republicans had “declined by approximately 50 percent since January of this year” — to a three-year low.

And in a just-released 2016 YouGov BrandIndex ranking, Fox News’ position plummeted to outside of the top-20 for the first time.  

Trump’s feud with Kelly tarnished the networks’ perception amongst viewers who suspected an anti-Trump bias. And while Trump still found safe refuge at “Fox & Friends” and even had Fox News host Sean Hannity appear in a campaign ad on his behalf, the blatant boosting alienated supporters of other Republican candidates.

Then one of the network’s most veteran female anchors accused former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment.

After Gretchen Carlson filed a blockbuster lawsuit against the Fox News boss, the network saw its biggest shake-up with the retirement of longtime host Greta Van Susteren and the ousting of Ailes — who went on to join the Trump campaign as an adviser.

Enter Trump.TV. As Salon’s Matthew Sheffield’s explained, Trump will be ideally situated to benefit from the demise of the Fox News brand among Republicans. Reports since Ailes’ ousting indicate that Rupert Murdoch and sons Lachlan and James, who help run parent company 21st Century Fox, plan to begin shedding the network’s image as a right-wing media outfit in favor of a more serious journalistic effort.

Host Shepard Smith recently told the Huffington Post that Murdoch indicated after the Ailes scandal that he planned to make Fox News “the best news organization in the America.”

But a more mainstream news source is not what Republican viewers want. While Fox News’ reputational ranking went down, Republicans still despise both CNN and MSNBC much more. CNN and MSNBC were ranked 1,470 and 1,471, respectively.

“If you’re tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast,” Trump told his supporters ahead of the third presidential debate Wednesday. According to the Financial Times, the nearly four hours of coverage had 8.9 million views by Thursday afternoon.

Marco Rubio: He Just Lost the Support of Fox News

The right wing melt down and civil war seems to be intensifying and I candidly find it difficult to summon any sympathy for any of the combatants be they the GOP establishment elite or Trump and his knuckle dragging supporters.  While I shudder at the upheaval that the GOP implosion may wreak on the nation, at the same time I hope that it may make it possible for a reemergence of politics of decency and a goal of providing solutions to pressing needs and issues rather than being consumed by the hate, bigotry and selfishness that are the hallmarks of today's GOP.  Meanwhile, in the GOP civil war, Fox News is seemingly throwing Marco Rubio overboard.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this new right wing backstabbing.  Here are are excerpts:

In his role as the donor class's darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans' media arm, Fox News.   . . . . But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he's lost confidence in Rubio's ability to win. "We're finished with Rubio," Ailes recently told a Fox host. "We can't do the Rubio thing anymore." 

Ailes was already concerned about Rubio's lackluster performance in GOP primaries and caucuses, winning only one contest among the 15 that have been held. But the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the "Gang of 8" comprehensive immigration-reform bill.

Fox's corporate support of Rubio has also been a growing source of tension with the network's more conservative talent. Sean Hannity was furious that the Times article reported how he went along with Rubio's immigration proposal. During an interview with Trump on Monday, Hannity barely defended Fox while Trump trashed Rubio backers like Hayes. "He shouldn't be on the air," Trump said. The best Hannity could muster was to change the subject. "Have you ever watched MSNBC?" he said. "They suck."

Ailes is now back to searching for a candidate the channel can rally behind. "He's thinking, What do we do about the whole damn thing?" one of the news executive's friends said.

Fox News Dumps Sarah Palin!

Some have conjectured that with Rupert Murdoch's handing over the reigns of his media empire to his sons does not bode well for Roger Ailes and Fox News.  Whether that will prove accurate remains to be seen, but today Fox News took a first step towards improving the quality of its programming: it did not renew it contract with the idiot of the North, Sarah Palin.  Sadly, I suspect that Palin will still make a living hawking her ignorance and bigotry to pockets of the Republican Party base.  Nonetheless, Palin's platform will be much reduced and, if we are lucky, the mainstream media will increasingly ignore her.  A piece in Salon looks at Palin receiving her walking papers.  Here are highlights:

In 2010, Fox News announced with great fanfare that it had hired Sarah Palin as a contributor. On Wednesday morning, Politico’s Mike Allen informed his readers that her days with the network were through — and that she’d actually severed ties with Fox nearly a month ago. The former conservative superstar had found her tenure at the leading conservative news outlet quietly smothered with a pillow.

The reasons for the split are easy enough to divine. Fox News must have decided that it wasn’t worth paying Sarah Palin a very large sum of money (her first contract was worth $1 million a year) to ramble on incoherently, especially when Sarah Palin isn’t what she used to be. The network’s core viewership is ultra-loyal — the only thing that makes a stalwart Fox News viewer disappear is death — and unlikely to switch to CNN just because Palin isn’t around as much as she used to be. Any way you look at it, Fox News needs Palin far less than Palin needs Fox News.

[W]hen Palin took herself out of contention [in 2012], a large part of her attractiveness to Ailes evaporated. To make matters worse, she enraged him by breaking the news on Mark Levin’s radio show, not Fox News.

Things got so bad after that that Palin was reduced to publicly complaining when her appearances got canceled. Relations haven’t improved much since then, even after Fox News signed a new contract with Palin in 2013. Her most memorable appearance in the years since was when she went on Megyn Kelly’s show and delivered a monologue about everything and nothing, which was incomprehensible even by her paltry standards.

What’s more, the political landscape has shifted in fundamental ways since her heyday.  . . . . Even Fox News itself seems to be moving away from those days, at least superficially. Its big star now is Megyn Kelly, who is positioning herself as an independent-minded heir to Barbara Walters.

It’s all very end-of-an-era, isn’t it? You almost want to thank Fox News for allowing everyone to begin to move on completely from Sarah Palin, and hastening her consignment to the dustbin of history, where she belongs.