#metoo

New York governor Andrew Cuomo is finally getting his comeuppance. Oddly, however, it’s not for killing thousands of nursing home residents. Instead, the press has decided that the real story is Cuomo being slightly creepy toward to young women. Cuomo's comments to two former aides are icky, no doubt. However, the media has also piled on with other spurious accusations that they insist are proof of a pattern of abusive behavior. In one, a young woman says Cuomo touched the small of her back at a wedding and then grabbed her face and asked if he could kiss her. She is visibly uncomfortable in a photo of the incident, but what attractive woman hasn't had a weird old dude make a poorly strategized advance at an event with alcohol?

Since the beginning of this month, the online political conversation has been abuzz over the incipient #MeTooing of yet another powerful man. It began when Lindsey Boylan, a millennial politician who recently launched a campaign for Manhattan borough president after failing to unseat Rep. Jerrold Nadler in November, began sending pointed tweets about her time as an employee in the New York governor’s office.‘Most toxic team environment?’ Boylan wrote, retweeting a prompt asking users to describe the worst job they’d ever had. ‘Working for @NYGovCuomo.

It’s no fun to see Bill Clinton in a virtual vacuum. He’s a people person, a glad-hander, a back-rubber, a donor-stroker, a bottom-fondler. But on Tuesday night, Clinton was a prisoner of Zoom. The big dawg had no legs to rub against.Clinton probably felt as bad about it as his audience. No extended ovation and whooping. No chance to mingle in the green room and offer a White House internship to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Not even an over-long embrace of Rosalynn Carter or a back massage from Jeffrey Epstein’s 22-year-old masseuse after an arduous journey on a private jet to Africa.Tuesday Night was Legacy Night at the Democratic convention, which is not in Milwaukee even though it claims it is.

The new lawsuit filed by two women against Fox News and several of its personalities is riddled with inaccuracies. This raises questions about the veracity of its claims. Jennifer Eckhart and Cathy Areu, a former Fox Business producer and frequent network guest, respectively, claim that they suffered sexual misconduct, harassment, and even rape at the hands of Ed Henry, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Howard Kurtz. The lawsuit immediately made waves in the mainstream media, where it was picked up by the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, CBS News, and other major outlets. It has been a top trending topic on Twitter since its filing. However, a review of several claims made in the suit reveals many basic inaccuracies.

It is a strange habit, the American one of making talk-show hosts into preachers. There is no good reason, after all, why a comedian should be any kind of arbiter of morality or anything much else. Yet in America the court of public opinion accepts the right of the jester to preach the homily too. So it was that, in a period not short on ‘personal takes’ and celebrity messaging, one night in early June on his Late Late Show, James Corden delivered a teary monologue about race relations in America. Lots of people thought he did well, and praised Corden’s talk of ‘white guilt’ and all manner of other sins. But one phrase stood out for being especially bogus. It was a phrase that was widely quoted.

Without a doubt, women who level sexual assault allegations against powerful men are often subjected to character assassination and smears.However, evaluating the credibility of a person who alleges that a presidential candidate committed a grievous act of criminal violence is not the same as ‘smearing’ that person.I’m not interested in smearing Tara Reade, who claims to have been raped by Joe Biden. For one thing, I have no particular affinity for Biden. You can go check my archive at The Spectator and elsewhere for numerous examples of articles in which I harshly criticize Biden, especially for his own pattern of deception as it relates to the circumstances of his 2002 Iraq War vote.

Joe Biden finally went on the record Friday denying he sexually assaulted Tara Reade. It took 39 days and multiple media appearances before he finally addressed the allegation in an official statement and during a live interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe. Biden had over a month to get his story straight, but his response still left a lot to be desired. Biden's decision to address the allegations on Morning Joe was likely strategic, as the hosts of the program have been vocal about defending Democrats accused of sexual harassment and assault. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough reportedly helped Mark Halperin rehabilitate his image after he was accused of groping multiple women. Mika also publicly supported Tom Brokaw, Sen.

Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, claimed in an interview last month that the former vice president had put his hand up her skirt and digitally penetrated her in 1993. Since the March 25 interview, new evidence has emerged that seems to corroborate Reade's story: her mother called into Larry King's radio show about the incident in 1993, and her brother, a friend, and a neighbor all recall being told the story by Reade. Nonetheless, despite making multiple media appearances in the month since the allegation, Biden has not addressed Reade's claim directly, though his spokespeople have denied it on his behalf. The former VP is nonetheless holding a 'Virtual Women’s Town Hall' on Tuesday.

'The gym bag, I don’t know where it went. I handed it to him. It was gone and then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers.' That's how former Senate aide Tara Reade described a 1993 encounter with her former boss Joe Biden on a podcast last month. A Biden spokesperson says the account is 'false’, but Reade's claim is supported by a friend and her younger brother, who both say she told them about the alleged assault shortly after it happened. But most establishment media outlets, such as the Washington Post, didn’t give her allegation more than a passing mention. Biden managed to give seven interviews to the press without being asked about Reade's claims once.

Alyssa Milano has rebranded herself as a Twitter activist and Democratic party booster since her acting career peaked with the late 90s TV hit Charmed. Thanks in part no doubt to her husband’s powerful connections in the entertainment industry (he’s a managing partner at CAA, a top-tier rep agency in Los Angeles) she’s leveraged her voice onto cable news, podcasts and into political campaigns. She is the celebrity perhaps most responsible for the mainstreaming the #MeToo movement. Her zenith as an activist came in 2018, during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Milano was the most recognizable face behind the justice during the controversial confirmation hearings in which he faced thinly-sourced and circumstantial sexual assault allegations.