This is big. In some ways bigger than what's going on in Hollywood.
If you were to name the big lefty magazines outside the mainstream media brands, you would probably come up with The Nation, Mother Jones and what's left of The New Republic.
Here's what they look like now.
Mother Jones magazine’s editor and chief executive acknowledged on Thursday that they investigated Washington bureau chief David Corn for inappropriate workplace behavior three years ago, warning him about touching female staffers and insensitive descriptions of sexual violence, and would now probe the allegations further in light of two emails written by former staffers in 2014 and 2015 and obtained by POLITICO.
One of the emails, written in 2015 by a former staffer outlining concerns she had heard from other women in the Washington office, said Corn, now 58, made “rape jokes,” “regularly gave [several women] unwelcome shoulder rubs and engaged in uninvited touching of their legs, arms, backs, and waists,” and “made inappropriate comments about women’s sexuality and anatomy.” The other email, from 2014, was by a former female staffer who claimed that Corn “came up behind me and put his hands and arms around my body in a way that felt sexual and domineering.”
Then the New Republic.
New allegations of sexual harassment against Leon Wieseltier have tanked the former New Republic editor’s new publication, which was set to launch this fall. Wieseltier on Tuesday apologized for “offenses against some of my colleagues in the past.” As a result, the Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, said it was killing Wieseltier’s new publication. The New York Times reports that women who worked under Wieseltier have been exchanging emails recently to share their stories of harassment. Wieseltier, 65, allegedly “pressed them for details about their own sexual encounters” and told them that “their dresses were not tight enough,” according to The New York Times, among other allegations.
And then The Nation and the New "New" Republic.
Hamilton Fish, president and publisher of The New Republic, resigned from the magazine Friday, following allegations that he had mistreated female employees.
In one such incident, Fish allegedly grabbed a female employee by the neck, leaving red marks. At the time, he was president of The Nation Institute, a nonprofit organization that funds progressive journalism. Fish told HuffPost that the neck-grabbing incident did not happen as described, but he did not offer his own version of events. Female staffers at The Nation Institute also described Fish as consistently undermining them, making sexually suggestive jokes and assigning them menial tasks. He thought of The Nation Institute as his “personal domain,” one staffer told HuffPost.
When Fish was named TNR publisher in February 2016, Nation Institute staffers mobilized to warn their TNR colleagues about their new boss. One current TNR staffer emailed Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, and asked her to tell McCormack about the circumstances under which Fish had left the institute. (Vanden Heuvel did not respond to requests for comment.)
Of course she didn't.
Fish was one of the godfathers of The Nation. Leon Wieseltier was his equivalent at the New Republic before it was trashed. David Corn was Mother Jones's D.C. Bureau Chief. These scandals go to the very top. At The Nation and the New Republic, they really couldn't go any higher.
And this is the reality of the left's progressive workplaces and its media leaders.
Mother Jones journalist David Corn scorched President Donald Trump on Saturday, saying that Trump has dragged U.S. presidential politics into the gutter.
The gutter, you say.