An MSNBC spokesman has confirmed a report saying a news channel staffer had been paid and left the job after complaining she was sexually harassed by ‘Hardball’ host Chris Matthews nearly two decades ago.
The spokesman said Sunday the woman approached CNBC executives in 1999 to report Matthews made inappropriate comments about her in front of others. CNBC is a sister company of MSNBC.
The company declined to identify the comments, other than to say they were inappropriate and never meant as propositions. The spokesman said Matthews was formally reprimanded at the time.
time.com
I have
written a couple of post over the past few weeks concerning the vulnerability
of most men to an accusation of sexual harassment from some time in their past. The posts were not to justify inappropriate
behavior by men, but to warn against a ‘lets clean the house’ mentality – a social
inquisition aimed at all men by women.
I had in
mind to write a third post on the possible consequences of a perceived war
against men; but decided that it would come off as sexist to the female readers
that might visit my blog – and I would regret that.
But today on
Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski voiced the comments I would have written.
I believe
this world would be more peaceful and saner with women in charge. For women to attain positions of authority,
especially in corporate America, they must compete for positions with men.
It goes
without saying that the work place should be safe and unthreatening for women;
it also goes without saying that a man who makes a female uncomfortable in the
work place should be censured and that men who are sexual predators should lose
their jobs.
But, there
must be a flexible standard. A purge mentality
against all men for past indiscretions will backfire.
Any business
man looking to hire a permanent staff person, with two equally qualified young applicants
– one female and one male - must decide which applicant can smoothly transition
into the position as the best fit to the existing staff.
However, the
young female, from the very beginning, is at a disadvantage. It is
a given that some time in the future a temp will have to be hired and trained
to replace the young woman while she is on paid maternity leave.
Now add to
this the specter of having your whole business disrupted by a sexual harassment
charge leveled at some male member of your staff. As an
executive you must now think twice before taking a business trip with a female
employee, you must think twice before having a private business lunch with a
female employee, and even a private business meeting or evaluation meeting
alone with a female employee would be uncomfortable. This
is the new business atmosphere concerning female employment.
The obvious
choice: hire the man.
I don’t have an answer to this; and it is not
right; but in the business world that exist today, this is a reality.
It is also a
reality that a man’s career, his employability, his finances, his family, and
his life can be destroyed by one accusation of sexual harassment from his past.
In the military we use to say: One ah-shit can nullify ten attaboys.
the Ol'Buzzard
I'm done. I ain't touching that shit any more.
ReplyDeleteFriend of mine received a very dirty joke in her email from a superior. She shared the joke with coworkers. One of them reported her for sharing the joke. The joke was deemed inappropriate, she was fired. However, the male superior who sent the unwanted joke, also on work time from his work computer, is still employed.
ReplyDeleteShe showed the joke out of her own sense of embarrassment instead of doing what she should have done, which is report him.
Just a couple of oh so small edits . . . "It is also a reality that a woman’s career, her employability, her finances, her family, and her life can be destroyed by one incident of sexual harassment in the past, present or future." But that's never really been a concern to anyone before, has it?
ReplyDeleteAnd remember that employers are vicariously liable for the actions of their employees. So yeah, boss, go ahead, roll the dice and hire that man over a woman. He could end up costing you a helluva lot more than the price of a maternity leave or two.
I teach every other kind of character development in school, so I wouldn't mind teaching lessons about how the genders should treat each other. Too many youngsters don't have good role models for respectful, upright behavior.
ReplyDeleteIt's never been about sex, you know. It's about the abuse of power. The only reason it's been so focused on men's bad behavior is there haven't been enough women in positions of power for the power-tripping female jerks to emerge. I am amused by your naïve belief that if only women were running the world things would be different. At least two of my male colleagues were sexually harassed by female supervisors at a government agency (one had his junk grabbed by a supervisor many pay grades above him, another was verbally abused after she found out he wasn't interested in her because he was gay). If I can think of two without working at it and I have a fairly small circle of acquaintances, how many more are out there? Yes, many men have behaved badly for decades and payback can be a bitch -- but a world run by women would not automatically be an improvement.
ReplyDeleteAs for why the power-tripping behavior tends to manifest as sexual abuse, I'd say the answer is pretty obvious. Sex is where we're all at our most vulnerable and insecure. If you're going to be abusive, you're going to hit where it's going to be the hardest to deal with.
Commensurate with the notion that women would be kinder, less sociopathic as supervisors is the idea that they're be less warlike in foreign policy. If women ran the world, we'd be less likely to get entangled in senseless conflicts. I'll just drop a few names and see how that less hawk-like caricature stands up: Indira Gandhi. Golda Meir. Margaret Thatcher. We currently have a Nobel Peace Prize winner sloughing off genocide in Myanmar so I don't see where having a woman achieve some power there has helped an oppressed minority there. Hillary Clinton was widely acknowledged as being one of the most hawkish people in the Obama administration, possibly because she learned realpolitik at Kissinger's knee, and Madeline Albright wasn't exactly the kumbaya type either.
Wow! Excellent post guy. As a male of this screwed up species, I can definitely relate.
ReplyDeleteBut then the ladies piped up. Another Wow!
Good points made all around. And yet while we all can see the problem, no one seems to know what to do about it. Any reaction now seems too much or not enough.