Sex harassment: More shoes to drop
After marveling at how many Beltway cognoscenti went down yesterday over sex harassment claims – John Conyers, Charlie Rose, Glenn Thrush (he can throw in Oliver Stone, too) – Axios's Mike Allen said he had an even more interesting tidbit: there is more to come.
More big-name sex harassers are on the cusp of being exposed. Allen writes:
The tech world's dark secrets have been seeping out for months, and it's just under seven weeks since the N.Y. Times detonated its Harvey Weinstein exposé. So this may feel like a crest, but here's the amazing thing: Every sign is that for the East Coast, there's lots more to come.
- News organizations are looking into specific congressmen, some with years-old reputations for leering, infidelity and more.
- Reporters have been asking around about other well-known media figures. We hear one top name is the target of two media investigations.
- And consider this: The wave has yet to hit the New York corporate suites. I'm told they're hardly immune.
Allen is a swamp thing if there ever was one (albeit a nice guy when I sat with him once on a panel), and he knows what's going on among the Washington elites. His tidbits are specific and have details.
This one in particular is entertaining:
At 10:30 a.m., during a weekly news meeting of the N.Y. Times Washington bureau, Vox published its long-rumored article on Glenn Thrush, who was suspended and says he "will soon begin outpatient treatment for alcoholism." His paper reported: "The meeting came to a halt as everyone stopped to read the article."
It's quite likely all of them accurately signal news in the pipeline. We don't have to make any guesses; we can just wait for the show to happen.
But here's the other thing worth noting, and here we can prognosticate.
Dollars to donuts, most of these mini-Weinsteins about to be exposed are creatures of the left. It's the pattern so far, and it will likely continue. Allen knows what is going on because he knows the power establishment, and sex harassment is above all an abuse of power. Even though both sides have bad apples, there are way more takedowns of leftists than rightists. What does that underline? Not only that the left has a culture of uncouthness, but that the left controls every lever of power in the establishment. If it didn't, a lot more right-wingers would be going down in what is becoming a seismic shakeup in the power balance. But since the right doesn't have power, it isn't even there to take down.
That. and the fact that unlike the left, the right still believes in being gentlemen as part of its culture.
It will be worth it to see what happens when the next shoe drops.