"So much worse than Bridgegate:" Did Mika Brzezinski know about Harvey Weinstein's unsavory, gruesome behavior?
According to the New York Times, Weinstein's decades of depredation were among the world's worst-kept secrets among our major insiders. Mika, meanwhile, had recently signed a deal to publish three more books with Weinstein Books.
We say she signed a deal for three more books for a reason. Her first four books, the ones which already exist, were also published by Weinstein Books, although you'd have a very hard time discerning that fact if you listened to Morning Joe this morning.
Over the weekend, Mika said she was dumping the deal for the three additional books. This morning, she was asked, in a seemingly prearranged way, if she had actually known about Harvey all along.
To watch the whole segment, click here.
Katty Kay was commissioned to ask Mika the question. After praising Mika for dumping the deal for the three new books, the compliant panelist read from script as follows.
Please note the carefully crafted nature of the questions Kay asked. Hachette is the name of an imprint within Weinstein Books, and as such is currently useful in the rhetorical realm:
KAY (10/9/17): But I did want to ask you, and we haven't had a chance to talk about it directly. When you were making that deal, did you hear anything about Harvey Weinstein? Was this anything that people said at Hachette? Was there— Did you hear rumors going around?From Kay's question, as from Joe's earlier comments, a viewer would never have known that Brzezinski has already published four books for Weinstein Books. Mika was praised for dumping the deal for three more books. No mention was made of the original four.
Meanwhile, look at Kay's narrowly focused questions. She didn't directly ask if Mika had known about Weinstein's decades of misconduct. Instead, she asked her if she had heard any rumors when she was signing the new deal! She asked Mika if anyone had told her about Harvey from inside the company as she was signing the deal!
Those questions come straight from an industry show trial. This was Mika's reply:
BRZEZINSKI (continuing directly): No, I worked with publishers at Hachette, Amanda Murray and Georgina, and they are fantastic women who do great work, and we've done great work.Credit where due! From that, a person might have wondered if one of Mika's previous books was published by Weinstein Books. We decided to check it out.
The first Knowing Your Value [book] that came out, that we're re-releasing in the spring, I worked with these very women. And we've had an incredible time working together. I would have been sad to move away from the company, but I would have done it, absolutely.
I never heard anything from inside the company, and I didn't hear much because we don't really [looking toward Joe]—I mean, he's invited us to many events. We've never gone. So we've never really traveled in his circles.
Having said that, after everything that I read, and that he's even admitted to, this was a no-brainer on so many levels.
Sure enough! All four of Mika's previous books came from Weinstein Books! Joe's initial comments disguised that fact. So did Katty's questions.
That said, note Mika's non-denial denials. Did she know about Harvey's conduct all along? She says she "never heard anything from inside the company" (major shock!), and that she never went to any of Harvey's parties. However they were intended, these statements take the shape of tightly crafted non-denial denials.
No one asked Mika the basic question: Did you know about Harvey all along, the way the Times says everyone did? For all we know, the answer is no.
But the answer may also be yes.
That whole segment reads like it was scripted for a show trial designed to find the defendant not guilty. From there, Mika proceeded to trash a long list of people, inevitably including Hillary Clinton, for not trashing Harvey yet.
Bonus bullroar:
Later in this morning's program, Mika and Joe came up with a loopy assessment. Mike Pence's trip to yesterday's NFL game "was so much worse than Bridgegate," Joe excitedly said, referring to the danger involved when traffic gets blocked for a vice president's motorcade.
To watch the segment, click here.
Truly, that's ludicrous. Whatever you think of Pence's excursion, the traffic tie-ups in Bridgegate involved an entire town for several entire days. It was extremely dangerous, reckless behavior on the part of the people who engineered the blockade.
(Note the grossly misleading way Joe describes the Bridgegate shutdown. For the record, before Candidate Trump was Joe and Mika's bestest friend, Chris Christie had long been cast in that role.)
Whatever you think of Pence's excursion, it hardly compared to the perils of Bridgegate. But just as Donald J. Trump seems to distract our attention with his gong shows and his tweets, Joe and Mika may perhaps distract our attention with declarations like this. As long as they keep battering Trump, everything else disappears.
Did Mika know about Harvey Weinstein? We have no earthly way of knowing, but we do know this:
Katty and Joe were coloring slickly within the lines as Mika launched her non-denials. "I never heard anything from inside the company," the author craftily said!
So this is important, but the ethical behavior of Trump's cabinet, not so much? (I refer any who wonder to check what Somerby has said about this in previous posts: He has called the plane travel stories trivial before. )
ReplyDeleteDid Trump know about Roger Ailes's decades of gruesome, unsavory conduct? How about O'Reilly's? Did Republicans know about Trump's decades of gruesome, unsavory conduct?
ReplyDeleteVoters knew about it and they didn't care.
DeleteThey cared, but the sweet, sweet sound of Trump's bigotry won them over anyway.
DeleteIt's very sad and depressing to learn about how some people will cover up the bad behavior or criminal misdeeds of others usually for their own selfish reasons or to protect those in powerful positions.
ReplyDeleteA former producer on The Apprentice has said President Donald Trump made “unfathomably despicable” racist comments while on the set of the show. The news about the remarks was disclosed by Bill Pruitt on NPR’s Embedded podcast released Wednesday. The comments, he said, were allegedly captured on videos that “are somewhere, in some warehouse.”
As I commented earlier today, the problem Somerby identifies with Mika applies to many journalists in the same situation. No More Mister Nice Blog describes the interwoven interests of journalists who might have revealed Weinstein's behavior and compares it to the situation at Fox.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason Somerby has it in for Mika but she is far from the only journalist to have failed to reveal the common knowledge about Weinstein and other powerful figures. They get away with this stuff because they ARE powerful, which means they hold leverage over other people's lives and careers. Mike is no worse than anyone else when it comes to this.
Somerby seems to think she is uniquely evil for trying to get ahead in the world, something that men in her situation do routinely and without criticism. I am sick of his bias against her.
Anyone could have revealed the wrongdoing of any of these creeps, including the ones still doing this stuff with impunity who have not been exposed. Mika and women like her are the victims because it is harder for them to get ahead when they must deal with this stuff routinely. Yet Somerby calls her out. That's just adding unfairness, since she has less ability to call out Weinstein when he is her publisher than she would have if she were uninvolved financially. And saying that she shouldn't have tried to publish her books with a sexist jerk doesn't solve anything. It just makes women less able to compete in a man's world, since I have heard nothing about him harassing men and I have not heard Somerby insist that no men should do business with Weinstein either -- and no men have come forward to expose him yet his behavior has been widely known. The blame is Weinstein's, not Mika's.
Somerby would probably criticize an abused wife for staying with her husband, and remain silent on the husband.
DeleteMaybe if Mika would actually spend time studying issues rather than writing crappy books, she could sometimes make cogent comments on the morning show.
ReplyDeleteIf Mika made cogent comments on the morning show, she'd be fired for not disseminating corporate propaganda.
Delete"Maybe if Mika would actually spend time studying issues rather than writing crappy books"
DeleteHave you read her books, or are you taking Somerby's word for it?
Hey, Bob. What did Whoopi Goldberg know about Weinstein and when did she know it? We MUST know this. Where is your expose on the liberal women on The View? We wait for the 123-part series.
ReplyDeleteThis was pretty interesting, about Columbus Day:
ReplyDeletehttp://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-truly-modest-proposal-goodbye-columbus.html#more
Yawn.
ReplyDeleteThe only entertainment I can squeeze out of this piece, dear Bob, is imagining how you were trying to find the most irrelevant mind-numbing incident in this whole universe today - and this is what you'd come up with...
Nothing says "Anti-establishment" quite like letting the elites pollute our land, air and water for profit. Amirite?
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