Willey are true, it has crossed a very important line from sexual
harassment to sexual assault. And if that's the case, we have to be
very serious about it. Well, the situation where Hewitt stuck his
tongue down that women's throat - that's assault. That is assault.
She certainly felt like she was assaulted. She freed herself by
kicking him in the balls - which they also cut out. She runs away
and then the next day, there was a fancy gala event where you have
to come in evening dress and she's there and Hewitt, this son of a
gun - he's like a randy old goat - he just could not take no for an
answer. She was wearing a backless gown and suddenly she feels
someone running his fingers up and down her bare back. She turns
around, obviously jumpy from what had happened the day before, and
sees the object of her horror - Hewitt - saying, "Don't be scared, I
just think you're a very attractive girl." They cut that out of the
article too.
There's a lot of huffing and puffing within the media about
Clinton's alleged behavior, with a lot of journalists complaining
about the public's so-called apathy on the subject. But in the case
of men like Hewitt, it seems pretty hypocritical.
It's absolutely unmistakable - and Hewitt is an extremely good
example - how most of the discourse about this issue involves people
who have no more moral standing than this ball-point pen in my
hand. And that goes not just for Hewitt, but for many of these
clowns both in the media here in Washington and in the Congress.
Anybody who has spent any time around Capitol Hill knows that a
large number of congressmen, both in the House and in the Senate,
fool around with either their young staffers or the young female
staffers of their colleagues. To any reporter who had their eyes
open, this is not news.
Carol Lloyd, A Feel For a Good Story, Mothers Who Think, 17Mar98.
With respect to Carol Lloyd's statement above, I wonder if I could have your answers
to just four questions:
(1) Is 60 Minutes infected with a slackness of integrity? What Carol Lloyd appears to be
describing in the upper echelons of the 60 Minutes administration - I am thinking
particularly of executive producer Don Hewitt and co-editor Mike Wallace - is a
deep-rooted slackness of integrity: the 60 Minutes environment has "more in common
with a drunken frat party than a professional newsroom," the top 60 Minutes staff are
"people who have no more moral standing than this ball-point pen in my hand," and
executive producer Don Hewitt comports himself "like a randy old goat." Might it be
the case, then, that the cause of your failing to satisfy minimal journalistic
standards in your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, and of your
failing also in the years since that broadcast to retract any of its many errors, is
that you yourself became infected by the same slackness of integrity that had already
gripped other of the 60 Minutes leadership?
(2) Does female hiring demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice program quality? If the
top 60 Minutes staff require their female employees to be physically attractive and
sexually accessible, then might the resulting inability of 60 Minutes to retain women
of high professional quality have resulted in a degradation in the average competence
of female employees? One may speak of demanding competence together with beauty, but