Roger Ailes and the War on Men

In reporting the recent death of Roger Ailes, the Wall Street Journal focused disrespectfully on the sexual harassment lawsuits that have been filed against him:

Several women have joined suits against Fox News or its former chief amid allegations of sexual harassment

Roger Ailes is credited with having helped Fox News become the largest cable news channel in the country.  He was said to have found an undeserved news market - half the population, that is, the conservative half, which had been largely ignored with contempt by the traditional news networks just as they were ignored with even more contempt by Hillary's presidential campaign.

Since he and his news hosts took strong stands against nearly everything liberals want to do, he was pretty much at the top of their enemies list.  It's no surprise that liberals would do anything they could to destroy this man.

The general impression is that Fox News will have a hard time mounting a vigorous defense against these accusations, even though there are no corroborating witnesses.  With Mr. Ailes' death, there is no witness whom defense lawyers can call to deny the charges.  In some ways, this makes a legal settlement more likely.

Liberals have no reason to care whether these charges are true or not: the storm of incessant negative publicity forced Fox News to fire Mr. Ailes.  After this tremendous victory, similar charges led to the network's discharge of Bill O'Reilly, their star commentator.  To universal liberal joy, Fox's ratings have plummeted since his and Mr. Ailes' departures.

Did It Happen?

Conservatives, on the other hand, actually care about whether the charges might be true.  It is an undeniable fact that opportunistic charges of rape or sexual harassment occur; it is also an undeniable fact that real opportunistic rape and harassment occur.

For example, on May 14, 2011, a wealthy French politician named Dominique Strauss-Kahn had a sexual encounter with a chambermaid while checking out of his $3,000 per night hotel.  She accused him of rape, he denied it, and the case boiled down to "He said, she said" as so many do.

It's so common for women to entice men into compromising positions and threaten rape charges that the term "badger game" was invented back in the mid 1800's to describe such schemes.  There hasn't been much change since then; our account of Mr. Strauss-Khan's ordeal lists other innocent men who spent time in jail on bogus rape charges before being cleared.  In the end, the Wall Street Journal quoted the Manhattan DA's office: "Despite entreaties to be truthful, she has not been truthful, on matters great and small,..." and the charges were dropped.

No criminal charges were brought in Mr. Ailes' case, but Fox settled with one of his accusers for about $20 million.  With that sort of prize available, what's wrong with a few lies, particularly when liberals will laud you as a heroine for "raising awareness" while taking down a noted conservative regardless of the truth of your accusations?

We know from the Duke lacrosse case and Rolling Stone's entirely fabricated article "A Rape on Campus" that some rape accusations are false and do immense damage.  The Obama administration started a "war on men" by encouraging colleges to disregard due process when women accuse men of misbehavior. 

Injustice against falsely accused man has become so common that even the Boston Globe reported that 28 members of the Harvard Law School Faculty wrote a letter urging the university to "Rethink Harvard's sexual harassment policy."  Many college men have been victimized by this "war on men" and have filed lawsuits alleging they've been railroaded - these issues are grinding through the courts at great expense to our taxpayer-funded public universities.

Then there's Ellen Pao, a wealthy executive who brought a sexual discrimination suit against her employer Kleiner-Perkins.  The jury found against her, but if it had been an office competitor whom she'd sued or the defense hadn't showed the jury that she'd had an affair with one of the partners, the outcome would probably have been different.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, many women claimed that Candidate Trump had sexually harassed them.  At least one accusation was proven false - Mr. Trump has a witness who says the exact opposite took place, the woman in question was pursuing The Donald.  But as long as liberals seek profit both in monetary terms and by destroying conservatives, this sort of thing will go on.

How To Protect Yourself

It seems that conservatives must adopt the "Pence Solution."

Mike Pence won't dine alone with a woman who's not his wife. Is that sexist? ...

Of course it's sexist - Mr. Pence often dines with men to whom he isn't married.  The LA Times went on to quote a frustrated career woman:

"My former boss never took a closed-door meeting with me in the span of working for him, on and off, over a 12-year stretch. Even when I was in a position of senior leadership. This made sensitive and strategic discussions extremely difficult."  [emphasis added]

Not being able to meet with her boss held back her career, but her boss had seen enough women use the "nuclear option" against men to be wary.  Had she done anything to make him fear her or was he just being careful on general principles?

As a leading conservative very close to the levers of power, Mr. Pence must protect himself.  The Washington Post is already gearing up to attack him just in case he tries to run for president:

Trump doesn't embody what's wrong with Washington. Pence does.

In the current witch-hunt atmosphere of ruining conservatives by any means, what choice has Mr. Pence but to be a sexist when choosing dinner companions?  If the "war on men" holds back a woman's career because men don't want to risk their careers by working with women competitors or colleagues who can destroy their careers at any time, women and the left have nobody to blame but themselves.