TW: Sexual harassment
Sep. 26th, 2018 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI'm putting this together since it was actually hard to find news articles talking about the whole story. TW: Sexual harassment
- Leonard Lopate is a New York City media personality who hosted WNYC- New York City's NPR station-'s midday show for something like the last thirty years. On the show, he interviewed various authors, actors, artists, writers, scientists, chefs, politicians and other participants in New York City and American culture with in-depth interviews of approximately 20 minutes. Lopate is a pretty skillful interviewer, and the wide range of guests he brought in often made for an entertaining and illuminating show- I listened to his show on my lunch break several times a week for most of the last decade.
-Last December, he was suddenly fired alongside weekend DJ Jonathan Schwartz because of sexual harassment allegations made by some of his subordinates. WNYC's own article about the firing.
The public reports of the complaints against Lopate have been fairly tame. He is said to have said some shitty, sexually charged things that he should not have said, but which generally don't feel like they're fireable offenses. He is also accused of kind of being a bully.
There are several possible explanations for his firing, given this:
-He actually did something far worse that has not been disclosed publicly.
-Last December, NPR was reeling from the disclosure of a far worse pattern of sexual misconduct from a senior executive, and was trying to cover its bases by making sure that a story didn't leak along the lines of "Two long-standing WNYC show hosts have had multiple sexual harassment complaints against them and yet the station has done nothing," so they overreacted and kneejerk fired Lopate and Schwartz.
-He didn't do anything worse than what has gotten out publicly, but even a handful of shitty sexually charged things is too many to subject women to, and should legitimately be fireable offenses, and NPR's administration finally realized this.
I don't know which is true. I'm also not really sure how much it matters. Nobody disputes that Lopate was sometimes kind of an asshole, his defenders just argue that his was a mostly harmless kind of being an asshole, and that the good he did as a performer justified it. But nobody should actually be upset when an asshole is fired, even if the things they did weren't per se 'fireable offenses'.
For the past nine months, the WNYC midday show has been led by a fascinating grab bag of guest hosts. You'd turn on the show and not know if it was going to be hosted by comedian Hari Kondabolu or journalist Duarte Geraldino or podcaster Kai Wright or food writer Melissa Clark or any of a variety of other cultural thinkers, as well as a rotating cast of WNYC staff. Few were exceptionally skilled interviewers, but all brought their own perspective and personality to the interviews, and to the selection of interviewees. It was enjoyable to have that surprise every day of who was going to be running the show. The awkwardness of the interviewers was also pretty charming. It gave a rough energy to the show that you rarely see from WNYC's polished performers.
In July, Lopate was hired by WBAI, our local Pacifica affiliate, to relatively little fanfare because all it did was confirm our general sense that few of the #metoo 'casualties' were facing serious long term consequences.
Two weeks later, Jay Smooth, hip hop DJ and media personality, and host of WBAI's long running Underground Railroad show, resigned from WBAI after attempting to get them to rethink their position. There was a since-deleted twitter post from WBAI administration claiming that they felt that none of the charges against Lopate had been proven, justifying their hiring him. Regardless of how specifically shitty WBAI's administration was, you have to admit that Smooth's actions are moderately heroic.
And last week marked the start of Alison Stewart's run as the new permanent host of a WNYC mid-day show now called All of It So we'll see how that goes. Stewart's an interesting choice- she has the stature as a journalist and media figure to talk to important people comfortably, she brings a woman's perspective, but she is not, I think, likely to be able to bring the artist's perspective to conversations that Lopate so often was. Lopate had art school training, not journalist's training. His brother was novelist Philip Lopate and he spent his life embedded in the society of New York's high culture community. In so many small, crucial ways, he was able to speak with many of the interesting people he was interviewing as a peer, and I'm not sure how Stewart's approach will compare. Perhaps the answer is that she will be bringing in a different set of people that she can talk to as peers, and that is an exciting new direction for the show.
Anyway, the Leonard Lopate Show was one of these low-grade background noises in my life, a regular fixture that sometimes registered and sometimes skated past my notice, and sometimes it taught me something valuable about a book or a piece of art or a part of history. It feels like that minor significance and ephemerality was its legacy, given how little writing I have seen about what happened. I was not fannish about the show, I am not one of the small group of NPR fans who are still up in arms about Lopate's firing and still posting on WNYC comments pages to complain, but it is a change in my life and I hope the adjustment goes well.
And as I noted in my memorial to Harlan Ellison, you wonder, in reflecting on the influence on your life created by known creeps, whether that influence can possibly be wholly for the good. In my mind, what I mostly extracted from Lopate's show was information about books and movies and paintings and recipes to think about, but what else was absorbed? It's worth reflecting on.
- Leonard Lopate is a New York City media personality who hosted WNYC- New York City's NPR station-'s midday show for something like the last thirty years. On the show, he interviewed various authors, actors, artists, writers, scientists, chefs, politicians and other participants in New York City and American culture with in-depth interviews of approximately 20 minutes. Lopate is a pretty skillful interviewer, and the wide range of guests he brought in often made for an entertaining and illuminating show- I listened to his show on my lunch break several times a week for most of the last decade.
-Last December, he was suddenly fired alongside weekend DJ Jonathan Schwartz because of sexual harassment allegations made by some of his subordinates. WNYC's own article about the firing.
The public reports of the complaints against Lopate have been fairly tame. He is said to have said some shitty, sexually charged things that he should not have said, but which generally don't feel like they're fireable offenses. He is also accused of kind of being a bully.
There are several possible explanations for his firing, given this:
-He actually did something far worse that has not been disclosed publicly.
-Last December, NPR was reeling from the disclosure of a far worse pattern of sexual misconduct from a senior executive, and was trying to cover its bases by making sure that a story didn't leak along the lines of "Two long-standing WNYC show hosts have had multiple sexual harassment complaints against them and yet the station has done nothing," so they overreacted and kneejerk fired Lopate and Schwartz.
-He didn't do anything worse than what has gotten out publicly, but even a handful of shitty sexually charged things is too many to subject women to, and should legitimately be fireable offenses, and NPR's administration finally realized this.
I don't know which is true. I'm also not really sure how much it matters. Nobody disputes that Lopate was sometimes kind of an asshole, his defenders just argue that his was a mostly harmless kind of being an asshole, and that the good he did as a performer justified it. But nobody should actually be upset when an asshole is fired, even if the things they did weren't per se 'fireable offenses'.
For the past nine months, the WNYC midday show has been led by a fascinating grab bag of guest hosts. You'd turn on the show and not know if it was going to be hosted by comedian Hari Kondabolu or journalist Duarte Geraldino or podcaster Kai Wright or food writer Melissa Clark or any of a variety of other cultural thinkers, as well as a rotating cast of WNYC staff. Few were exceptionally skilled interviewers, but all brought their own perspective and personality to the interviews, and to the selection of interviewees. It was enjoyable to have that surprise every day of who was going to be running the show. The awkwardness of the interviewers was also pretty charming. It gave a rough energy to the show that you rarely see from WNYC's polished performers.
In July, Lopate was hired by WBAI, our local Pacifica affiliate, to relatively little fanfare because all it did was confirm our general sense that few of the #metoo 'casualties' were facing serious long term consequences.
Two weeks later, Jay Smooth, hip hop DJ and media personality, and host of WBAI's long running Underground Railroad show, resigned from WBAI after attempting to get them to rethink their position. There was a since-deleted twitter post from WBAI administration claiming that they felt that none of the charges against Lopate had been proven, justifying their hiring him. Regardless of how specifically shitty WBAI's administration was, you have to admit that Smooth's actions are moderately heroic.
And last week marked the start of Alison Stewart's run as the new permanent host of a WNYC mid-day show now called All of It So we'll see how that goes. Stewart's an interesting choice- she has the stature as a journalist and media figure to talk to important people comfortably, she brings a woman's perspective, but she is not, I think, likely to be able to bring the artist's perspective to conversations that Lopate so often was. Lopate had art school training, not journalist's training. His brother was novelist Philip Lopate and he spent his life embedded in the society of New York's high culture community. In so many small, crucial ways, he was able to speak with many of the interesting people he was interviewing as a peer, and I'm not sure how Stewart's approach will compare. Perhaps the answer is that she will be bringing in a different set of people that she can talk to as peers, and that is an exciting new direction for the show.
Anyway, the Leonard Lopate Show was one of these low-grade background noises in my life, a regular fixture that sometimes registered and sometimes skated past my notice, and sometimes it taught me something valuable about a book or a piece of art or a part of history. It feels like that minor significance and ephemerality was its legacy, given how little writing I have seen about what happened. I was not fannish about the show, I am not one of the small group of NPR fans who are still up in arms about Lopate's firing and still posting on WNYC comments pages to complain, but it is a change in my life and I hope the adjustment goes well.
And as I noted in my memorial to Harlan Ellison, you wonder, in reflecting on the influence on your life created by known creeps, whether that influence can possibly be wholly for the good. In my mind, what I mostly extracted from Lopate's show was information about books and movies and paintings and recipes to think about, but what else was absorbed? It's worth reflecting on.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-26 02:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-09-26 04:19 pm (UTC)Two thoughts:
I don't know enough about WNYC's employment structure or know enough about the state laws governing his employment, but if he was an at-will employee then the fireable offense could be anything that isn't a protected class. And while I suspect that WNYC's logic lies more in one of your first two options, I have incredible sympathy for the third. Which brings me to my next thought ...
When I think about a lot of the #metoo men who are accused, particularly in the entertainment industry, what I often think about is not the sexual assault or harassment itself, but the ripple effects in the workplace as well as those who haven't been sexual harassers, but who have made for hostile workplaces in other ways: by bullying and demeaning those around them; by sheltering harassers; by harassing in non-sexual ways -- verbally, acting violently (say, throwing things when angry), and forcing a lack of boundaries. Linda Bloodworth Thomason's piece in The Hollywood Reporter is a good example of a high level version of this, but the version I've seen the most and that's talked about the least is how people in entry level positions are abused -- not usually sexually, but with demands or workplace norms that create a hostile environment and are often borderline illegal in other ways -- flaunting laws about OT for example. I've seen much of it described as being a system of weeding out people who don't want it as much, since there's so many people who want to work in entertainment, but that's a load of horse shit. I've also seen it described as "well you're all a bunch of artistic types, so of course passions will run high", which is another load of horse shit. Those are excuses to treat people like shit and for people with big names to throw their weight around and I see it as being part of a professional landscape where #metoo sexual abuses are normalized and are simply another symptom of a larger problem. In each of those cases I'm thinking of the those people being fired would have created a much better work environment for everyone, even if the names attached to the project wouldn't have been as famous. Does that mean they should have been fired? Maybe not, but I definitely wish that it was at least a conversation to be had instead of having to work around them and find people who will put up with workplace abuses. (I should say that most of the people I'm thinking of were men, but there have been several women who fall into this category as well.)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-09 05:57 am (UTC)And this comment is very insightful, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-10 04:12 pm (UTC)But as you point out, the experience of job precariousness that leads to us tending to sympathize with people being fired also puts the burden of their bad behavior on other employees who don't dare to speak out or leave because they are dependent on their job. And also, we know that there are plenty of people who are kept around in spite of having done things that are generally considered 'fireable offenses', because of other value they provide to the company. So yeah, the current idea of 'fireable offense' is generally not serving people well.