You know things are getting uncomfortable at the Media Research Center on the #MeToo front — after all, it has studiously avoided talking about the sexual harassment allegations against numerous Fox News personalities even as it rants about non-conservative alleged perpetrators.
As the spousal abuse scandal involving White House adviser Rob Porter was blowing up, CNSNews.com was studiously ignoring that too, until it got to the point that biased reporter Susan Jones whined that she had to cover it. The only other article CNS has done on Porter is a Feb. 12 piece by Melanie Arter uncritically regurgitating the Trump White House line on Porter.
In the midst of this, CNS felt the need to … recount a decade-old consensual affair involving a current Democratic candidate for California governor. Craig Bannister grumbles in a Feb. 8 CNS blog post:
California Lt. Governor Gavin Newson [sic] (D), now running for governor, says the #MeToo movement doesn’t apply to his affair with a female staffer who was married to his chief campaign adviser.
[…]But, addressing the scandal at a Politico event on Monday, Newsom said the #MeToo movement should focus on “deeper issues” than his sexual affair with a subordinate:
“The #MeToo movement represents “a profound opportunity to address deeper issues,” he said, adding: ‘It’s not a political movement, it’s a cultural movement.’”
“I applaud women for coming forward” as part of the #MeToo movement, Newsom added.
One woman who has come forward – the subordinate Newsom had the affair with – agrees with Newsom that the #MeToo movement doesn’t apply to the Democrat running for governor:
So everyone agrees — except Bannister — that a consensual affair, however ill-advised, is not sexual harassment. But it diverted the eyes of CNS readers away from actual bad things happening in the Trump administration, so it arguably served its purpose.