Melissa Francis is among the former Fox News employees who has had a legal battle with the right-wing cable news outlet, filing a gender discrimination lawsuit and alleging retaliation on their part. Now, according to Daily Beast reporters Diana Falzone and Justin Baragona, the New York State Labor Department is investigating Francis’ allegations.
Kevin Mintzer, Francis’ attorney, told the Beast, “Ms. Francis filed a charge with the New York State Department of Labor because Fox News has not changed and continues to discriminate and retaliate against women, including those who seek equal pay for equal work.”
According to Falzone and Baragona, they asked the New York State Labor Department for a comment on the investigation but was told, “The NYS DOL does not comment (confirm nor deny) on potential or pending investigations.” And a Fox News spokesperson would not comment on the probe either but told the Beast that Fox News “parted ways with Melissa Francis nearly a year ago.”
Francis is by no means the only female ex-employee of Fox News and/or Fox Business who has had a legal battle with them. Others have ranged from Gretchen Carlson to Andrea Tantaros, and Falzone herself is a former Fox News employee who filed a gender-based discrimination lawsuit against them.
Francis, a former actress, worked at CNBC before her association with Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business. She spent roughly eight years with Fox News, starting in 2012.
Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against former-boss-turned-Trump-campaign-adviser Roger Ailesin August. In it, she alleged that in response to her complaints about Ailes’ sexual innuendos and unwanted advances, she was first demoted and then fired. At the time, Fox News responded by calling the suit—which came on the heels of similar allegations from female network stars including Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly—“a smokescreen to obscure her violation of her employment contract” and labeled Tantaros “an opportunist” in court papers. Now the former on-air personality’s legal team says they have mental health records going back to 2014 that solidify Tantaros’ claims.
Counsel for Tantaros released a signed affidavit from her former therapist, Michele Berdy, who backs up the charges her patient has made toward Ailes and others.
“Over the course of many months (2014–2016), Andrea relayed to me on multiple occasions instances of Mr. Ailes’ demeaning and overtly predatory behavior, as well as the abusive conduct of Fox News’ public relations department.” The statement goes on to confirm that Tantaros spoke about retaliatory actions taken by various Fox News staffers after she spoke up about Ailes’ behavior. It also notes that Berdy came forward on her own.
“I also want to make clear that Andrea did not reach out to me about her present case against Fox News,” it reads, in a tweet sent by Politico reporter Kelsey M. Sutton. “After reading about it in the media, and also reading reports that Fox News was denying her claims, I emailed Andrea to tell her that I knew that she was telling the truth because she had told me, in a therapeutic setting where she could have had no motive to lie, about the conduct of Mr. Ailes… and others at the time, or very shortly after, the harassment, retaliation, and pervasive hostile and sexualized workplace conditions took place.”
In mid-September, an attorney for Tantaros told various outlets that she had turned down a seven-figure settlement offer from Fox News to drop her case against the network.
IMAGE: Screenshot of Andrea Tantaros on Fox News Channel
Hypocrisy, zealotry, and gobbledygook. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. David Daleidan
The mastermind behind the fraudulently shot and deceptively edited videos meant to smear Planned Parenthood into oblivion is now complaining about unfair treatment.
David Daleidan was head inquisitor (or, as Fox News characterizes him, citizen journalist) behind the Center for Medical Progress — the contemptibly misnamed anti-abortion outfit that released films which supposedly exposed the non-profit women’s health care network as a trafficker in human remains. Several state investigative probes and a congressional investigation later, and the only indictments handed down have been against Daleidan himself and his accomplice.
That indictment came in Texas, but it seems like California is potentially about to follow suit. The Washington Post reported:
Investigators with the California Department of Justice on Tuesday raided the home of David Daleiden, the anti-abortion activist behind a series of undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood, the activist said.
Authorities seized a laptop and multiple hard drives from his Orange County apartment, Daleiden said in an email. The equipment contained all of the video Daleiden had filmed as part of his 30-month project, “including some very damning footage that has yet to be released to the public,” he said.
Daleidan and his conservative supporters have been quick to condemn the raid by officials as a politically motivated action. His own outside-the-law actions, of course, remain inscrutably righteous.
The curious habit of state legislatures enshrining Official State Things is innocuous enough for the most part. Lately, though, Tennessee has been taking the practice to bizarre extremes.
After nearly 30 minutes of debate, the state Senate on Monday approved the measure, sponsored by Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, with a 19-8 vote, sending the legislation to Gov. Bill Haslam’s desk.
While proponents stressed the historic significance of the holy book and its religious meaning, some opponents argued that the bill trivializes something they hold sacred while others stressed constitutional reservations.
Lowering the Bar helpfully notes that this is both plainly unconstitutional and stupid — and furthermore that Tennessee isn’t even the first state to try to do this. In Louisiana, LTB writes, “the debate was not over whether to do it but over which version of the Bible would be appropriate.”
Fox’s Andrea Tantaros earns her seat on the Outnumbered couch by being progenitor of some fairly outlandish — and incorrigibly ditzy — Obama conspiracy theories
Tantaros is what happens when you cross Dale Gribble from King of the HIll with Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons, by which I mean she manages to somehow hybridize the dopiest bromides of a self-righteous PTA meeting with the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones.
Here is the Fox News luminary in her own words, speaking about Barack Obama on Tuesday’s show:
Why would the administration give cover to ISIS? Is it about his legacy? Some people are asking the question, is he covering for ISIS? Why would the administration be pressuring these agents to not give us the facts on the ground?
Video below, courtesy of Media Matters.
For another example of super-sleuth Tantaros in action, check this out.
You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Rush Limbaugh, patron saint of shock jocks, is quite flexible.
That’s judging by his catalogue of contortions this week, which included the talk radio host defending Trump’s obscene remarks about “punishing” women, then defending his remarks defending Trump by saying that he was not, in fact, defending Trump, while still defending them… his remarks, that is. Like I said, he’s flexible. Being spineless can do that.
Then, there was Limbaugh asserting that Trump was technically correct in his assessment that, if you believe abortion is murder, then yes the woman should be punished. Trump’s only error was that he was “politically” in the wrong. (Side note: Take a moment to relish the editors at DailyRushbo’s decision to describe Limbaugh’s characterization of Trump’s comments as “politically wrong,” and not “politically incorrect,” because, you know, thesauri have a well known liberal bias.)
It wasn’t pandering, it wasn’t an excuse. It was an attempt to explain to people who want to support Trump why he might have screwed it up. It was an attempt to explain to people who don’t want to support Trump why it might not be what you think it is.
Who are you going to believe — Rush, or your lying ears?
Sarah Palin’s style is much more conducive to dittohead rallies than stately functions. No crowd seems to work as well for her as a throng of Tea Partiers cheering and sloshing around their drool buckets every time she says something like “No-Bama.” This was most cruelly illustrated this week by her insane, nonsensical — even by the extremely relaxed standards of the Alaskan governor — speech this week at a Wisconsin Republican function.
It was as if each word was plucked from her own worst game of Boggle. Palin’s latest bag of dictionary confetti impelled even the journalists in the room (who you’d think would be inured to her antics after all these years) to start caustically live-tweeting the event. The governor’s penchant for internal rhyme and folksy nonce words was in evidence, making the 20-minute monologue resemble nothing so much as a Wasilian riff on “Jabberwocky.”
If you don’t have the stomach or time to endure Palin’s 20-minute monologue resembled, you can view the best bits edited together in the following video (courtesy of Mediaite):
Sarah Palin Goes on Bizarre RambleSarah Palin went on a truly bizarre and rambling 20-minute speech in Milwaukee on Friday. Here are the highlights.
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Mandatory office guns, a tropical torture chamber, Vladimir Putin battling Satan, and some very dedicated Ted Cruz supporters. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Andrea Tantaros
President Obama’s announcement Tuesday that he was issuing a proposal to close Guantanamo Bay was met with the predictable conservative backlash. Count on the hosts of the midday roundtable Outnumbered — Fox News’s high-concept daily show which resembles what might happen if the Plastics from Mean Girls cattily recited conservative bromides — to churn out the most tin-eared and ignorant response. Specifically, co-host Andrea Tantaros referred to the prison complex as a “tropical paradise.”
It’s true that Gitmo is located on an island in the Caribbean, where the climate is likely “tropical.” But it is also true that the site has been a place where America has kept detainees, held and tortured them, some for several years, without trial; a locus for water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques;” and a black stain on the country’s reputation domestically and worldwide.
Tantaros also speculated that this was part of the president’s master plan to propose something that he knew would get blocked in Congress, just so that he could issue an executive order, which would, in turn, get challenged in the Supreme Court, “conveniently without conservative Justice Scalia there.” What delightfully smug eel-like illogic, compounded with self-defeating rationalization that somehow a recalcitrant Senate Republican cabal is just a pawn in Obama’s ninth-dimensional chess.
“It’s insanity, it’s illegal,” she concluded, adding, “it’s disgusting,” in what we might charitably speculate was a moment of self-reflection.
When it comes to being loyal to a candidate… there’s commitment, and then there’s commitment. And then there’s people who are willing to cut their own nuts off.
Ted Cruz apparently knows how to inspire that latter — one devoted follower went so far as to threaten to “eunuch myself” if it would boost Cruz’s performance.
That dedicated fellow is Steve Deace, who, according to Media Matters, “was part of Cruz’s Iowa leadership team and has given his advice and name in support of the senator, has gone on a tirade against Cruz on social media, his nationally syndicated radio show, and in twoparts on Conservative Review. He has denounced Cruz’s current messaging and stance against Trump as weak, despite explaining that he is still a ‘Cruz guy.'”
Speaking on his eponymous show Monday, Deace was aghast at the Texas senator’s third-place showing in South Carolina, but even more perturbed by the fact that his golden calf of a candidate has pulled one too many about-faces lately, apologizing to the Carson and Rubio camps for shady campaign trickery. (Even Cruz’s non-apology apologies, it should be said, come softened by the most assiduously carved out qualifications, deflections, and distortions. The oily senator has never truly owned up to his chicanery.)
“I love him, we are friends,” Deace said, “but I don’t believe in victims.” Apparently, Cruz’s mealy-mouthed back-pedaling is a sign of weakness, and by not catapulting him to first place in South Carolina, Palmetto voters were sending the Texas senator a message “that they want him to go back to being that alpha male conservative leader that people fell in love with.”
He continued:
If anyone with the Cruz campaign ever apologizes to Ben Carson again, I may eunuch myself, which will make my wife very, very upset. I am desperate at this point. I will do anything, name it, name the price. As a Cruz guy, I will do anything the universe demands, that they never apologize to Ben Carson or really anybody else again.
He added that voters “don’t want nice,” they want brutal and effective. He illustrated his point by invoking a curious fable of a fireman with dark secrets who comes to rescue your family when your house is in flames:
When your home is on fire, you have no idea, you have no idea when the firemen comes crashing through your front door to rescue your kids, you have no idea if he has kiddie porn on his computer at home. You don’t know if he has got a tongue ring and a john account online. You don’t know that and you don’t care.
We hear a lot about how the nefarious Left wants to take away our right to have guns. Less often, we hear about someone trying to take away our right not to have a gun.
File this under the “Guns Make Everything Safer and Better” insanity: one Georgia business is now insisting that all of its employees show up for work packing heat.
Lance Toland Associates, an aviation insurance company with several offices throughout the Peach State, is instituting a new policy requiring all workers to obtain concealed carry permits.
“A lot of my clients are high-fiving when they hear this. They think it’s the best things for a company to mandate gun ownership and be responsible,” business owner Lance Toland told WSB-TV in Atlanta.
The owner says after employees get their license, Toland gives them a gun known as the “governor,” which is made by Smith & Wesson. Toland contends the weapon is one of the most effective for self-defense. Toland says his company’s gun mandate came as a result of a surge in crime in the Atlanta metro area.
Toland says the gun he distributes is “a 5 shot .410, just like a shotgun and you call it hand cannon.”
If nothing else, it offers a quick, effortless way to resolve workplace disputes.
Jones is a professional conspiracy theorist who can sniff out a good false flag in the most seemingly straightforward stories. You might assume, reasonably, that he could unmask the well-connected billionaire with longstanding ties to the Clintons who is currently leading the GOP race for some sort of establishment goon. But the fact is, Jones has thrown his weight so completely behind The Donald that he’s willing to wage war against the mogul’s demonic foes who’ve lined up against him.
Likewise, just as you’d assume a beacon of journalistic integrity like Jones — a luminary in the fight for individual freedom and American values — would take issue with a demagogue like Vladimir Putin, the radio host is pretty enamored of the Russian leader, because he “is putting up a fight… in the face of just absolute pure evil.” He points to the fact that Russia has supposedly banned genetically-modified foods (one of the Dark Lord’s darkest designs) and that “You tune into Russian TV now, it’s like I’m hosting it.” Forget about the very real dangers that real journalists face in Putin’s Russia.
As reported by Right Wing Watch, Jones went on a tirade about the forces of Satanic darkness embodied by a cabal of globalists who “want to deform us and jack with the food and mutate everything” and the forces of God and light, represented here by the merry trio of Jones, Trump, and, yes, Putin.
Your campaign is in shambles, after months of hemorrhaging talent and crawling in at or near rock bottom in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
A recent report from Vice depicts one of your recent rallies as a cold and plodding slumber of the damned. You never actually spent those funds you raised from credulous voters on much real campaigning, preferring to tour the country, touting your latest book, and dash away from vital early-voting to states to grab yourself a fresh pair of slacks. Does it ever trouble you that you took money from people whom you duped into believing you were an actual candidate?
Why are you even running anymore? You’ve said “this is just the beginning” after you came in sixth (out of six) in South Carolina. You’ve likened yourself to the tortoise in Aesop’s fable. And yet your most reliable debate tactic of late has been to talk about how much shut-eye you’ve been getting in between questions, suggesting a closer resemblance to the lethargic hare, who improbably surged to the top of the polls early on, but is now smugly content to lie etherized upon the podium.
In your fitful, straining first year of political life, you have demonstrated a persistent and stubborn allergy to reality. And while I have little love for the likes of John Ellis Bush or Chris Christie, it must be noted that these men read the numbers, watched the coverage, heard the bell toll for them, and acted accordingly.
This is no longer an operation, Dr. Carson. It is an autopsy.
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