The Media Research Center’s Tim Graham and Brent Bozell lecture in their Oct. 13 column:
We can guess no one will make a movie about the decades of harassment by Weinstein and Hollywood’s cover-up. And, certainly, no one would win an Oscar for it. No Holy Father in Tinseltown has moral authority. Feminist superstars like Meryl Streep professed they hadn’t the slightest idea of what their friend Harvey was doing … which makes them either profoundly cynical or amazingly clueless.
A far more believable response came from French actress Lea Seydoux, who wrote in the Guardian that she was groped by Weinstein. She said: “Everyone knew what Harvey was up to and no one did anything. It’s unbelievable that he’s been able to act like this for decades and still keep his career.”
If the liberal intelligentsia found it completely unbelievable that a Catholic bishop might have been uninformed about sexual abuse by priests, then how do they expect anyone to believe it’s impossible for the Streeps of Hollywood to be unaware?
How about conservatives who regularly appeared on Fox News — like Bozell, for example, who for years had a recurring weekly segment on Sean Hannity’s show, or any of the other MRC — who pontificate about Weinstein by don’t want to talk about the serial sexual harassment perpetrated by Fox News chief Roger Ailes and host Bill O’Reilly?
As we’ve documented, Bozell not only couldn’t be bothered to condemn Ailes — that would have likely cut down on Fox News appearances for him and MRC — his praise of Ailes upon the latter’s death earlier this year completely censored mention of the sexual harassment that cost him his job.
As far as O’Reilly’s sexual harassment goes, Bozell and Graham wrote a column that included exactly one sentence in perfunctory denunciation of the harassment and the entire rest of the column attacking O’Reilly’s critics and the “liberal media” for exposing it. Further, Graham appeared on the final episode of O’Reilly’s show (albeit after he had been suspended) and didn’t think he needed to comment on that situation.
Graham then took it one step further in an Oct. 15 post by attacking one of Ailes’ accuser, whining that “this week’s People gave three pages to a big article on former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, whose sexual harassment accusations against Fox News chief Roger Ailes created a similar hubbub in July 2016. Fox News settled her lawsuit for $20 million.” Yes, according to Graham, Ailes’ serial sexual harassment was just a “hubbub,” apparently not a big deal.
Graham then portrayed Carlson’s allegations as part of a liberal hit job on Ailes: “Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back, and they loaded in an excerpt. The book’s dust-cover testimonials come from a progressive crowd: Maria Shriver, Katie Couric, Larry Wilmore, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, Billie Jean King, and Fox-loathing journalist Gabriel Sherman.”
Graham seems not to have considered that Carlson’s publishers could find no conservative who would speak out on her behalf for fear of alienating Fox News and losing those precious TV hits — after all, Bozell and Graham certainly have no interest in doing so.