The biggest story of this week (not related to cops killing black men) is Fox News’ Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes and the cascade of accusations of sexual harassment being leveled against him. After former host Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, other women began coming forward with accusations of their own. This week has been bad for the bloated corpse running Fox News… and it just got so much worse.
The “Bill Cosby of media“ is now facing an accusation that he tried to solicit oral sex from girls as young as 16.
In an interview with New York Magazine, Gretchen Carlson’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, told writer Gabriel Sherman:
“My office is being deluged with calls and website contacts with women. I don’t even have a count anymore… Women as young as 16 who said he demanded oral sex. Another said during an interview that he said, ‘Take off your bra.’ She was devastated.”
They say sexual predators never strike just once.
While none of the women who have accused Mr. Ailes, outside of Ms. Carlson, have gone on record, it appears Ms. Carlson’s lawsuit is poised to unleash a maelstrom of shit for the guy who once boasted “somehow, I always walk away” when confronted with potential career catastrophe.
Ms. Carlson filed her lawsuit and Wednesday and since then, so many women have come out of the woodshed to lodge their own complaints. The sky is falling for Mr. Ailes, so much so that it may end up spelling the end for Fox News’ 76-year-old chief executive. He may not be able to “somehow walk away” from this one, especially since it appears Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, who have a contentious relationship with Mr. Ailes, may have just been presented with an opportunity to oust him. From New York Magazine:
“According to one highly placed Fox source, Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan and James, approved the hiring of an outside lawyer to conduct the independent investigation. While it’s common for large companies to bring in outside counsel to conduct inquiries during public scandals, the move is a radical one for Murdoch. ‘Unprecedented,’ one former senior executive told me. ‘It’s not Rupert’s style to investigate internal issues.'”
The last time outside counsel was brought in to investigate a scandal involving Mr. Ailes — when he was accused of using an anti-Semitic slur while at NBC — he resigned a short time later.
I suppose we’ll just have to hang back and see what happens. Could this be the end of Roger Ailes’ tenure as Fox News’ chief executive officer? Will more women come forward with accusations Mr. Ailes sexually harassed them? Will the Duke boys find a way out of this one? Let’s get some popcorn and find out!
Featured image by DonkeyHotey, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
