On Tuesday, Bill O'Reilly responded to Megyn Kelly's book, which lays out how Roger Ailes sexually harassed her on CBS' This Morning and he angrily replied, "I’m not interested in basically litigating something that is finished, that makes my network look bad, okay? I’m not interested in making my network look bad at all. That doesn’t interest me one bit."
On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Megyn Kelly responded to his words by not mentioning his name. "I believe that Roger Ailes made the company look bad."
Bill O'Reilly was sued for sexual harassment by Andrea Mackris in 2004, who worked for Fox News at the time, so it's not surprising that Bill would be uncomfortable broaching the topic.
For O'Reilly, burying one's head in the sand is better for "the company" than stopping sexual harassment of employees.
O'Reilly complained again on his Fox News program and said, "You don’t like what’s happening in the workplace, go to human resources or leave."
Gayle King asked Megyn to comment on O'Reilly's advice and she said, "...sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Norah O'Donnell said, "You don't believe you're making the company look bad as Bill O'Reilly alleged?"
Kelly replied, "I believe that Roger Ailes made the company look bad. My heart is with other women out there. And trust me, this doesn't just happen at Fox News."
She continued, "We got rid of ours, but there are men, trust me, out there right now who are doing this to other women and other women who are watching this right now who are scared and don't know what to do because they know very well, like I did, in the moment, if you speak up the reality is, you can talk loftily, everything about 'taking a stance' but the reality you're labeled a troublemaker. That's still the world in which we live, Norah."
It's important to remember that Megyn Kelly is a seven-figure asset at Fox who when Roger Ailes harrassed her DID go to Human Resources and DID get a lawyer because duh, she could afford one. She could also afford to be unemployed for a week or more. Many women in this country cannot afford that. That sexual harassment is still claimed by a-holes like O'Reilly to be a problem because talking about it "makes the company look bad," rather than the FACT of it making the company look bad, shows how far we still have toward equality and progress in the workplace.
And shame on the CBS hosts for not saying what Megyn Kelly said, and what I shouted at the O'Reilly video when I saw it. Roger Ailes made the company "look bad."
