And furthermore…
Isaac Chotiner’s Buruma interview is today’s news in Abusers’ Corner; yesterday’s was John Hockenberry doing his “This has all been so sad for me” thing in Harper’s.
He starts off by telling us everything we know about him, which is why I stopped reading it yesterday, gagging. He goes on to tell us about all his stuff in a storage unit now, how important he used to be, how sad, poor him.
Then he tells us his friends don’t shower him with affection any more.
I have also faced unrelenting anger from both male and female colleagues. Or, more common and more painful, I have faced their stony and, in my view, cowardly silence. Only one of my accusers reached out or responded to my heartfelt queries. She had very useful and meaningful things to say, for which I am grateful.
Those other bitches, who failed to “reach out” to him just because he’d abused them in the past – the hell with them, right?
I have never been accused of anything that, in my view, could be construed as criminal or coercive.
Well naturally. You told yourself whatever story was necessary to make it ok to sexually harass women. That’s how that works.
But in the blink of an eye I have gone from being someone recognized on the streets of New York City as a journalist, author, and advocate for people with disabilities to someone who fears recognition and trembles at the prospect of running into some radio listener who has come to find me an object of pity or reproach. My mission here in part is to let you know a lot more of the truth about me and to deny what you may have heard that is false but gets repeated over and over without challenge.
In short, dear readers, it’s all about him.
And then…my god he writes an entire book about it. It must be 40 thousand words at least. It’s all as self-obsessed as the snippet above.
What the hell is wrong with everyone?
From everything I have heard and read, “The Takeaway” was started as a means to highlight voices that had not heretofore been granted status on public radio: specifically, women of color were hired to be hosts alongside Hockenberry. He bullied and hounded these women from the show, according to their own testimony and of those around them, which may not have been criminal, but it was certainly brutal. In the end, only the white man, Hockenberry, was left as sole host.
Hockenberry’s swift dismissal of Suki KIm’s reporting is atrocious. She brilliantly exposed a culture of coddling the star at WNYC, and Hockenberry says that all that was about was her feeling “uncomfortable” with his advances??
If anyone is interested in hearing a fairly recent take on Hockenberry’s actions at WNYC regarding his treatment of women of color who were co-hosts: Celeste Headlee was on “The Takeaway,” and has been one of the hosts of “Scene on Radio.” She talks about her experiences on its most recent episode, available here.
And, as usual, that ended up being white men. These articles Ophelia is writing about seem to be suggesting that the male voice has been silenced for too long, which leaves only one thing to say: WTF?
I think, iknklast, that those men have decided that any time which passes whilst a woman is speaking is time during which a man is necessarily silenced. They are only content when there are no female voices being heard at all.
Yes, tigger, that seems to follow from the studies that show that even a short period of a woman talking in a meeting translates into the men reporting that women dominated the meeting. For some reason, men seem to see one woman getting any time at all on the air or in the world as threatening.