Sexual Harassment – Ed Hoffman

The Main Event – September 21, 2018

September 21, 2018

Connect with The Main Event on social media! Follow Ed Hoffman on Twitter @EdHoffman, where he tweets about current events all week long – and, like the show on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheMainEventEdHoffman. You can also call the new listener hotline to leave Ed a voicemail and tell him what you think of the show! Call The Main Event listener hotline at (855) 640-2092. Here’s a preview of this week’s show!

Kavanaugh Allegation Continues

Senate Republicans continue to support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the fight against one woman’s suspiciously timed accusations of sexual assault from 35 years ago.

Here’s a recap of this week’s events:

On Monday, Christine Blasey Ford was reported to be the anonymous accuser from last week (when Dianne Feinstein sent a letter to the FBI the very day there was a confirmation vote scheduled – a letter she has had since July). Ford is now a clinical psychology professor at Palo Alto University.
Brett Kavanaugh’s statement: “This is a completely false allegation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes—to her or to anyone. Because this never happened, I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself yesterday. I am willing to talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee in any way the Committee deems appropriate to refute this false allegation, from 36 years ago, and defend my integrity.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, Ford says that at a house party when she was 15 (no recollection of what month it was or even whose house it was at), Brett Kavanaugh and a friend pushed her into a bedroom, pinned her down and sexually assaulted her after turning up the music so her protests couldn’t be heard.
She identified the friend as Mark Judge, who is now a journalist and filmmaker. Judge’s statement to The Weekly Standard: “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.” CNN and other mainstream media outlets are attacking Judge’s character by pointing out that he wrote a book about partying in high school called “Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk” (so of course, he must be guilty of assault).
Another classmate Ford identifies as being at this mysterious party, Patrick J. Smyth, sent this letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee: “I understand that I have been identified by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as the person she remembers as ‘PJ’ who supposedly was present at the party she described in her statements to the Washington Post. I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh. Personally speaking, I have known Brett Kavanaugh since high school and I know him to be a person of great integrity, a great friend, and I have never witnessed any improper conduct by Brett Kavanaugh towards women.”

And now, Ed Whelan – a former law clerk for Justice Scalia who now runs the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center – has uncovered evidence that the house where the party most likely took place was hosted by a kid who looked exactly like Brett Kavanaugh. Chris Garrett, a Georgetown prep classmate and football teammate of Kavanaugh’s, could have easily been mistaken for his classmate Brett.

After Diane Feinstein made the allegations against Kavanaugh public (despite Ford’s supposed wishes that they remain private), the Republicans on the Committee released a letter signed by 65 women who said they knew Kavanaugh in high school and could vouch for his decency. Ed alert: I have a hard time coming up with 65 women I went to high school with.” Scott agrees, saying there would likely be multiple accusers if Kavanaugh had done this.

Democrat Hypocrisy on Assault

As it turns out, plenty of Democrats have their own similar stories from high school and one of them is Cory “Spartacus” Booker. From the Washington Post on Friday:

When he was in high school, Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat and possible White House contender, groped his classmate as they kissed. He reached for her breast, and when she swatted his hand away, he made another attempt…

…But the skeleton in Booker’s closet seized on by outlets such as Fox News and the Daily Caller wasn’t really in his closet. The senator himself chose years ago to air the issue, marking a notable contrast with instances in which accusations of impropriety burst forth as a result of media investigation or opposition research. (Really? A “noble contrast”?)

In 1992, Booker, then a student at Stanford University, wrote a column for his college newspaper in which he recounted the groping and used his own behavior to underscore, in starkly personal terms, how his views had shifted on gender and sexual respect. He credited his work as a peer counselor with the transformation.

“After having my hand pushed away once, I reached my ‘mark,’” he wrote. “Our groping ended soon and while no ‘relationship’ ensued, a friendship did. You see, the next week in school she told me that she was drunk that night and didn’t really know what she was doing.”
Booker’s words speak for themselves.

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The Main Event – November 22, 2017

November 22, 2017

Connect with The Main Event on social media! Follow Ed on Twitter @EdHoffman, where he tweets about current events all week long – and, like the show on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheMainEventEdHoffman. You can also call the new listener hotline to leave Ed a voicemail and tell him what you think of the show! Call The Main Event listener hotline at (855) 640-2092. Here’s a preview of this week’s show! (To see Ed’s comments, look for “Ed Alerts” throughout the blog post!)

This week’s show starts out with tributes to the people we’ve lost this week: Malcolm Young of AC/DC, actress/singer Della Reese, and former teen idol David Cassidy. Ed also reminds everyone that the number to call for home loans only is (855) 6402-2020; to give your opinion on the show, please call the listener hotline.

Then it’s on to the number one news item of the season, sexual harassment, for the full hour.

Accusations Against Democrats Continue

While Democrats want to pretend Republican Roy Moore in Alabama is the only one being accused, the list of Democrats who have allegations against them continues to grow. Surprise surprise…Leeann Tweeden isn’t the only woman coming forward to accuse Franken – and unlike Tweeden, this woman was touched by Franken after he became a United States Senator. Lindsay Menz reached out to CNN hours after Tweeden made her story public, saying she wanted to share an “uncomfortable” interaction with Franken in 2010 that left her feeling “gross” at the Minnesota State Fair. Ed Alert: “I think Franken has put enough evidence out there that he does this stuff.”

And there’s a new Democrat facing allegations this week: Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, who reportedly propositioned congressional aides who worked for him, one of whom he settled with for $27,000 in 2015. Since Conyers is a dinosaur who has been in Congress since 1965, that segues to a “slightly altered” clip from Jurassic Park for some comic relief. Ed Alert: “These guys want to act like they’re pillars of strength in the community, but clearly that isn’t the case. Who you are in public needs to be who you are.”

And Then There’s Charlie Rose

As you may have heard, veteran TV journalist Charlie Rose has just lost both his TV shows because of the allegations against him. You probably know Charlie Rose as the guy on PBS who does boring interviews with people in a dark room; he’s also on CBS This Morning with Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King. But for eight of the women who worked for him, Rose is their boss who walks around naked and badgers them for sex. Eight women told The Washington Post that Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence or groping their private areas. In Rose’s apology statement, he said “I always felt I was pursuing shared feelings.” Ed Alert: “That reminds me of a scene from Thelma and Louise” – it’s a scene where Louise tells a man attacking Thelma, “In the future, when a woman’s crying like that, she’s not having any fun.” Who was having fun, though, were the women who saw David Cassidy at a concert Ed caught a few years back. He tells the story as a tribute to the late teen idol.

What about Bill Clinton?

Finally, some of those speaking out about the sexual harassment phenomenon are bringing Bill Clinton into the conversation. This month, New York Times writer David Brooks said that if “you don’t draw lines in these big cases (like Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal 20 years ago), then you won’t draw the line in these little cases.” Ironically, Brooks said this on the Charlie Rose show!

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York and the member who now holds Hillary Clinton’s former seat, said that Bill Clinton should have resigned from the presidency after the Lewinsky scandal 20 years ago – then tried to walk it back a bit later, of course. The question the Times asked Gillibrand was only in regards to the Lewinsky scandal, and Hillary’s response to her was “This was a very difficult time in our marriage and for our country, as I’ve written about before.” Ed Alert: “I have a few questions. Which time was the difficult time in their marriage: Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones? I could go on and on.” Speaking of, Ed is recapping the story of Kathleen Willey. “She asked to see President Clinton to see if she could get a paid gig in the White House because she and her husband were having financial problems, and he proceeds to take her into a private part of the Oval Office and sexually assault her.”

Final thoughts: “If you’re not a good guy when nobody’s looking, you’re not a good guy.”

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