Tim Graham and Brent Bozell’s Nov. 27 column is all about piling on Charlie Rose over sexual harassment allegations. They call him among the “elites,” “privileged” and a member of the “ruling elite.” They lecture: “Every powerful man who is getting caught up in this wave isn’t living by the Ten Commandments but by the ‘Access Hollywood’ code: When you’re a star, the women will let you do it. You can do anything.”
Funny thing about that: Graham and Bozell never lectured the man who invented the “Access Hollywood” code — Donald Trump — that way. As we documented, both Bozell and Graham went the Clinton Equivocation route when Trump’s misogyny surfaced, insisting that Bill Clinton did much worse . Rather than devote an entire column to shaming Trump, Graham and Bozell whined and deflected for an entire column, huffing about an “October surprise” and deflected by insisting, “As repugnant as it was, Trump’s offense was words. The Clintons’ offenses were actions.” The word “repugnant” is the only criticism of Trump’s behavior in that entire column.
And Graham and Bozell certainly didn’t spend an entire column shaming Roger Ailes or Bill O’Reilly for their actions in the field of vile sexual harassment. As we also documented, their column on O’Reilly could muster only a perfunctory “indefensible, if true” disclaimer, then dismissed the accusations as old news and went all Clinton Equivocation again. And when Ailes died earlier this year, Bozell gushed over his work in building Fox News but stayed silent about Ailes’ victims, and his Media Research Center attacked anyone who brought them up.
Graham and Bozell extended their Rose-shaming to his employers: “Charlie Rose exploited women for decades as he produced shows at Bloomberg’s TV studio for PBS and hosted shows on CBS. None of those news agencies ever seemed to find any wrongdoing inside their own offices worth reporting. The embarrassment and shame should also be theirs.” Again, they never shamed Fox News for not finding Ailes’ and O’Reilly’s repugnant behavior worth reporting on.
Back in their 2016 column whining about and deflecting from the Trump misogyny, Graham and Bozell concluded: “The cynicism boggles the mind.” True — especially your own, boys.