Read the whole thing over at the Washington Post, it’s a long and shameful description of NLMSM icon Charlie Rose’s fall from grace—and a shocking between-the-lines read that Rose got to that position of grace in the first place—but I’m struck by a couple of comments in particular that Rose has made about these revelations and associated accusations.  The first is this gem:

I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times….

Wow.  How does Rose suppose his embarrassment compares to the humiliation and damage suffered by those eight (and more?) women he abused?  And his abuse was insensitive behavior, yet….

And this one:

I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings….

Now, as readers of my stuff know, and particularly from what I’ve written in this sort of scandal recently breaking, I’m a firm believer in innocent until proven guilty at trial, and Rose should be afforded the same consideration, but—again, wow.  “I did some of this stuff, but not all of it; and it was all a big misunderstanding, anyway!?”  This utterly destroyed what was otherwise a (structurally, anyway) sound apology.

Separately, but just as important, how is it possible that CBS, PBS, and Bloomberg TV were unaware of these abuses over that long stretch of time?  Because no formal complaints were made?  Who believes that?

That would be utter nonsense, unless we were to believe that those three teams of executives, every single one of them high-powered, highly intelligent, highly alert, fully grown adult humans were in fact just a couple of monkeys busily hearing no evil and seeing no evil.

Every organization has its rumor mill; these abuses were being talked about around the water coolers, in the wash rooms, in workers’ cubicles.  It boggles the sensibility to claim that these things didn’t eventually bubble up to “management” separately from formal complaints.  It boggles the sensibility yet further, that having heard these rumors, the executives were so lacking in initiative that they couldn’t look into them on their own initiative.

Furthermore, at least one knew from direct testimony.  Here’s Yvette Vega, Rose’s longtime executive producer, responding to one women with an explicit complaint:

That’s just Charlie being Charlie.

Vega thought everything was jake.  Guys are guys.  No worries, dearie.  Vega added, claiming to have learned better:

I should have stood up for them. I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.

Yewbetcha.  Now, what is Vega doing with her “regret?”  Besides bodice-ripping and wallowing in it, I mean.

And this, from an unnamed PBS spokeswoman:

PBS was shocked to learn today of these deeply disturbing allegations[.]

We’re shocked—shocked—to learn that inappropriate behavior is going on in this establishment.  Right.

Maybe it’s time that, in addition to holding the miscreants to account, we started firing and, yes, jailing, supervisors and executives who actively condoned, if not outright encouraged, these behaviors through their own conscious decisions to ignore rampant rumors and their deliberate choices to hide their heads in the sand and not investigate—whether to protect the abused employees or to clear the good names of other employees subjected to salacious, but baseless, rumors.

These guys shouldn’t be allowed to hide under their desks in their corner offices anymore.

Senator Al Franken (D, MN) has been accused Thursday of sexually harassing a woman while the two were on a USO tour in Afghanistan 11 years ago.  He’s apologized for it.

He was also quoted in a 1995 New York Magazine article about his generating a “joke” for Saturday Night Live, where he worked at the time, that centered on drugging and raping then-journalist Leslie Stahl.  He apologized for that, too.

Then he said about that apology during his 2008 campaign for Senate that he

didn’t think he should have to apologize for the cracks, which his opponents were taking out of context. “To say I was sorry for writing a joke was to sell out my career, to sell out who I’d been my entire life,” he writes [in his book]. “And I wasn’t sorry that I had written Porn-o-Rama or pitched that stupid Lesley Stahl joke at 2 in the morning. I was just doing my job.”

But…”I learned that campaigns have their own rules, their own laws of physics, and that if I wasn’t willing to accept that, I would never get to be a senator.” And so Franken took a deep breath and told a little white lie: “I’m sorry.”

Little white lie.  Franken still wants to be a Senator.  With his clearly stated position that apologies are just lies to be mouthed in order to get what he wants, how is it possible for anyone—let alone the woman who accused him last Thursday—to believe his apology for that Afghanistan harassment?  Or any other apology he might pretend to offer for any other transgression?  Or anything at all he might say on any matter?

And lest there be any question about that USO incident, understand clearly: the existence of Franken’s pseudo-apology stands as his blithe confession that he did the thing of which he’s accused.

And he’s still a Senator.

The stampede to call out sexual harassment is growing, and actionable complaints are being made.  These need to be carefully investigated, and the hides of those convicted nailed to the outhouse wall.

However, there also is a growing number of accusations made against unnamed harassers—just claims of workplace harassment devoid of useful specifics.  The latest round (eliding Al Franken, who’s the subject of a nearby post) is claims of harassment in Congress.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D, CA) said she knows of two current members of Congress who “have engaged in sexual harassment,” while another congresswoman, Congresswoman Barbara Comstock (R, VA) recounted a member who exposed himself to a female staffer.

The members were not named.

And

Senator Claire McCaskill (D, MO) told reporters that she had been harassed when she interned on Capitol Hill, but she did not report it.

And

[Former Congressional Black Caucus Fellow] M Reese Everson said that a member of Congress asked if he could flirt with her “in order [for her] to excel in [her] career.”

The problem with this sort of accusation is that there’s no reason to believe them, certainly there’s no way to check them out, and most importantly, there’s no way to go after the harassers if they do exist—they get off scott free.

That’s unacceptable in both ways.  Name names.