Over the last few months the inbox here at PBS has had its fair share of commentary about sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement. Many of you are angry that Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley are among the luminaries who have lost their jobs over sexual harassment claims.
Some of you think there has been some over reaction, that boys will be boys, men have hormones, women shouldn’t put themselves in a situation where they are tempting to men and that the talent of these men absolves them.
What I also see is a steady stream of ad hominem, sexist attacks on the women who appear on air on your PBS station, often about their looks, appearance, voice. In other words, things that are never raised about males who appear on the air.
They can range from “helmet-hair, twitchy hands, scratchy voice...” from Doc Porter to this one about a female correspondent from Roger Friedman: “Gentleman, Your correspondent… is so incredibly ugly it turns to stone to see her. No amount of cosmetics can help her,; are you so cheap you can’t afford to hire a smart correspondent with face acceptable. Ugh.” Note also that his complaint is directed at “Gentleman” as if he is unable to imagine that he could be writing to a woman who might be in a decision making position.
I’ve heard about pronunciation, vocal fry, age, demeanor – all directed at women on air.
In other words, the world is a hostile place for women, something that is revealing itself not only with the increase in casual misogyny, but also in all the stories that have been unleashed in this #MeToo moment.
What is the best reaction to this reckoning? What is a useful discussion that comes out of this moment? The fact is, there are many discussions to be had in response to this moment and that is the aim of a new, limited series – #MeToo, Now What? – airing on PBS.
Host and Executive Producer Zainab Salbi has said that one of the things she wants the series to do is to figure out how to move forward.
Which brings me to Episode 2, The Accuser and The Accused.
You might never have heard of Devin Faraci.
He was an influential critic on the site Birth.Movies.Death, a film site run by the Alamo Drafthouse, a chain of artisanal movie theaters dedicated to the best, audience focused film watching experience, who was let go after an allegation of sexual harassment in the fall of 2016.
Cast your mind back to the fall of 2016, when the world had not yet learned that Harvey Weinstein is a monstrous thug and when the hashtag #MeToo was not yet part of the everyday discourse with its own Twitter emoji, but, the world did know that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was a self-confessed p***y grabber.
It was in light of that story and Faraci’s criticism of Trump that led to the outing of his own sexually inappropriate behavior and dismissal from his job as editor-in-chief.
Fast forward to today and our culture is convulsed, appropriately, by the discussion of sexual harassment, assault and a moment of reckoning for so many men whose behavior has cost them their jobs. I’ve written about many of them in previous columns. This case appears to have been ahead of that wave.
In this episode, Salbi talks to the Accused (Devin Faraci) and the Accuser (Caroline) to “explore how each experienced the assault and came to grips with it afterwards.” I urge you to watch the whole thing.
There was uproar on social media in the days leading up to the airing of the program, with many outraged that Faraci should be given any platform at all, that it was a PR stunt, an attempt by the show to rehabilitate or whitewash Faraci’s history.
Now, of course, that the show has actually aired, it’s possible to assess those criticisms.
People have written to complain that there has been more than one accuser and that Faraci had a history of sexism and worse.
The show did not examine those claims. It was focused solely on separate conversations with the accuser and the accused.
I asked the producers if they had looked into any other allegations against him. They did not. Here's part of the response from Judy Doctoroff, president of Public Square Media, producers of the program:
"In our preparation for the interview, we did not investigate other instances of assault. Rather, our focus was on Caroline and Devin’s particular stories. The conversation in the interview made it clear that Caroline and Devin Faraci’s processing was not to be generalized and expected of all individuals who are directly or indirectly impacted by their experience, or to any women who have experienced assault or harassment. In the interview, Caroline repeatedly said that her path of healing was her own, and that each woman who experienced assault should be free to pursue whatever path of healing works best for her."
As a viewer, I did not see this show as an effort to force some sort of reconciliation between the two.
What it did was to have a deep and open conversation with an accuser about what she had gone through and what it meant for her and how she felt.
Caroline was brave to talk about it and also incredibly empathetic: “He’s the person who should feel embarrassed about this, and I’m the person who has held on to that embarrassment and shame for so long.” The incident has stayed with her for years and she has been working on how to let go of that anger.
Faraci also talks about his experience of being called out, losing his job (there was uproar when he was quietly rehired a few months later in a more junior position, and he promptly stepped down from that job too), and re-evaluating his life.
The #MeToo moment is a time when we are finally hearing from women and their stories and the behavior they have been enduring at the hands (often literally) of men in the workplace.
Critics (particularly men) have asked that we hear from men too. This is one step.
It is up to the viewer to make up their own mind about what they heard.
What I came away with was Caroline’s authentic reaction, thoughtful response and her insistence that she was working through this herself and that she speaks for herself and her own experience. She recently posted this on Twitter (before seeing the final program):
As for Mr. Faraci? Viewer Stephanie A. from Littleton, Colo., wrote, "This moderator showed an annoying suspicion of a man who seemed to have done everything right. I really liked the show with that exception."
I don't know of any show that can satisfy all sides in a debate as emotional and contentious as the one we are currently having in this country about this moment. This episode was but one valuable contribution to a discussion that is going to require many more deep and often painful conversations if we are to learn anything from the revelations that have recently been exposed.
