FINALLY, Andrea Tantaros publicly breaks her silence against sexual predator, former FOX News CEO Roger Ailes

(What an absolutely disgusting moral pig!!! Instead of being terminated from his cushy position with a $50 million severance package, a sick bastard like former FOX News CEO Roger Ailes ought to be thrown in prison for the rest of his natural life! Excellent reporting by both New York Magazine, and The Young Turks on this story.)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/andrea-tantaros-made-harassment-claims-against-roger-ailes.html

Fox News Host Andrea Tantaros Says She Was Taken Off the Air After Making Sexual-Harassment Claims Against Roger Ailes

By Gabriel Sherman

Fox News’ senior executives have said they were unaware of sexual-harassment allegations against Roger Ailes before former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit against him in July. But those claims are now being challenged by Fox host Andrea Tantaros, who says that she complained multiple times to senior Fox executives in 2015 about Ailes’s inappropriate sexual behavior toward her. Tantaros says that, after she came forward, she was first demoted and eventually taken off the air in April 2016. Fox continues to pay her.

Through her lawyer, Judd Burstein, Tantaros says that both she and her agent told Fox executive vice-president Bill Shine, senior vice-president Suzanne Scott, and general counsel Dianne Brandi about episodes of Ailes’s alleged harassment. “She made multiple harassment and hostile-workplace complaints,” Burstein says. As far as Tantaros knows, Fox executives never investigated her complaints, Burstein says; instead, they claim, Fox sidelined her. “I believe it’s retaliatory,” says Burstein.

Fox’s attorneys dispute this. The network says Tantaros was suspended with pay because she violated company policy by not allowing Fox to vet her 2016 book, Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What They Wanted Has Made Women Miserable. Fox attorneys told Burstein the network was embarrassed by her book’s cover, which depicts Tantaros bound by ropes.

According to Tantaros’s account, Ailes began harassing her on August 12, 2014. During a meeting in Ailes’s office, Ailes allegedly asked Tantaros to do “the twirl” so he could see her figure. She refused. Then, in mid-December of that year, Ailes made another advance, Burstein says. “Ailes asked her to turn around, and then he said, ‘Come over here so I can give you a hug.’” Tantaros rebuffed the advance, Burstein says.

In February 2015, Tantaros was pulled off the 5 p.m. program The Five and demoted to working full-time on the midday show Outnumbered. In February 2015, according to Burstein, Ailes allegedly harassed Tantaros again in his office, asking about her workout routine because her body “looked good” and mentioning that she must “really look good in a bikini.”

On April 30, 2015, Tantaros filed a formal workplace harassment complaint about Ailes to Shine, Burstein says. The following day, Burstein says, Tantaros met with Shine to further discuss her harassment claims. Shine allegedly told her, “Roger is a very powerful man,” and that she “should not fight this.”

In August, her agent spoke with Brandi about the episode; according to the agent, Brandi said she would look into the matter but did not follow up.

After making more complaints to Shine and Scott over the course of the next year, Tantaros was suspended from the network in April 2016. “All of a sudden, the book became this big issue,” Burstein says.

A few weeks before she was suspended, Tantaros hired Burstein, an aggressive litigator who has history battling Fox, to negotiate the dispute over her book. Burstein had negotiated a multi-million-dollar severance package in 2013 for Brian Lewis, Ailes’s then-communications chief, who was fired by Ailes after he accused Lewis of being a source for the Ailes biography I was writing at the time.

Burstein says Tantaros, who is still employed by Fox, knows she is taking a risk in violating her contract’s confidentiality clause. She’s telling her story now, he says, because “she doesn’t have the same fear of being attacked by the Fox PR machine, and the Murdochs have made it clear they want to clean up the place.”

Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and other sources have questioned Tantaros’s account. BuzzFeed reported that Tantaros did accuse at least four people, including “two on-air contributors, a correspondent, and a host,” of inappropriate behavior, but never made a complaint against Ailes.

Is FOX News “soft-core porn” for old guys, OR, for FOX CEO Roger Ailes?

I’ve blogged about this a number of times before as to FOX News having the vast majority of its female on-air personalities appear as if they were either former cheerleaders, models, or beauty pageant contestants (like the Plaintiff in this Sexual Harassment lawsuit, former Miss America Gretchen Carlson) rather than mediocre-looking women who possess intelligent journalistic savvy.

If it’s true that Ratings are everything in the TV network business — and we all know that Sex promotes viewers to watch a certain TV program/network — then, I guess, there’s no place for mediocre-looking people on television despite how much “journalistic integrity” they may possess.

Granted, Mr. Ailes is certainly entitled to his ‘Day in Court’ on this lawsuit, but, perception-wise, Ms. Carlson’s charges in her lawsuit sound extremely “Believable” right about now, in light of FOX’s history with on-air female personalities. If Ms. Carlson’s allegations are true, then this is a Text Book case of Sexual Harassment — and Pattern of Behavior — in its purest form. And now, the Huffington Post has reported that about 10 former female employees from FOX News have already come forward to support Ms. Carlson’s allegations in this case.

Prediction: I think Roger Ailes and FOX News will pay Gretchen Carlson a “ton of money” to settle this lawsuit, out of court, in much the same fashion as it did with its top-rated star, Bill O’Reilly when he got whacked with a Sexual Harassment lawsuit several years ago from — you guessed it — a then-FOX News employee.

P.S. This now begs the question, Why was Andrea Tantaros terminated from FOX News a couple months ago? Did Tantaros ever engage in a sexual relationship with either Mr. Ailes or one of the other ‘big wigs’ at FOX News? It’s sort of amazing how none of the specifics of Ms. Tantaros’ firing (just before her Book was about to be publicly released) ever came into fruition.

How close is FOX News from having one of its female personalities pose nude for Playboy magazine?

(So let me state the inevitable here: Megyn Kelly is drop dead gorgeous. No doubt about it. As a TV personality, Kelly is probably better than average but is she a more “professional” journalist than, lets say, Greta Van Susteren at FOX News? I don’t believe so, but for whatever reason, Ms. Kelly bumped Van Susteren out of her former weekday primetime slot. And oh yeah, Megyn Kelly allegedly has the #2 rated show on all of cable TV.

Personally, I think Ms. Kelly’s success has a lot to do with the way she posed here for GQ magazine, which, oh by the way, isn’t too much different than the way she usually dresses for her own show. In contrast, the TV camera would NEVER show Greta Van Susteren below the table she’s sitting at, mainly because she most always wears a pants suit. And I think Greta is a wee bit older than Megyn.

Bottom Line: Sex obviously sells at FOX News. And sexy-looking ladies usually translate into high ratings for a cable TV network.

Besides Megyn Kelly’s show, FOX News has a show with four young sexy ladies – all wearing short skirts and Stiletto high heels on a show called, ‘Outnumbered’. The guy who gets to be the guest on, ‘Outnumbered’ is given the hash tag, #OneLuckyGuy.

One of the regulars on ‘Outnumbered’ is a gorgeous lady named Andrea Tantaros and her former FOX News weekday show was ‘The Five’ – Tantaros was replaced on, ‘The Five’ by an equally sexy-looking young lady named Kimberly Guilfoyle, who sits at the end of the table where the camera focuses in on her gorgeous legs under the table before and after each commercial break.

Then Gretchen Carlson is a former Miss America contestant who has her own weekday afternoon show on FOX News, and former Miss New York USA, Joanne Nosuchinsky is a regular guest on FOX shows, ‘Red Eye’ and ‘The Greg Gutfeld Show’.

As a point of public disclosure here, I am DEFINITELY NOT a Donald Trump supporter, I DID NOT vote for him in the New Hampshire Primary, but it is really hard to view Megyn Kelly a serious, consummate professional journalist after seeing the way she was willing to pose in GQ magazine. It was sort of like how women pose in those “soft porn” magazines like: Maxim or Stuff.

Did Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein ever publicly pose wearing Spandex Speedos so they could prove to the world what great journalists they were? I don’t think so. Nor did you ever see the late great Walter Cronkite walking around his then-vacation home in Cape Cod wearing one of those Muscle Tee Shirts.

So how far are we away from seeing one – or maybe several – FOX News female personalities posing nude for either Playboy or Penthouse magazine? The old, “consummate professional journalist” line just doesn’t hold any water anymore – at least not from FOX News. Also, are there any questions on why FOX News doesn’t employ any overweight or handicap females as on-air personalities?)

Fox News has accused Donald Trump of making “sexist verbal assaults” against Megyn Kelly, issuing its most aggressive response yet to the Republican frontrunner’s repeated attacks on its star anchor.

The sharply worded response came Friday evening after Trump took his attacks against Kelly to a new level, referring to her as “sick” and “overrated.” Trump also called for his supporters to boycott her Fox News show.

“Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks against Megyn Kelly and his extreme, sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate who wants to occupy the highest office in the land,” the network said in its statement.

“Megyn is an exemplary journalist and one of the leading anchors in America — we’re extremely proud of her phenomenal work and continue to fully support her throughout every day of Trump’s endless barrage of crude and sexist verbal assaults,” the statement continued. “As the mother of three young children, with a successful law career and the second highest rated show in cable news, it’s especially deplorable for her to be repeatedly abused just for doing her job.”

Trump, who for seven months has tried to impugn the credibility of the Fox News host, had raised the stakes in a tweet on Friday.

“Everybody should boycott the @megynkelly show. Never worth watching. Always a hit on Trump!” the GOP frontrunner tweeted. “She is sick, & the most overrated person on tv.”

Trump’s campaign kept up the barrage Friday night, putting out a statement that said in part, “Fox News has begged Mr. Trump to do a prime time special to be broadcast on the Fox Network, not cable, with Megyn Kelly. He has turned them down.”

Fox recently announced plans for Kelly to do a special on the broadcast network in May, but a Fox News spokesperson said Friday night, “No one associated with Megyn Kelly’s upcoming Fox Broadcasting special reached out to Donald Trump for an interview.”

A Fox representative made clear that neither Kelly nor Bill Geddie, the executive producer of the Fox program airing in May, ever reached out to Trump for an interview.

Kelly has kept quiet throughout the many attacks by Trump, a fact the Trump campaign noted in its Friday night statement.

“Unlike Megyn Kelly, who resorts to putting out statements via Fox News, Mr. Trump will continue to defend himself against the inordinate amount of unfair and inaccurate coverage he receives on her second-rate show each night,” the campaign said.

This was the most intense attack in a campaign against Kelly that Trump began last August, when he complained that she had treated him unfairly during the first Republican presidential debate.

Since then, Trump has frequently accused Kelly of bias and unfair coverage, often with little to no evidence of any specific offense.

In the run-up to what would have been their second meeting, at the Fox News debate on January 28, Trump said that Kelly shouldn’t be allowed to serve as moderator. Fox News shot back a tongue-in-cheek response in which it accused Trump of being afraid of Kelly, and therefore unfit to deal with foreign leaders. Trump decided to skip the debate.

Trump and Kelly were reunited at the third Fox News debate, on March 3, where Trump struck a much more convivial tone. Kelly once again proved to be Trump’s toughest adversary that night, asking tough and well-researched questions that won her the praise of journalists and observers on both sides of the aisle.

It’s not exactly clear what precipitated Trump’s latest round of name-calling, nor his call for a boycott. Throughout the week, Trump has been trying to brand Kelly as “crazy” and obsessed with criticizing him.

In the eyes of many Trump critics, it is he who appears to be obsessed with Kelly. And while it’s hard to see how such attacks could have much success with the American public, it’s also true that a plurality of the country’s Republicans have so far supported the man making them.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Everybody should boycott the @megynkelly show. Never worth watching. Always a hit on Trump! She is sick, & the most overrated person on tv.

5:55 PM – 18 Mar 2016

CNNMoney (Los Angeles) First published March 18, 2016: 8:01 PM ET

Are there any ugly females working on-air at FOX News???

Andrea Tantaros

Ainsley Earhardt

“…We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry…”

–lyrics from the song, “Dirty Laundry”, by Don Henley

So I was watching the early news this past Tuesday, May 21, specifically the tornado aftermath in a community of Oklahoma which, at that point, had already taken the lives of at least 51 people. The show I had tuned into was FOX and Friends First, on the FOX News channel and the thing that stuck out to me – more than anything else on that broadcast — were the two female co-hosts and what they were wearing that morning.

The two co-hosts of this episode were Ainsley Earhardt and Heather Childers, both extremely attractive young blondes sitting on bar stools wearing fluorescent sun dresses of different shades of green that came up to about six inches from their crotch areas, and high heel stilettos — I can only assume that this is the standard “work uniform” for all the on-air women of this show. Simply put, these women seemed more suited to be going to a Hawaiian bar after the show, ordering a few Mai Tai’s and hoping to get “hit on” by a couple of wild and crazy guys.

To slightly paraphrase the old cliché, “their actions (or wardrobe) were so loud that I couldn’t hear the words they were speaking.” Don’t get me wrong, I love watching beautiful, voluptuous, rather scantily-clad women like these on TV – but for a seemingly serious and competitive news reporting outlet like FOX, this was extremely inappropriate attire when covering a national disaster of this magnitude. Would these women, for example, wear these particular clothing items to the funeral of their own parent(s) – I don’t think so.

Can you imagine if Walter Cronkite, back in ’63, reported on his national CBS News broadcast the assassination and subsequent death of then-President John F. Kennedy wearing just a tank top and Bermuda shorts? Truth be told, Cronkite, who was ALWAYS the consummate professional, had too much class and integrity to lower himself to that level.

FOX News’ motto, incidentally, is “We Report You Decide”, well, after watching both Earhardt and Childers do their “reporting” for several minutes, I almost “decided” to cruise the streets of nearby Lowell, Mass., to take care of some of my physical needs, if you know what I mean.

In defense of Earhardt and Childers, they’re certainly not the only two on-air females at FOX News exploiting their sexy physical assets for, I assume, in the name of higher TV ratings. FOX and Friends First is followed every weekday morning by, FOX and Friends, which features Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America recipient several years ago.

If I were a gambling man, I’d bet the farm that at least 90 percent of the female on-air personalities at FOX News has had some experience in either beauty pageants, modeling, or cheer leading – they seem to be all cut from that same cloth. It also calls into question, do ugly females, specifically the ones who are overweight or wearing eyeglasses even apply for an on-air jobs at FOX News? I can sort of understand how a place like Hooter’s restaurants would discriminate on hiring a female waitress who doesn’t fit their physical criteria, but when the heck did it become a REQUIREMENT that a female reporting or analyzing the news on TV had to be “sexy”? I’m sure there are plenty of overweight women that wear glasses who can report or analyze the news just as well as their sexy counterparts.

Another interesting show on FOX, which airs weekdays at 5 p.m., is, The Five. It features a panel of five individuals sitting at a table with either Andrea Tantaros or Kimberly Guilfoyle at the far left end of the table. As you might’ve already guessed, both Tantaros and Guilfoyle have gorgeous traffic-stopping legs and bodies that just won’t quit. Both of these women ALWAYS wear the dresses that are inches shy from their crotch areas and high heel stilettos, which you really can’t miss before and after each commercial break. Also, if I were a gambling man, I’d also bet the farm that the FOX News weekday shows I’ve mentioned thus far have considerable more MALE viewers than FEMALE viewers, for obvious reasons.

I guess if I were a FOX News zealot, I would bring up Greta Van Susteren in an effort to squelch my whole argument here. Van Susteren is arguably the best on-air female at FOX News, from a professional standpoint, and she definitely has the best time slot (weeknights at 10 p.m.) with her On the Record show. But what Van Susteren has in professional savvy, she lacks in physical attractiveness. In all fairness to Van Susteren, I definitely wouldn’t consider her fat or ugly, but she does sport the “Plain Jane” look. Personally, I wouldn’t mind dating Van Susteren and I’d feel very fortunate if she’d go out with somebody like me. But unlike the vast majority of female on-air personalities at FOX News, the producers don’t have the cameramen focus on her “physical attributes” while the show’s going on. I think most people, if they’re honest, would agree with me that Van Susteren is the EXCEPTION – definitely not the NORM – when it comes to physically attractive on-air females working at FOX News.

BOTTOM LINE: So why do I still watch FOX News? In spite of all the aforementioned, it’s still the most objective news reporting on TV. Barack Obama is DEFINITELY not God, and I certainly want to hear “the other side” of President Obama, which the other major news outlets choose not to broadcast. As for the male on-air personalities at FOX News, they appear to be in good shape, dress well, and have no thinning hair problems. Whatever the FOX News men are lacking, it’s certainly not adversely affecting that network’s ratings.