“I’m proud to share this recent conversation with Warren Buffett,” the 80-year-old newsman wrote on his website. “It is his first interview on camera in almost a year, and the first I’ve done in more than 4 years. It is a step in a journey to engage the most interesting people and explore the most compelling ideas in the world.”
Rose is 80. That's 11 years younger than Buffett, but still, why not keep to your private life? Yes, the world has its "most compelling ideas" that could be "explored" and "most interesting people" to be "engaged," but you're not giving off the slightest ray of hope that you're the man to do it. You were disgraced, and we'd pretty much forgotten about you.
The article has nothing about the substantive content of that interview, which you can watch, here, at Rose's website. I'm certainly not recommending it.
That's not a Gloria Steinem quote! It's easy to look up. Wikipedia has an article, "The personal is political":
The phrase was popularized by the publication of a 1969 essay by feminist Carol Hanisch under the title "The Personal is Political" in 1970, but she disavows authorship of the phrase. According to Kerry Burch, Shulamith Firestone, Robin Morgan, and other feminists given credit for originating the phrase have also declined authorship. "Instead," Burch writes, "they cite millions of women in public and private conversations as the phrase's collective authors." Gloria Steinem has likened claiming authorship of the phrase to claiming authorship of "World War II."
That is, it looks as though Gloria Steinem is at most "famous" for saying that no one person can claim to have said it first.
The powerful and now-departed men of CBS — Moonves, Fager and star interviewer Charlie Rose — helped shape how our society sees women. The network, after all, is the most-watched in the nation. “60 Minutes” for 50 years has been the very definition of quality broadcast journalism: the gold standard.
It’s impossible to know how different America would be if power-happy and misogynistic men hadn’t been running the show in so many influential media organizations — certainly not just CBS.
Yes, we can't know what might have been without these apparently awful people running CBS, but what's the evidence that the shows the shows pumped out on CBS were importantly misogynistic enough to have made our culture the "misogynistic culture" it is? I can't find anything in Sullivan's column.
We attempt a joke. “Nice to meet a fellow ‘enemy of the people,’” transforming President Trump’s controversial characterization of the free press from a scorching threat on democracy to an interview icebreaker.
“I refuse even to joke about it,” Amanpour says, grinning gamely but preparing to deliver the first in a series of manifestos that would score our conversation about the state of journalism-under-fire....
Fallon is a florid writer. What does "manifestos that would score our conversation" even mean? Doesn't a "manifesto" need to be something more than a one-liner? My dictionary, the OED, says it's "A public declaration or proclamation, written or spoken; esp. a printed declaration, explanation, or justification of policy..." and "In extended use: a book or other work by a private individual supporting a cause, propounding a theory or argument, or promoting a certain lifestyle." As for "score," I guess he means "To cut superficially; to make scores or cuts in; to mark with incisions, notches, or abrasions of the skin." Example from the OED: "The elephant,..deeply scores with its tusks the trunk of the tree" (Charles Darwin).
The conversation is covered with cut marks made by declarations of policy. Okay. It's actually quite common to speak for words as capable of making cut marks. We often say "cutting remarks." And a conversation is something that can be cut. We speak of cutting into the conversation and even of silence that feels like you could cut it with a knife. Or a manifesto.
Anyway. Back to late-night talk shows. Why were people watching Charlie Rose in the first place? Did he make them feel smart and sophisticated? Can Christiane Amanpour access the same streak of TV audience emotion? If there was a sexual element to the response, can Christiane do what Charlie did? By the way, was Ted Koppel in a different psycho-sexual niche? Who watched Ted and who watched Charlie? What was that late night consumption of men chewing the news all about?
IN THE COMMENTS: campy said:
“I refuse even to joke about it,” Amanpour says,...
An additional 27 women — 14 CBS News employees and 13 who worked with him elsewhere — said Rose sexually harassed them. Concerns about Rose’s behavior were flagged to managers at the network as early as 1986 and as recently as April 2017, when Rose was co-anchor of “CBS This Morning,” according to multiple people with firsthand knowledge of the conversations....
“I had been there long enough to know that it was just the way things went,” said Sophie Gayter, now 27, who worked at “60 Minutes” in 2013 when, she said, Rose groped her buttocks as they walked down an office hallway to a recording studio. “People said what they wanted to you, people did what they wanted to you.”
"Matt Lauer interviewed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump in an official 'commander-in-chief forum' for NBC. He notoriously peppered and interrupted Mrs. Clinton with cold, aggressive, condescending questions hyper-focused on her emails, only to pitch softballs at Mr. Trump and treat him with gentle collegiality a half-hour later. Mark Halperin and Charlie Rose set much of the televised political discourse on the race, interviewing other pundits, opining themselves and obsessing over the electoral play-by-play. Mr. Rose, after the election, took a tone similar to Mr. Lauer’s with Mrs. Clinton — talking down to her, interrupting her, portraying her as untrustworthy. Mr. Halperin was a harsh critic of Mrs. Clinton, painting her as ruthless and corrupt, while going surprisingly easy on Mr. Trump. The reporter Glenn Thrush, currently on leave from The New York Times because of sexual harassment allegations, covered Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign when he was at Newsday and continued to write about her over the next eight years for Politico. A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable.... It’s hard to look at these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton and not see glimmers of that same simmering disrespect and impulse to keep women in a subordinate place...."
Do these shows need a man? A week ago, NY Magazine ran "How Will CBS Replace Charlie Rose?" which doesn't assume that a man must replace Rose. Perhaps to take that position openly is to embrace sex discrimination. Even if you think it, you shouldn't say it, especially during The Reckoning.
And yet these morning shows seem to be so much about emotionally bonding with these hosts. I'm saying that from a distance. I've never watched any of them (except in brief clips that occasionally make the news). Isn't it a question of who the viewers — mostly women? — want to wake up with? I believe that's the way these shows used to be talked about. But now, perhaps, that kind of discussion is politically incorrect.
The NY Magazine article does refer to gender at the very end, but only like this:
Letting O’Donnell and King handle the show themselves would also save money, no small thing in an age of ever-shrinking network bottom lines. Oh, and it would send a perhaps not-subtle message: Two women can do just fine anchoring a morning show themselves.
It's been a running joke on John Oliver's show for years:
Charlie Rose's "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King just happened to be a guest on Stephen Colbert's show last night. We're told she was already scheduled and, when the Rose story broke, she considered canceling, but Colbert's show is on CBS, and I assume I'm looking at CBS trying to extricate itself from the Charlie Rose story. And Gayle King isn't just committed to CBS, she's got her own reputation to keep clean. Watch the mind-numbing performance of Gayle King who plays dumb and cloyingly emotional:
1. In Colbert's introduction of King, he says she "delivers the hard news as co-anchor of 'CBS This Morning' and delivers the good news as the editor-at-large of O, the Oprah Magazine." Was "hard news" an intentional reference to Charlie Rose, whose penis is in the news? If innuendo was not intended, I believe it would have been noticed after it was written and edited out, so I say it was intended. Deniable, of course. Everything's deniable, like King's I-knew-nothing! routine.
2. Less than half-way through this clip, I was pausing and researching signs of lying. King is looking down and to her right (as if she had notes down there she needed to read) and scratching her cheek (at 2:02 (I've seen myself on video many times touching my cheek when I know I'm saying something that's has an element of deceit)). And look at her fist at 2:55.
3. "This is very difficult for me" — King's tactic is to make this a story of her emotional journey. Colbert plays a supporting role, with softball questions like: "Are you angry?" To which King answers: "I am a variety of emotions. There's certain some anger. There's some sadness. There's compassion. There's concern." It's so complex! "You can hold a variety of emotions around one particular incident."
4. At 3:52, she repositions and goes back to "what these women are going through." But what I want to know is what she knew and might have done to help "these women" before the news story broke and had an impact on her career. We have to start listening to women. King has been a professional in woman-oriented media for a long time. She didn't just recently get a clue about these issues. But the Colbert audience gives her a massive cheer (as she interlaces her fingers and works her hands back and forth).
5. Women will continue to speak up, King tells us in an impassioned tone, because "they're now being believed." She has to say "they," though she's a woman, because if she said "we," it would seem as though she had a story to tell.
6. King says that men need to "join the conversation." How? Men have to condemn sexual harassment and not make fine distinctions. They have to say that "it's all bad." So... not really a conversation. "All of it is really unacceptable." There's nothing to debate. Oh, but then she says, "By the same token, I want to be able to joke and laugh with friends without thinking I'm going to be called into human resources. But we all know the difference. What that is. We do." We do? Is it that talking is different and you can joke? But look at the most famous joke on the subject: "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the pussy, you can do anything." That has plainly been dumped into the all-of-it-is-really-unacceptable category. (No wonder Siri is telling me, "Ann, I don't really know any good jokes. None, in fact." It is the Era of That's Not Funny.") [AND: As Ignorance is Bliss asks in the comments: "So who put a pubic hair on my Coke?"]
And here's Gayle King talking about the Rose story with Norah O'Donnell on their show, "CBS This Morning" yesterday:
That's very stiff and stilted. The 2 women are scripted to say what's been decided as the correct way to save their show. It goes on and on, and I'm saying that after stopping the clip at 2:12. There's no way, no matter how much longer they talk — the clip goes on for another minute — they are not going to get to the topic I want to hear discussed: What did you know? If you didn't know, why didn't you know? What good are you in your women-helping-women role on morning TV if you didn't recognize the monster who sat next to you for 5 years?
Multiple women said they had at first been reassured by the presence of Vega, Rose’s executive producer, who has worked with him for decades. Two women who spoke to The Post said they repeatedly reported Rose’s inappropriate sexual behavior to Vega.
But:
“I explained how he inappropriately spoke to me during those times,” Godfrey-Ryan said. “She would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.’"...
“I should have stood up for them,” said Vega, 52, who has worked with Rose since the show was created in 1991. “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”...
It's a very long article, and I won't undertake to describe Rose's alleged modus operandi, using his small (15-person) operation to bring vulnerable women into his orbit and to isolate them in his remote beach house where Rose (we're told) used the mating technique of walking around naked.
PBS and Bloomberg LP have distanced themselves from Charlie Rose Inc., which is a separate entity. They tell the Post they knew nothing, nothing. And they've suspended distribution of the show.
The most up-voted comment at WaPo is: "Is Trump the only man in the world that is not being held accountable?"
A liberal icon crashes to the ground and what can a liberal do but scream at the sky — Trump!!?
I guess it could mean a lot of things, but from the article, the idea seems to be to portray her "as hypocritical and untrustworthy" (because of her personal wealth), and to stress her emotionality. Some right-wing radio guy called her “frazzled” and “triggered,” which Traister calls "highly gendered language." And Warren is portrayed as taking a "doggedly pragmatic paths to advancement" — being one of the "hand-in-the-air Tracy Flicks of the world" that Americans instinctively loathe. The "right wing," we're told, "regards ambitious women as threatening and ugly," while the "left" sees them as "compromised and emblematic of reviled Establishment mores."
However right or wrong any of that is about how opponents attack female candidates and voters react to those attacks and how "highly gendered" it is, there's still the question whether we want to see "Hillary" become a verb. We've seen proper names become verbs. We know what "to Bork" means, because we know what happened to Bork. But what happened to Hillary? She's got a whole tome trying to say or avoid saying what happened. It's called "What Happened." What the hell happened? Sorry, that does not have the makings of a new verb.
Does Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg know what happened? Charlie Rose tried to get her to say: "Do you think sexism played a role in that campaign?" A role. Obviously, it had some role.
So it's unsurprising that she said "I have no doubt that it did." The audience claps and whoops though she's just said essentially nothing.
Rose is sharp enough to know he got essentially nothing and redid his question: "Do you think it was decisive?"
Ginsburg cagily said, "There are so many things that might have been decisive" and "But that was a major, major factor." The first statement absolves her of all responsibility, and the second statement gives those who want a quote a tasty nugget to enjoy.
But Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not know what happened, because no one can really know. It's infinitely complex. Going forward, we need to predict what might happen and try to influence what happens. If we care about getting good candidates and figuring out whom to trust with political power, let's not screw up the discourse with the grotesque verb "to Hillary." Women candidates deserve better than that. We all deserve better than that.
If you care about a female candidate, you're not helping her by encouraging people to think of her as being like Hillary, even if you believe that some attacks on Hillary were unfairly sexist.
I was just listening to the podcast of Monday's Rush Limbaugh show. A long segment called "The Mommy Wars" ends like this:
RUSH: Here's Charlie Rose. And listen to Charlie. He had to wrap up the interview with the women on his show today with Gayle King, and they were talking about the new feminism. Here's what Charlie Rose said that men have to do.
ROSE: It is incumbent on men to appreciate more and to do more and have the same responsibilities that women do.
RUSH: I just sit here, my mouth just falls open. Will you play that again? It is up to men to understand more, to do more, to explain more, to say more, to feel more, to touch more, to be more, to be fully respected and understood so that women will go to bed with us, is what he means.
ROSE: It is incumbent on men to appreciate more and to do more and have the same responsibilities that women do.
RUSH: Appreciate more and to do more and understand the absolute hell women's lives are, because if we don't, we'll never get 'em in the sack. Yes, dear, yes dear, yes dear, yes dear, can we go to bed now?
The "hightone chatterbox" — I love The Daily News! — is Charlie Rose.
She says she toiled away 25 hours a week from June to August 2007, researching for the host, putting press packets together, escorting the guests and cleaning up after the show....
State law prohibits unpaid interns unless they are being trained and not performing in place of paid employees....
“Central to the show’s lean production are the substantial number of unpaid interns who work on The Charlie Rose Show each day, but are paid no wages,” Bickerton charges in the suit.
Rose has been running his lean operation with "at least 10 interns doing his bidding," and Bickerton's suit is a class action.
I feel the urge to connect this to the recent uproar over Rush Limbaugh. Liberals are trying to destroy Limbaugh by attacking him for his failure to live up to principles that could be characterized as either liberal or conservative. (Treating women with special respect — is that a feminist or a traditional-values notion?) Now, here's a way to attack the liberal icon Charlie Rose, using what I think are mostly liberal principles: minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, and government-imposed rules about labor relations. Also: ensuring that the children of the wealthy don't get special advantages. (They're the ones that can afford to begin their careers with nonpaying internships.) I assume libertarians and conservatives don't worry about free citizens freely choosing to work for free.
But you can't really compare Charlie Rose to Rush Limbaugh. There's no fun in bringing down Charlie Rose, and, anyway, conservatives aren't salivating at the opportunity to destroy a voice on the left, are they? Just let him keep talking, keep competing in the marketplace of ideas. Let him keep producing audio sound bites for Rush to ridicule.
ADDED: Judging from most of the comments to this post the answer to the question above is that time-consuming content will be ignored or assumed to be whatever it appears to be at first glance. In case you're using a device that won't play embedded video: here's the link to the YouTube page. Now, please. Take the time to watch.
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