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BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I’m Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I’m Brooke Gladstone. This week, we focus on bad behavior of all kinds and the reactions to it. Here, at New York Public Radio, both the staff and the public have been roiled by allegations and management's response within our own walls.
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FEMALE CORRESPONDENT: Today, two high-profiled hosts were placed on indefinite leave after accusations of inappropriate conduct, Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: As of Friday, that’s pretty much all we know. These two suspensions came on the coattails of a larger story concerning John Hockenberry, longtime host of The Takeaway, who left the station after his contract expired in August.
MALE CORRESPONDENT: Over the weekend, New York Magazine’s website, The Cut, ran a first-person piece by a former Takeaway guest who said she was harassed by John.
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: That piece, written by journalist Suki Kim, featured allegations ranging over nearly a decade from several former producers, interns, freelancers and cohosts who’d worked at The Takeaway. One thing that's come up again and again, amid the charges of unwelcome touching, sexual and racial harassment and crass language, was bullying.
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CELESTE HEADLEE: He would bang on tables, he would yell and then we’d go into the show and, while we were on the air, he would talk over me, he would interrupt me, he would say dismissive things.
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: That’s Celeste Headlee, one of three women of color who were cohosts on The Takeaway who complained to management, never saw their concerns addressed and later left the station. If you're interested in WNYC’s story, you can find On the Media’s extended take in our midweek podcast posted last Wednesday at onthemedia.org.
In this hour, we take on issues playing out in a broader political and cultural context, and we’ll start in Washington, where a wide range of bad behavior prompted the imminent departures of Democratic Congressman John Conyers, Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken and Arizona Republican Trent Franks. Here’s Senator Franken.
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SENATOR AL FRANKEN: I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving, while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assaul, sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: Franken, of course, is referring to Alabama Republican Senate candidate and accused serial sexual predator of teenagers, Roy Moore.
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FEMALE CORRESPONDENT: On Monday, President Trump, for the first time, threw his full support behind Moore, first in this tweet, “Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama.”
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: For Republicans in the Senate, transactional politics trumps principle. It even trumps optics. Republicans want Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ former seat filled by a fellow party member, and allegations be damned.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick says that the tendency of Democrats to take the high moral ground while Republicans descend, as Michelle Obama might say, when they go low, we go high, has its merits but also its dangers.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: There needs to be at least some understanding of the corollary, which is when they go low and then they go lower and then they go lower and we don’t react in kind, we, we may be getting played.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah, you call that unilateral disarmament. As an example of getting played, you cite Mike Huckabee engaging in a kind of doublespeak.
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MIKE HUCKABEE: As long as Al Franken is in the Senate, as long as you’ve got Conyers and others who are staying in office, then, then why not have Roy Moore? First of all, he’s denied the charges against him vehemently and categorically.
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tell me what that says to you.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Well, that’s the two step. Oops, sorry about Conyers and Franken, but we’re still gonna let Moore run because let the people decide.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Or the accusers are liars or because it happened a long time ago. Two weeks ago, the same Republican senators who were saying, absolutely, we believe these women, Moore cannot be seated, are now not only funding him but colluding to say, well, if he says they’re all liars, they must be liars. As Democrats try to clean house, Republicans are, at the same time, moving the goalposts so that things that were breathtaking two weeks ago are now perfectly okay.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But is this so surprising? I mean, you’re seeing it from the White House with regard to the Russia investigation. First, they say there was no contact and then they say there was contact but no collusion. And we’ve already had hints from some lawyers that they’re going to say, so what’s the difference if they colluded with the Russians? Moving the goalposts isn’t surprising. Why does it matter now more than any other time?
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Because losing a Senate seat the week after we saw this affront that was the tax bill, I don’t think Democrats are in a position to say, eh, it’s only a Senate seat. I can’t think of a time in my life, Brooke, when more has been on the line, in terms of not contributing to losses.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: On the other hand, the Washington Post said that one reason for Franken to resign was that the Democratic Party has simply staked out a much stricter position on these issues than the Republicans. And a poll that was released on Wednesday explains why. It was a Quinnipiac University poll, which found that when Americans were asked whether a lawmaker facing multiple sexual harassment accusations should resign, while just 51% of Republicans agreed, 77% of Democrats agreed.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: The Republicans have made the case, and they've said this overtly, by the way, with respect to Roy Moore, that we’re purely transactional. We need the seat. Democrats can say, believe the women, and I think we have to say, systems that we have used historically to ferret out abuse and disparity and actual assaults on women are not serving women. Something is broken. And, at the same time, I think we can say burning it all down and hoping that the media can try and convict and sentence somebody in a two-hour tweet cycle is not the process that’s going to fix this.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I am concerned about a lack of proportion in assessing these allegations, but I don't know that I agree that the bench of Democrats on the local level is so shallow that Democrats can't replace the people who resign with people who will respect women and vote in a way that ensures that our systems are not burnt to the ground.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: So I don't dispute for a moment that the generation that is coming up behind us are not only up to the task but they’re gonna smoke us, in terms of their capacity to do this better. But, boy, I hope we live long enough to see it happen. [LAUGHS]
[BROOKE LAUGHS]
And it seems to me that putting all of our marbles in the virtue basket and not being really careful about saying, hey, Senate Democrats, the same Senate Democrats that called on Franken to step down, when are you going to call on Donald Trump to do the same?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: When are you going to get up and give a unified statement that what he did is vastly more troubling? I think it’s the willingness to have this collusion, where we all agree that we play [LAUGHS] by different rules --
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: -- among Democrats, that frightens me most of all.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm. But what are the optics for so-called “progressives” when they don't respond aggressively? I mean, what's the future of the party then?
DAHLIA LITHWICK: I think the optics, to the extent that we can project what would have happened had Franken been given what he asked for, which was an ethics inquiry, an open assessment and a parsing of which of those claims were legitimate and which ones were unfounded, I actually think the optics of saying, let's look at this, rather than make a determination in the media, would have been really responsible.
And I know you can say, look, there was never gonna be a, a fair Senate ethics inquiry so maybe it doesn't matter but there would have at least been something that looked like a process. I think in the absence of that, we cannot be doing this in a media cycle over Twitter because we’re all angry. If we don’t like the systems that exist in our workplaces and in the Senate to test allegations and to think through what is serious and what is real, then let’s [LAUGHS] construct better systems but just doing it by Twitter, that cannot be good for the optics. [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It sounds like you're saying, though, that a moral stand from the people we sent to represent us in the chambers of government has no place in this world right now.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Oh no, please, please, please, let me be clear. What I'm saying is the fundamental flaw at the heart of “when they go low, we go high” is that we are setting ourselves up for different ideas of what a moral stand looks like. When Democrats harm vulnerable communities because they’re trying to reach to a standard that I think a) is unmeetable at this moment and b) is not being [LAUGHS] adhered to by the other side, I think we have to ask ourselves seriously whether there's something more than the morality of how we conduct ourselves that’s at issue.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I guess the bottom line is that if you want to make the world a better place, you have to function as effectively as you can in the world as it is.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: Yeah, yep. Sorry, buddy. [LAUGHING]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dahlia, thank you very much.
DAHLIA LITHWICK: It has been [LAUGHS] my profound pleasure. BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate and hosts the podcast Amicus. Her recent article is called, “The Republicans Have Built An Uneven Playing Field.”
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, bullying, not just for kids anymore.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media.
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