Bill O'Reilly Was A Sexually Harassing Pig For Decades

So, Digby, this week we got news that we were going to be without some people in the future.
In the immediate term, we are going to be without I know one of your favorite TV personalities
for many years.
Bill O'Reilly is no longer going to be with us on Fox News, and we'll also talk about
Congressman Chaffetz or Chaffetz.
Jason Chaffetz said that he won't run for reelection, which is also a very strange story
in many respects.
But let's stick first with Bill O'Reilly where I think the strangest part about this story
is that there has been a publicly-owned business that has been employing this guy for as long
as they have with the record that he has had in terms of harassing women that have worked
for him, that have worked for the network, that have come on as guests on the network.
Also, I think it's just bizarre that we actually have something called Fox News that has been
spewing this garbage for almost 20 years now.
The fact is it was over a decade ago that it was revealed that Bill O'Reilly was a sexually
harassing pig.
He was sued by a woman named Andrea Mackris.
The depositions that were released from that lawsuit, there were recordings of Bill O'Reilly
harassing her.
Actually in his own voice.
Harassing her over the phone.
And they were repulsive.
He was a repulsive pig.
They settled with her for a lot of money, and it was like nothing happened.
I remember writing about it.
You must've talked about it at the time.
We were all over that story.
I think I played the Mackris opera that was written by somebody …
Yeah.
I put it up on my blog last week in tribute to Bill O'Reilly being fired.
This guy, it's not like this wasn't known.
In other words, the point I'm making is that this has been out there forever.
Recently, we find out that ... There had been rumors for many years that Roger Ailes, the
boss at Fox, was also a piggish sexual harasser.
It turns out that they've spent millions of dollars.
People say that it was like a porno ring in there in that newsroom.
Suddenly, it's like, okay, finally advertisers felt enough pressure from their constituents,
from their customers, apparently to actually withdraw from O'Reilly when it turned out
that there had been a number of big dollar settlements done over the years, and most
recently people are coming forward to say that he's done it again.
I'm still astonished that it took that long and that it took that much to reach this point.
This guy really, he had to actually be exposed ... What were the advertisers thinking after
the Mackris thing?
Maybe he- I think the interesting thing about this story
to me is that there seems to me there are two factors that weren't there during the
Mackris time.
One is social media, which I think in terms of boycotts, in terms of creating economic
pressures on corporations, and certainly people have talked about this.
But I don't think that can be underestimated.
The speed and the ability for someone, really anyone, to begin to broadcast and embarrass
corporations now is really significant.
I don't need to have many followers on Twitter to start this campaign if someone with a lot
of followers retweets me, and then ... We see it all the time where people on Twitter
are like ... And we saw it with the United Airlines, frankly, this past week or two.
It is making, I think, corporations hyperconscious of ... I don't want people to get the wrong
impression.
I don't think there's any more morality involved in these decisions at all.
It's making them a lot more nervous because there's a lot more leverage that people have,
whether they're consumers of these products or not.
You can really tarnish the image of a corporation now through these campaigns.
Certainly this was done before.
John Aravosis from AMERICAblog, he had done this with Dr. Laura like almost 20 years ago,
I think.
Bill O'Reilly was a machine that made over $100 million annually himself for this company.
That's a big ... You need to take out a lot of advertisers to make that hurt, and apparently,
that's more or less what happened on some level.
The other thing that strikes me is that Donald Trump, the era of Donald Trump has activated
a broader cross section of people, particularly women, and, I think, has raised a certain
level of sensitivity to this type of stuff.
What is your sense of that?
I think that's true.
Look, Trump himself got away with it.
The Access Hollywood tape, by all that is decent in this world, should have disqualified
him to be President of the United States.
It didn't, but I think the fact that it didn't probably has raised the bar now, or actually
maybe lowered the bar, for people to, for women in particular, to just go, ‘Wait a
minute.’
I think that it has opened people's eyes to the lack of accountability that you find at
a certain level in our society among a certain group of men.
People like Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump.
That's a type.
Roger Ailes.
These are very domineering jerks who are- And we should say they're buddies.
This is actually like a social group.
Oh, yeah.
All of them.
Trump came out and basically, didn't basically, blatantly defending Bill O'Reilly.
Said, "He shouldn't have settled.
I don't think he did anything wrong."
He said those words.
And Ailes.
Yeah.
He did the same thing for Ailes, too.
He did it for both.
He does not believe that they did anything wrong, and he think that that is perfectly
okay.
As Melania Trump said, "It's just boys talk."
That is just something they think is okay.
Well, our culture is saying ‘No, it's not okay.’
We know when it starts to affect the bottom line, that becomes a much bigger problem for
corporate America.
From what I understood reading about the O'Reilly firing, there was a lot of argument going
on.
There's Rupert Murdoch who also defended all these guys, who's currently running Fox News
after Ailes' departure.
He didn't want to let O'Reilly go, and not just for financial reasons, although he had
been a cash cow, and certainly he had a very loyal audience that really stuck by him through
this whole thing.
But it was the sons who are the heir apparents at News Corp. who were arguing for firing
Bill O'Reilly.
Apparently, one of them, James, had been saying ‘No, I think we should keep him.’
According to the reporting by Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine, it was James' wife that
persuaded him that ‘You've really got to let O'Reilly go.
This is bad.’
It's interesting because the same thing happened ... The New England Patriots came to the White
House this week.
Tom Brady, the quarterback, did not show up, and that was kind of surprising …
Well, I got to say I was very happy about that.
Look, all right, we got to take a break.
Let's come back.
We'll wrap up this talk about Bill O'Reilly, although I feel like it deserves probably
hours of celebration.
Then, we'll also talk about another person who has announced that they won't be with
us at least in Congress or won't be running for reelection.
That's Jason Chaffetz.
Very interesting development indeed.
We got to take a quick break.
We'll be right back with more.
I'm Sam Seder.
This is Ring of Fire Radio.
I'm talking to Digby or Heather Parton.
We'll be right back.

Bill O'Reilly Was A Sexually Harassing Pig For Decades

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