"I do not in any way, shape, or form condone any harm done by one human being to another. I have also lived long enough to believe in the power of forgiveness..."

"... second chances, and offering a human being a path to redemption. HOW TO BEAT TRUMP is an important, thoughtful book, and I hope everyone has a chance to read it."

Said Judith Regan, head of the publishing company Regan Arts, quoted in "Accused Serial Sexual Harasser Mark Halperin Signs ‘Trump’ Book Deal" (New York Magazine).

Regan's name is vaguely familiar. From her Wikipedia page:

In 2006, Fox announced that Regan had interviewed O.J. Simpson, during which Simpson "confessed" to the 1994 murders of which he had been acquitted. The so-called confession was to air on the Fox network and Regan was to publish Simpson's written confession as a book entitled If I Did It. After harsh criticism, News Corporation cancelled both the book and the interview with Simpson that was to air on the Fox Network. The book went on to be published and became a #1 bestseller. News Corp. fired Regan and Regan sued and won a reported $10 million.

I... believe in the power of forgiveness, second chances, and... a path to redemption...

A sampling of Twitter responses to the Halperin book announcement:

“The new accusations from the four women include that Halperin masturbated in front of an ABC News employee in his office and that he violently threw another woman against a restaurant window“ https://t.co/Kaie9uZzmJ https://t.co/eNY2AgDCaw

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) August 18, 2019

1. Having a high-profile position in the media, getting a book deal etc, is a privilege, not a right. Mark Halperin not only sexually harassed women (something he has acknowledged), he has been credibly accused of assaulting multiple women. https://t.co/rJfWSLoGoz

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 18, 2019

Can't a man publish a book? Shouldn't we judge it by its substance? Booted out of his job, he found a way to use his skill and be productive. Now, we will have the rectangular object, and why not say it's worth what it's worth? One answer is: A no-name writer wouldn't have gotten this level of publication and publicity if he wrote an equivalent volume of "How to Beat Trump." Halperin is still able to trade on his reputation and that shouldn't be accepted. But the other answer is, let's see the book. Maybe it's a good read. "If I Did It" was a smash hit. And that makes me think... how would you like Halperin's if-I-did-it book about those terrible things he did? Well, he can't do that. O.J. had his acquittal of the crime. The tort suit was over and done — res judicata. Halperin must look outward and find somebody other than himself to execrate. It's just so uncreative to pick Trump to beat on. So tiresome. "How to Beat Trump." It's like they're hoping people will see the book in the bookstore, pick it up, chuckle, say the title, and comically bop their companion on the head with it.

"'Morning Joe' co-host Mika Brzezinski upset women who accused Mark Halperin of sexual harassment..."

"... when she reported on air Friday that she had tried to arrange a meeting so the now-disgraced political analyst could apologize," Fox News reports.

Brzezinski said Halperin, who was fired in October after being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, was "more than willing to meet with his accusers and apologize with them face-to-face." The MSNBC star said she “actually tried to offer him to them” but the women “don't want to talk to him.”

[A] letter [from] 10 of Halperin’s accusers... states that Brzezinski was “inappropriate” for suggesting such a meeting and that she has a conflict of interest because of her “personal friendship” with Halperin.... “Sexual harassment and assault is illegal in the workplace, and represents a violation of the policies and standards of NBC News," the letter said. "It is an unethical and harmful request to ask that sexual assault victims confront their accusers in person and, in particular, on live TV.”...

Brzezinski issued a statement late Friday... "In the case of Mark... I realize that it is not my place.... As a victim of sexual assault, I understand that each individual's case is different. This is up to the victims, some of whom I've been in contact with.... ”

Brzezinski was promoting what in a criminal case is a right of the accused: the right to confront the witnesses against you. It tends to be an ordeal for the accuser, and it's certainly not a ritual of healing. Victims of sexual assault have sought protection from that ordeal, such as by using one-way closed circuit television. See Maryland v. Craig, a case with a famous Scalia dissent:

The Court makes the impossible plausible by recharacterizing the Confrontation Clause, so that confrontation (redesignated "face-to-face confrontation") becomes only one of many "elements of confrontation." The reasoning is as follows: The Confrontation Clause guarantees not only what it explicitly provides for -- "face-to-face" confrontation -- but also implied and collateral rights such as cross-examination, oath, and observation of demeanor (TRUE); the purpose of this entire cluster of rights is to ensure the reliability of evidence (TRUE); the Maryland procedure preserves the implied and collateral rights (TRUE), which adequately ensure the reliability of evidence (perhaps TRUE); therefore the Confrontation Clause is not violated by denying what it explicitly provides for -- "face-to-face" confrontation (unquestionably FALSE). This reasoning abstracts from the right to its purposes, and then eliminates the right.

"Many of the male journalists who stand accused of sexual harassment were on the forefront of covering the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump."

"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...."

From "The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election," by Jill Filipovic in the NYT.

"Veteran journalist Mark Halperin sexually harassed women while he was in a powerful position at ABC News..."

"... according to five women who shared their previously undisclosed accounts with CNN and others who did not experience the alleged harassment personally, but were aware of it," CNN reports.

"During this period, I did pursue relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me," Halperin said in a statement to CNN Wednesday night. "I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain. For that, I am deeply sorry and I apologize. Under the circumstances, I'm going to take a step back from my day-to-day work while I properly deal with this situation."...

Pursue relationships.... there's a phrase that invites mockery. What did he do? He now understands that it was inappropriate? What did he do that he couldn't understand at the time was inappropriate but he understands now? Either he's lying or he was too dumb/unperceptive to be in "a powerful position at ABC News."

Notice that if the answer is he's lying, he could be lying about not knowing in that past that it was inappropriate or lying about currently believing that it's inappropriate. There's also a middle ground, a limbo, where you believe that according to the standards of the time it was acceptable and you enjoyed those standards and even wish they still prevailed, but you know times have changed and it's inopportune now to defend yourself.

The stories of harassment shared with CNN range in nature from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one's breasts against her will. Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed. Halperin denies grabbing a woman's breasts and pressing his genitals against the three women.

You have to deny the things that are criminal offenses, even as you are appeasing with apologies.

Widely considered to be one of the preeminent political journalists, Halperin, 52... co-authored the bestselling book "Game Change"....

He went after the woman, Sarah Palin.

ADDED: I clicked on my "Mark Halperin" tag. I haven't bothered with him much over the years, but once he called Obama a "dick" and professed "I can't explain why I did it," causing me to say "Why is he editor-in-large at Time if he can't explain things as accessible to him as his own mind?" And once he interviewed Ted Cruz in a way that caused a liberal website to award him "The Prize For The Most Racist Interview Of A 2016 Candidate."

Trying to make the dump-Trump movement look organic.

On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd asked his panel of commentators, "How real is the Dump Trump movement inside the Republican party?" Mark Halperin (of NBC) said "it's real" — not that it's likely to work, but to make it work...

The key... is to not let this be something seen as led by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, but led by the delegates themselves. There is this movement that you mentioned at the top of the show. Their hope is that that catches on, and they're willing to go--

Chuck Todd popped in with the perfect word:

That it looks organic.

Halperin repeats Todd's word:

That it looks organic and it looks like it's grassroots and that the delegates can trump the voters more easily than people in Washington. Trump talks about it being illegal, it's not illegal. If the delegates decide to do this, they can....

Gwen Ifill (of PBS News Hour) — referring to an interview earlier in the show — didn't think it could look organic:

I don't know after watching that interview with Paul Ryan how you can believe that they can make this seem organic. If you want to lead a movement, you've got to have leaders of that movement. I don't think we have leaders in this Congress. I think they all want to not answer, as we saw Mitch McConnell do. I think the idea that somehow, from the grassroots, people are just going to reach up and do what the leadership wants has never proven to be true.

Jose Diaz-Balart (of MSNBC and Telemundo) likened the effort to seem organic to a balding guy's use of a comb-over:

This reminds me of the, and my dad had this, the big comb-over, you know?... The person with the comb-over thinks you think it looks natural. And that it really is that way. But when you're looking at the person, you're saying, "That's a big comb-over." This thing is being organic and that it comes from the bottom up is a big comb-over. It's a big comb-over. We can see it, everybody's going to see it. And you can say what you wish, if it's coming from all these organized groups, it's a comb-over.

"The Prize For The Most Racist Interview Of A 2016 Candidate Goes To Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin."

Writes Ian Millhiser at Think Progress (who's no fan of Ted Cruz (the caption over there says "Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin, who somehow managed to act like a bigger jerk than Ted Cruz")):



"The interview sparked outrage among conservative writers over the weekend. Hot Air called it a 'train wreck.' Twitchy mocked 'Bloomberg Politics reporter-turned-ethnic policeman Mark Halperin.' PJ Media’s Rick Moran opined that '[a]sking Cruz to say something in Spanish is akin to asking a black person to eat watermelon or start dancing.'"

"Those who have been helping Romney make up his mind say there are three factors in favor of a run, and two factors against."

Explains Mark Halperin at Bloomberg:

The main rationale on the “go” side is Mitt and Ann Romney’s strongly held conviction that no one in the current field would make a better president. 

I scoff at that view.

Critics in both parties and the press may scoff at this view, but the Romneys believe it to their core and thus feel Mitt has an obligation to his country to once again shoulder the mantle....

Well, of course, they believe it. Don't all candidates get themselves into that frame of mind — on top of the vanity and the desire for power? Oh, maybe some candidates don't look ahead to the actual presidency and only consider whether they'd be best at getting elected (and competent enough at doing the job to which they'll be elected). But I doubt they admit that's what they're doing. For example, Obama excels at running for office, and famously falls back on his candidate persona to get through rough times as he serves out his terms, but I doubt that he ever says to his confidante's: I was such a wonderful candidate, but I've got to admit that Hillary would have made a better President.

(Does one really "shoulder" a "mantle"? A "mantle" is some kind of cloak or robe. Figuratively, it's "Anything which enfolds, enwraps, or encloses as a mantle; an immaterial thing likened to or described as a covering" or "A duty or position of responsibility, authority, leadership, etc., esp. one assumed or inherited by one person from another." (OED.) Assume the mantle is a more apt expression. "Shoulder" creates the image of carrying something something heavy. Not that the candidacy isn't heavy, just that the imagery of shouldering the mantle is incoherent. End of language rant! Sorry, but I feel I have an obligation to the internet to poke at the corpses of dead metaphors.)

The second factor... is a host of emphatically encouraging poll results....

I've always heard that early polls mostly register name recognition. If Romney doesn't get out of the way, the others don't get to build their name recognition. But let me be clear: I'm not against Romney's running. I wrote about the idea of Mitt running last April, when there was a rumor that Romney would run IF Jeb Bush did not. And I was pretty encouraging: "If the donors get behind Mitt Romney, why wouldn't Mitt Romney be a creditable candidate? Why couldn't he win if he ran not because he was a sore loser and felt entitled or ambitious, but because he's a modest, dutiful man, called into service in a time of need?" Ha ha. That's the "main rationale" cited by Halperin.

Halperin says the third factor is Romney's "sense that he can perform better in 2016 than he did in 2008 and 2012" — mainly by showing "that he 'cares about people' like them" by not being so "modest about his decades of work as a lay minister in the Mormon Church."

As for those 2 negative factors: 1. It's tough on the family, and 2. The GOP candidate will have to spend money and sustain attacks through the primaries and then face Hillary Clinton, who will have been saving all her money and sitting back, getting flattered by the press and her party-mates.

The family is the ever-convenient reason for not doing whatever it is you've decided you can't do. As for bulling through the GOP field and still having what it takes to fight the well-rested and untested wife of the ex-President who only ever won an election in New York state and served a rather lackluster term as Secretary of State, I think he's up for that fight.

UPDATE: ROMNEY ANNOUNCES HE WILL NOT RUN. New post coming.

AND: New post here.

"Barack Obama’s decision to base his re-election campaign outside of Washington seems to be working pretty darn well."

"The campaign’s massive, high-rise headquarters in Chicago’s Loop achieves a fine balance between 2008’s hip-casual dorm room (there’s a Ping-Pong table and cheeky homemade signage) and 2012’s systematized Death Star (there are more employees than I have ever seen in a political campaign, with work stations subdivided as ever more employees are added). The place hums from early morning until late at night, designed for maximum efficiency and manifest focus."

This, in Time Magazine, by Mark Halperin, is a particularly silly example of press love for Obama.

Hip-casual dorm room... cheeky homemade signage... systematized Death Star... so embarrassing. Halperin sounds like the new, overeager intern.

Is President Obama, traveling about pushing his jobs bill, on "the campaign trail"?

I had to laugh watching "Meet the Press" today. David Gregory was doing the "roundtable" section of the show, talking to Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Helene Cooper of The New York Times, and Mark Halperin of Time magazine.

Castellanos said:

[T]he president is running, I think, a very strange campaign for re-election.  He is running around the country, in fact declaring his own impotence, saying that, "I'm weak.  I can't get anything done in Washington. Mommy, mommy, please make these Republicans play fair."

Gregory turned to Cooper and said:

I talked to some Republicans and Democrats on the Hill this week who said, "This seems like more of a political exercise, this jobs bill, than anything else." They haven't dropped the bill, by the way.  They haven't introduced the legislation yet; and yet, former President Clinton is saying, "Well, no.  This is really the key.  He's got a good plan." The chances of it passing are not very high.

And Cooper — who, we're told, is reporting on the White House every day — said:

[O]ne of the reasons they haven't dropped the jobs bill yet in Congress is because President Obama decided that he needed to go out and try to sell it first to the American public.

So... presumably, it's about drumming up public support for the jobs bill, which really is a jobs bill and not — as Gregory just put it — "more of a political exercise... than anything else."

Then Gregory dragged in Granholm — the super-polished Granholm, and she says:

[Obama has] got to put stuff out there that work--that works. ... So he's doing--he's adopting a plan that will create American jobs, both in the public and the private sector.  And that's exactly what he needs to trumpet.  And I just say, if the Republicans continue to say no to this reasonable plan, game on.

Game on? So... it is a political exercise?

Castellanos breaks in to say:

There's a little bit of a problem.  The American people have televisions and the Internet, and they can see what's going on....

Then there's an interlude about the new Ron Suskind book — which I just pre-ordered here — and Gregory lifts out a quote...

 "Over the past few months, [National Economic Council Chair Larry] Summers had said this, in a stage whisper, to [OMB Director Peter] Orszag and others as they left the morning economic briefings ...  `I mean it,' Summers stressed.  `We're home alone.  There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes.'"

Wow! That's hot. But Halperin lamely obfuscates, and Gregory goes back to Helene Cooper and asks her if "there [is] a broader vision for the economy that the president goes out and, and runs on?" And here's the part that made us laugh here at Meadhouse. Remember Cooper is the one who was careful to say: "President Obama decided that he needed to go out and try to sell [the jobs bill] first to the American public." And remember Granholm had bolstered that with her rejection of the notion that the jobs bill is "more of a political exercise... than anything else." And Cooper says:

I think there is, and he's, he's, he's, he's put that [broader vision] out there with his, his jobs proposal. And he said, "These are the things I think we need to do." But he's, he's very much hampered by the political reality of where we are right now. That said, I wouldn't--I, I was out on the--not the campaign trail, that's a very--but I was out with him this week as he went to try to pass his jobs bill in Columbus, Ohio, and in Raleigh, North Carolina....

Ha ha. It's all about Obama's reelection! As  Castellanos said: The American people have televisions and the Internet, and they can see what's going on. 

"[N]ot the campaign trail, that's a very..."... Cooper couldn't come up with the right euphemism for "campaign trail" or even the right words to follow "that's a very" that would express, with appropriate euphony, the reason why she's sorry she said "campaign trail."

Game on!

Mark Halperin called Obama "a dick" and now he says "I can’t explain why I did it."

He's apologized, but I don't care. I want him to explain why he did it. Why is he editor-in-large at Time if he can't explain things as accessible to him as his own mind?



Am I the only one who takes more offense at the blurted phrase "Oh my God" (by Joe Scarborough) than the use of the word "dick" to explain the President's behavior? I think insulting the President is rough political discourse, but saying "Oh my God" is taking the Lord's name in vain.

You know, I bet Halperin was reverting to a style of speech that he uses with his colleagues, off-camera, and he thought he could stick it in, perhaps with bleeping or a comic reference to bleeping that didn't happen. But he's out of touch with the segment of the morning TV audience that experiences "he was a dick" as way off the norm. I mean, I am too.

I'm trying to guess whether that segment is also disturbed by "Oh my God" the way I am. I really don't understand how anyone who believes in God (or has respect for people around them who believe in God) can say use "God" as part of a casual exclamation.

But calling people a dick. It's rude, but actual dicks aren't able to take offense, and even if they were, they wouldn't determine your fate in the afterlife.

Vlog?

Stop me before I vlog again. Or raise some topics and ask some questions, and this might turn into a vlog day.

ADDED: The vlog is done, and will be posted soon. It's about: Mark Halperin's op-ed about the influence of Richard Ben Cramer's book "What It Takes," the prospect of vlogging this blog's commenters (with references to Alexandra Pelosi's documentary "Journeys With George"), and whether children should call their parents by their first names.

AND: Here it is.