No, we did not. But the shit just keeps pouring out. Now Eric Bolling has been accused of harassing women, both guests and employees, and of sending un-asked-for pictures of his penis to women (someday, I’d like to talk to the kind of guy who does that, just to figure out what he thinks he’s accomplishing). One of his targets, Caroline Heldman, has come forward with a specific set of accusations on Facebook. Here’s part of it.
Fox News just suspended Eric Bolling pending allegations that he sent photos of his genitalia to female colleagues. My only surprise is that it took this long for people to come forward about Bolling’s behavior, which has been wildly inappropriate for years.
I did hundreds of appearances on Fox and Fox Business from 2008 – 2011, and had multiple experiences with Bolling that caused grave concern to my friends and family. Bolling referred to me as “Dr. McHottie” on air on four different occasions, and called me “smart, beautiful, and wrong” on air twice. I pushed back with “Mr. McSexist,” but I shouldn’t have had to. This on-air behavior was perfectly acceptable to Fox executives at the time.
Bolling would also contact me via phone and text after shows, sometimes to apologize for his behavior (and then do it again), and sometimes just to talk. He said he wanted to fly me out to New York for in-studio hits and to have “fun.” He asked me to have meals with him on several occasions, but I found excuses not to go. Once, he took me up to his office in New York, showed me his baseball jerseys, and in the brief time I was there, let me know that his office was his favorite place to have sex. I know other women have had similar experiences with Bolling, which means that lots of folks at Fox knew about his behavior well before 2017.
This has all become terribly familiar. One interesting phenomenon is how Fox News supporters rush pell-mell to demonstrate exactly how pervasive the problem is. Heldman cunningly allowed them to hang themselves with their own words. Apparently some of the right-wing web sites have linked to her post, and as of this morning, she has 204 comments there. They’re staying up.
Tonight I am breaking the rules of the page by allowing all of the awful, sexist posts from knuckle-draggers to stay up. It’s important to show what happens when people come forward about sexual harassment. It’s important to see why so many stay silent.
If you can stomach it, read the comments. They demonstrate the problem. I’ve included a few of them below.
You low life white trash, the truth will come out, and we stand behind Eric Bowling.
They care so much that they don’t know how to spell his name.
Guess what LOSER, Hypocrite! Proof of who you really are is being gathered by the second! False accusations will end up in YOUR Prosecution! Wait & See! Miss Sexual Objectifying Hypocrite! Pics are coming to, to show how you objectify yourself to get, in your own words, “Using your body as tools to master your environment, tools to get you from one place to the next, as these amazing vehicles for moving through the world in a new way”, what you want, and then turn around, don’t report anything, because you are the one sexually harrassing, “using your body as a tool to master your environment”, and when you do NOT get your way, you try to turn it around, and accuse others of sexually harassing you! Your own words and actions, and pics, you leave up on public domain, and others, will be your own downfall! You must have the dumbest lawyer known to man, to even think you have a chance, with all the evidence against you, open to public view, to be admitted into evidence against you! WOW you are not too bright, and neither is Gloria Allred another LOSER! Good Luck with your False Accusations, and the next pics I see of you, will hopefully be of you in handcuffs, where you belong, for abusing the legal system with blatant LIES, your very own words are going to prove!
One common theme is how much they hate Gloria Allred.
Another is comparing women to cuts of meat.
If Eric thinks your HOT,than he needs help ! I’m not buying it at all. Why the wait ? Eric has Prime Rib at home and why would he want Hamburger Helper ?
Lying ass cunt….why would Eric want a tuna fish sandwich when he can go home to a beautifully prepared filet mignon every single day.You look like a crack whore..Nobody wants your nasty ass..that is why you go around accusing men falsely. ..
I do not know what Bolling’s wife looks like, and it isn’t relevant. I do wonder if she feels that these people are doing her a favor.
Then of course there is much insistence that she is too unattractive to have been sexually harassed.
YOU COULD ONLY WISH SOMEONE WOULD YOU FUGLY CUNT
YOUR TO UGLY TO HAVE SEX WITH…LMAO
Eric Bolling must have been drunk to think that you’re hot…LMFAO!!
And of course, that old standby: you’re just in it for the money, why didn’t you sue him the moment he called you Dr McHottie, coupled with a complete lack of awareness of the problem of differential power.
Why are you now just coming forward? You seem to be a serial sue happy fool looking for a big payday. You do not have much credibility. If you were so destroyed when this happened why didn’t you quit Fox immediately?
Stick with it for the cliches.
DEMOCRATS ARE AT IT AGAIN…FAKE NEWS !
Funny how all of the men on Fox get accused. I’m sorry if you can’t think for yourself. You are a prime example of the complicit sheep that the Deep State set out to create when they decided to take over our country. The only good part of this is you and your faggots will be the first that they mow down when it is time to cull the herd. See you in re-education camp slime-ball!!
This one caps it all off with irony.
Eric thinks you’re an asshole and would never want to have sex with you. Conservative men don’t like modern day feminists(=communists) because they’re too stupid to hold a real conversation, they only use talking points contrived by other people. Critical thinking skills=0
Fox News was corrupt from the top down, but apparently that’s the way their viewers like it.
To be fair, EVERY pic of Bolling s a dick pic.
God, those comments. What is it with these guys, where they trust one guy’s word over multitudes of women who have evidence to back up their accusations? Where do these people come from? Same things as happened with O’Reilly, Ailes, Trump, Cosby, et al, ad nauseum.
Me, when I find out someone I admired or was a fan of is in fact a total creep, I then become NOT a fan of that person. Maybe I’m doing it wrong…
A heck of a lot of those awful commenters are women, or at least, have traditionally feminine names.
@PZ That is true; you’re right, of course. I should have said “people.” I have uber-conservative female relatives with this attitude myself (with whom I’ve effectively quit talking/interacting). My astonishment still stands.
PZ, yeah, well I could use either a traditionally male or female name with which to make comments. “The Internet” doesn’t care a whit!
Perhaps Mr Murdoch insists on his employees having the characteristics mentioned here. After all we have the present president as a self admitted practitioner of the same “tactics”.
Prostitution was a profession with a long history and standards till Mr Murdoch reduced it into a branch of journalism.
I did hundreds of appearances on Fox and Fox Business from 2008 – 2011…
What respectable reason could anyone of any integrity (i.e., not a wingnut propagandist or PR shill) have for such deplorable behavior?
Did we need more evidence of the Fox cesspool? Nope. I suspected as much before the first public airing. It just seemed obvious. I continue to suspect that it goes up to the highest levels, or should I say to the depths of the cesspool.
As for the true gender of those posters, I’m sure some of them really are women. Women are just as capable of crassness as men. However, I also suspect that some of them are what you might call troll-bots, programs that generate internet identities and then produce floods of ratings and comments.It isn’t rocket surgery, and there’s a cadre that Steve Bannon called “rootless white males” perfectly capable of doing so.
If that goes on, Fox News will be the only pro life, anti contraception, full blown conservative, right wing organisation solely run and managed by woman.
Joy Reid interviewed Caroline Heldman today, and Reid also summarized the pervasive sexual harassment environment at Fox News.
“I’d like to talk to the kind of guy who does that, just to figure out what he thinks he’s accomplishing”
I’m not that kind of guy, but my understanding is that the rate of favourable responses to dick pics is very low but not negligible, and the kind of guy who does that has no scruples about imposing images of his genitals on the vast majority of women who don’t want to look at them while searching for the few who are interested.
@Corey Yanofsky #11:
You presume that there are actually favorable responses to the dick pics. If there are, it’s possibly just of the ladder-climbing variety, which does still exist today. As for favorable responses that are actually genuine, I don’t think the men actually care if they get a single genuine response, as long as someone will have an affair with them.
I would think it’s fairly obvious – it’s flashing, except you don’t have to hang around the park in a dirty mac. Nobody imagines that flashers are genuinely but misguidedly attempting to form relationships with women… We recognise it for what it is: a form of sexual assault. Why should the intervening layer of technology make it any different?
“…sending un-asked-for pictures of his penis to women (someday, I’d like to talk to the kind of guy who does that, just to figure out what he thinks he’s accomplishing)….”
Well it does provide a hint that, contrary to all other evidence, they do actually have one.
During the election, I made a few posts and engaged with some facebook friends saying absolutely absurd things. My employer contacted me to say that some other folks were upset by my political posting. On facebook. It honestly just involved pointing out, for example, the Hillary email thing was a bunch of nonsense. Very mild.
People I work with would post the most insane shit you can imagine – all the Russian-generated conspiracy fake news nonsense, it turns out. As well as just sick stuff about Hillary, personally, which we’re all familiar with.
Point is, there is an inherent bias towards allowing right wing nonsense to proliferate. Look at all those horrible people posting horrible things under their real name. Everyone in their friend category sees their posts. That includes co-workers and employees. I will bet you they never have a talk with their boss about chilling with the vitriol.
I just find that interesting.
@methuseus #12:
I’m not presuming anything — I’m summarizing vaguely remembered comment threads of dubious reliability.
@ richardelguru #14
That’s not really the best insult to use. There are plenty of men without penises who are fine people and don’t deserve to be compared to these assholes. (Like, you know… trans men.)