No Men-- Especially No Men In Public Office-- Should Ever Think They Are "Untouchable" When It Comes To Workplace Sexual Harassment

-by Valley Girl

I wrote an email to Howie a few days back saying in part "I totally agreed with your tweet. This is what leadership should be about. It seems that they are not willing to name names because it will hurt their own careers. Howie, you have a lot of connections. Is there any way you could winkle this information out of someone? Get them to name even a few names? My gut feeling is that once even a few names are mentioned, then the floodgates will open."

Howie asked me to do a guest post. I’ve been working on that. Getting into the weeds, as I usually do. I started checking out Barbara Comstock (R-VA), who I didn’t know anything about before, but who now seems to have little record of bravery of any sort. I’ve compiled quite a dossier on her.

And, reminding myself of the details of Jackie Speirs’ history-- 1978 including when she went, as a congressional aide to Leo Ryan, to Jonestown, Guyana. By the end of the trip, Ryan was dead-- the first and only congressman to be assassinated in office-- along with three journalists and one cult defector. Speier and nine others had been shot and left for dead at a remote airstrip; they waited 22 hours for help to arrive.

Yes, she does have a solid history of bravery, courage, and public service. Watch this for context as to what Howie was talking about-- a House hearing:



Also note that this video above leaves out something: via CNN: During the hearing to review the House's sexual harassment policies, Comstock said it was "important that we name names."... exactly what Howie challenged her to do in his tweet.

And, also from the same CNN link, note this, if you follow the link-- "Speier, a Democrat who has gone public with her own allegations of sexual assault while she served as a Hill aide decades ago, testified before the panel Tuesday that two currently sitting members of Congress-- one Democrat, one Republican-- have 'engaged in sexual harassment' but have not yet been reviewed." NO, CNN is wrong on this quote. Speier actually says: two members… one Democrat, one Republican, who have been subject to review, or not have been subject to review, who have engaged in sexual harassment.

Fast forward with the post I’ve been working one-- I’m on EST, so I missed this news by several hours, until I woke up this morning. And ended up ditching most of what I’d already written. Note again Speier’s actual comment above.

The Buzz Feed story blows the lid off one of these two-- John Conyers. Title and subtitle: She Said A Powerful Congressman Harassed Her. Here’s Why You Didn’t Hear Her Story. "When you make private settlements, it doesn’t warn the next woman or the next person going into that situation."

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances.”

Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sexual favors, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.

And the documents also reveal the secret mechanism by which Congress has kept an unknown number of sexual harassment allegations secret: a grinding, closely held process that left the alleged victim feeling, she told BuzzFeed News, that she had no option other than to stay quiet and accept a settlement offered to her.

“I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go,” she said in a phone interview. BuzzFeed News is withholding the woman’s name at her request because she said she fears retribution.

The woman who settled with Conyers launched the complaint with the Office of Compliance in 2014, alleging she was fired for refusing his sexual advances, and ended up facing a daunting process that ended with a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a settlement of more than $27,000. Her settlement, however, came from Conyers’ office budget rather than the designated fund for settlements.

In this case, one of Conyers’ former employees was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers’ taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would “rehire” the woman as a “temporary employee” despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.

The process was “disgusting,” said Matthew Peterson, who worked as a law clerk representing the complainant, and who listed as a signatory to some of the documents.

“It is a designed cover-up,” said Peterson, who declined to discuss details of the case but agreed to characterize it in general terms. “You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It’s like being abused twice.”

Two staffers alleged in their signed affidavits that Conyers used congressional resources to fly in women they believed he was having affairs with. Another said she was tasked with driving women to and from Conyers’ apartment and hotel rooms.

In her complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to “touch it,” in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands.

She alleged Conyers made her work nights, evenings, and holidays to keep him company.

In another incident, the former employee alleged the congressman insisted she stay in his room while they traveled together for a fundraising event. When she told him that she would not stay with him, she alleged he told her to “just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go.”

“Rep. Conyers strongly postulated that the performing of personal service or favors would be looked upon favorably and lead to salary increases or promotions,” the former employee said in the documents.

Three other staff members provided affidavits submitted to the Office Of Compliance that outlined a pattern of behavior from Conyers that included touching the woman in a sexual manner and growing angry when she brought her husband around.

One affidavit from a former female employee states that she was tasked with flying in women for the congressman. “One of my duties while working for Rep. Conyers was to keep a list of women that I assumed he was having affairs with and call them at his request and, if necessary, have them flown in using Congressional resources,” said her affidavit. (A second staffer alleged in an interview that Conyers used taxpayer resources to fly women to him.)

The employee said in her affidavit that Conyers also made sexual advances toward her: “I was driving the Congressman in my personal car and was resting my hand on the stick shift. Rep. Conyers reached over and began to caress my hand in a sexual manner.”

The woman said she told Conyers she was married and not interested in pursuing a sexual relationship, according to the affidavit. She said she was told many times by constituents that it was well-known that Conyers had sexual relationships with his staff, and said she and other female staffers felt this undermined their credibility.

“I am personally aware of several women who have experienced the same or similar sexual advances made towards them by Rep[.] John Conyers,” she said in her affidavit.

A male employee wrote that he witnessed Rep. Conyers rub the legs and other body parts of the complainant “in what appeared to be a sexual manner” and saw the congressman rub and touch other women “in an inappropriate manner.” The employee said he confronted Conyers about this behavior.

“Rep. Conyers said he needed to be ‘more careful’ because bad publicity would not be helpful as he runs for re-election. He ended the conversation with me by saying he would ‘work on’ his behavior,” the male staffer said in his affidavit.

The male employee said that in 2011 Conyers complained a female staffer was “too old” and said he wanted to let her go. The employee said he set up a meeting in December 2011 to discuss “mistreatment of staff and his misuse of federal resources.” The affidavit says that Conyers “agreed that he would work on making improvements as long as I worked directly with him and stopped writing memos and emails about concerns.”

Another female employee also attested that she witnessed Conyer’s advances, and said she was asked to transport women to him. “I was asked on multiple occasions to pick up women and bring them to Mr. Conyers['] apartment, hotel rooms, etc.”

“I don’t think any allegations should be buried... and that’s for anyone, not just for this particular office, because it doesn’t really allow other people to see who these individuals are,” said the former staffer. “When you make private settlements, it doesn’t warn the next woman or the next person going into that situation.”

Another staffer said Conyers’ reputation made people fearful to speak out against him. Aside from being the longest-serving House member and the ranking member of a powerful committee, Conyers is a civil rights icon. He was lauded by Martin Luther King Jr. and is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“Your story won’t do shit to him,” said the staffer. “He’s untouchable.”

Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is the second most senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee after Conyers. This was his statement yesterday: "The allegations against Ranking Member Conyers are extremely serious and deeply troubling. Obviously, these allegations must be investigated promptly by the Ethics Committee. There can be no tolerance for behavior that subjects women to the kind of conduct alleged. We also must support efforts to reform the way the House of Representatives handles these matters to make the process easier and more supportive of victims, as well as more transparent."

I'll leave this post with a brief mention of the salience of "political correctness" in the societal explosion we're going through now. I borrowed it from an essay by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: "Political correctness is a vague term, perhaps best defined by the conservative scholar Samuel Goldman. 'What Trump and others seem to mean by political correctness is an extremely dramatic and rapidly changing set of discursive and social laws that, virtually overnight, people are expected to understand, to which they are expected to adhere.' From a different vantage point, what Trump’s supporters refer to as political correctness is largely the result of marginalized communities gaining sufficient political power to project their prerogatives onto society at large. What a society finds offensive is not a function of fact or truth, but of power. It is why unpunished murders of black Americans by agents of the state draw less outrage than black football players’ kneeling for the National Anthem in protest against them. It is no coincidence that Trump himself frequently uses the term to belittle what he sees as unnecessary restrictions on state force."

Some Say Trump Is Human Too

For the first time in 100 years, the very right-wing biggest newspaper in New Hampshire hasn't endorsed the Republican nominee for president. "Voters leaning toward Trump are understandably fed up with the status quo, of which Clinton is a prime example," wrote publisher Joseph McQuaid. "But they kid themselves if they think Trump isn’t pretty much a part of that status quo as well, or that he is in any way qualified to competently lead this nation. The man is a liar, a bully, a buffoon. He denigrates any individual or group that displeases him. He has dishonored military veterans and their families, made fun of the physically frail, and changed political views almost as often as he has changed wives." The paper endorsed the Libertarian.

In his NY Times column yesterday, Nick Kristof tried dealing with the problems the mainstream media has in covering a crackpot like Trump. The night before, one of the DWT regular readers whose ideas and opinions I most respect, e-mailed me about our own Trump coverage. He was pissed off at the way we have chosen to dehumanize Trump, particularly in the way we refer to him as "Trumpanzee," although I tried to dehumanize it by usually using phrases like "Señor Trumpanzee" or "Monsieur Trumpanzee."

As you probably know, I've been a long-time reader of DWT.  I have, until recently, always appreciated its voice and especially yours.

But there's something going on right now that I find deeply, horribly, upsetting, and I thought I should tell you about it.

It's the use of the term "Trumpanzee" to refer to the GOP nominee.

I will grant you he is at least every bit as terrible as you say and think.  But even so, he's still a person. A bad person. A very bad person. But a person.  And to suggest he is in fact an animal, or half animal, is to use the very sort of dehumanizing rhetoric that we on the left (and DWT) have long opposed when deployed by the right. We objected when they did it to Blacks, to the LGBT community, to the left more generally. And we-- and you-- were right to do so.

Why then descend to that level? Why go down there with the Nazis and the right wing fanatics?  We-- you-- need to be better than that.

Even Trump is human. He has human rights like the rest of us. Unfortunately he has chosen to use his humanity in service to terrible ends. But that doesn't make him sub-human or non-human, and we shouldn't suggest that it does.

It's just not funny.

Give it a rest? Please?

We've had far more complaints from animal rights activists and pet lovers who have asked us to stop defaming chimps by attaching them in any way to Mr. Trump. So, we've heard and we're retiring the phrase. Maybe we should go back to Herr Trumpf? Anyway, back to Herr Kristof's column in the Times. He seemed distraught that "by a margin of 15 percentage points, voters thought Donald Trump was 'more honest and trustworthy' than Hillary Clinton." Even someone like me, who has no love for Hillary agrees with him that "this public perception is completely at odds with all evidence... "Clearly," he wrote, "Clinton shades the truth-- yet there’s no comparison with Trump." She may do worse than shade the truth, but if anythingis clear, she is certainly-- and has always been-- the lesser of two evils, even the far lesser. Kristof says he isn't sure journalism-- journalists-- bear responsibility "but this does raise the thorny issue of false equivalence, which has been hotly debated among journalists this campaign. Here’s the question: Is it journalistic malpractice to quote each side and leave it to readers to reach their own conclusions, even if one side seems to fabricate facts or make ludicrous comments?"

President Obama weighed in this week, saying that “we can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here.”

I’m wary of grand conclusions about false equivalence from 30,000 feet. But at the grass roots of a campaign, I think we can do better at signaling that one side is a clown.

There are crackpots who believe that the earth is flat, and they don’t deserve to be quoted without explaining that this is an, er, outlying view, and the same goes for a crackpot who has argued that climate change is a Chinese-made hoax, who has called for barring Muslims and who has said that he will build a border wall and that Mexico will pay for it.

We owe it to our readers to signal when we’re writing about a crackpot. Even if he’s a presidential candidate. No, especially when he’s a presidential candidate.

...I wonder if journalistic efforts at fairness don’t risk normalizing Trump, without fully acknowledging what an abnormal candidate he is. Historically we in the news media have sometimes fallen into the traps of glib narratives or false equivalencies, and we should try hard to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

We should be guard dogs, not lap dogs, and when the public sees Trump as more honest than Clinton, something has gone wrong.

For my part, I’ve never met a national politician as ill informed, as deceptive, as evasive and as vacuous as Trump. He’s not normal. And somehow that is what our barks need to convey.