JUST IN: Host Sues FOX for “Sex-Fueled, Playboy Mansion-Like Cult,” Singles Out O’Reilly
The network of “Christian family values” and right-wing conspiracies has found itself unable to shake the sexual harrassment scandal that led to their predatory CEO, Roger Ailes, to step down. More and more women are stepping forward to share their stories and new lawsuits have been filed. In a new lawsuit filed in New York, host Andrea Tantaros accused Ailes and FOX’s star host Bill O’Reilly of orchestrating a “nightmare” of sexual harassment and humiliating retaliation against her when their advances were rebuffed.
Tantaros didn’t mince words when she revealed what really goes on behind the scenes at America’s most viciously ignorant media empire: “Fox News masquerades as defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny.”
The suit begins by describing the microharassments and the culture of exploitative misogyny that Ailes and his lieutenants cultivated at the network, such as forcing her to change into on-air clothing without a curtain for privacy and being instructed to wear clothes “to show off her legs.” She recounts how Ailes would ask his female employees to turn around in a circle so that he could leer at their bodies so often that it was known as the “twirl” throughout FOX offices.
FOX guests and male employees, including former Senator Scott Brown, often would touch Tantaros inappropriately; all her complaints to Senior Executive William “Bill” Shine were promptly ignored. When Ailes was deposed, Shine was promoted to co-president.
Tantaros alleges that O’Reilly attempted to “lure” her to a private Long Island mansion where she could show him her “wild side”.
[C]ommencing in February 2016, Bill O’Reilly (“O’Reilly”), whom Tantaros had considered to be a good friend and a person from whom she sought career guidance, started sexually harassing her by, inter alia, (a) asking her to come to stay with him on Long Island where it would be “very private,” and (b) telling her on more than one occasion that he could “see [her] as a wild girl,” and that he believed that she had a “wild side.” Fox News did take one action: plainly because of O’Reilly’s rumored prior sexual harassment issues and in recognition of Tantaros’s complaints, Brandi informed Cane that Tantaros would no longer be appearing on O’Reilly’s Fox News show, The O’Reilly Factor.
Her refusal of the advances of senior FOX executives was met with retaliation; she lost her job as host of the Five and the predators directed “the posting of, numerous negative comments about Tantaros from “sock puppet” social media accounts (accounts operated by Fox News’s media relations Department designed to make it appear that they were maintained by persons unrelated to Fox News).”
The correlation of stories in Andrea Tantaros’ lawsuit with the stories told by Gretchen Carlson and literally dozens of other women prove that these are not just a few disgruntled employees but evidence of an entire company for which the exploitation and sexual harassment of female employees is the daily behavior of the self-entitled males who run it. When you consider this network then claims to represent Christian family values while presenting information so divorced from reality that it literally makes you stupider to watch, it’s hard to see how Rupert Murdoch can justify its existence at all anymore.
