Perverted Lives of the Rich and Famous > Another CNN Exec Bites the Dust; Cowboy's Cheerleaders Settle Voyeurism case; Prince Andrew Settles with Virginia

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Another One Gone At CNN: Gollust Announces Her Resignation

From Network

Carmine Sabia

February 16, 2022 

OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.

Not to mention commentary which reflects this blog editor's opinion.

It has been around two weeks since former CNN head Jeff Zucker resigned from his position at the network, citing an inappropriate relationship with a co-worker, and now that co-worker has resigned.

Allison Gollust, the former lieutenant to Zucker, resigned after an investigation “into issues associated with” Chris Cuomo, a former CNN anchor, and his brother Andrew, the former governor of New York, a memo sent to staffers by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said, CNN reported.

“Based on interviews of more than 40 individuals and a review of over 100,000 texts and emails, the investigation found violations of Company policies, including CNN’s News Standards and Practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, and Chris Cuomo,” he said to staffers.

“We have the highest standards of journalistic integrity at CNN, and those rules must apply to everyone equally,” he said. “Given the information provided to me in the investigation, I strongly believe we have taken the right actions and the right decisions have been made.”

So, is this an admission that with Cuomo, Zucker and Gollust the highest standards of journalistic integrity were not met?

Gollust issued a statement announcing her departure from the company on Tuesday.

“WarnerMedia’s statement tonight is an attempt to retaliate against me and change the media narrative in the wake of their disastrous handling of the last two weeks,” she said. “It is deeply disappointing that after spending the past nine years defending and upholding CNN’s highest standards of journalistic integrity, I would be treated this way as I leave. But I do so with my head held high, knowing that I gave my heart and soul to working with the finest journalists in the world.”

There's that phrase again. Apparently, Gollust has over-estimated her standards.

Reports have indicated that Chris Cuomo is getting set for a major lawsuit against the network.

After his former boss Jeff Zucker exited the network, sources say that Cuomo wants a settlement of around $60 million, The New York Post reported.

 

Multiple sources tell Page Six that Cuomo — who was fired in December for helping his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fend off sexual harassment allegations — is ready to dig his heels in by claiming that Zucker not only knew about his dealings with the governor but that the network boss had his own inappropriate dealings with Andrew.

And he is prepared to demand not the $18 million left on his contract, but as much as $60 million.

“He wants Megyn Kelly money,” sources said to The Post.

“Chris insists he never did anything for his brother Andrew that Zucker didn’t know about,” a source said.

“His camp believes Zucker wasn’t fired for an inappropriate relationship with Allison Gollust. Everybody knew about that and nobody cared.

“What he believes happened is WarnerMedia found something in their investigation into Chris, perhaps internal memos or documents which revealed more about Zucker’s involvement with Andrew Cuomo. Gollust was just a convenient excuse,” they said.

That's been my theory ever since Zucker stepped down.

“Chris intends to fight for every dollar on his contract, and loss of income from the 15 to 20 years left in his career, had Zucker not orchestrated a ‘f–k-job’ on him. He could ask for as much as $80 million but CNN isn’t going to pay that. But there’s an argument he could ask for as much as $60 million,” the source said.

Another source said that “Chris is telling people in the Hamptons he was wrongly fired, humiliated, his career has been ruined, and he wants Megyn Kelly money.”

For reference, Kelly got $69 million from NBC after she was fired in 2019 when she defended blackface on her show.

Sources have said that Zucker “coached Andrew Cuomo [on] what to say in his press conferences, particularly how to hit back at President Donald Trump. He advised him when, and where, and what to say. He chastised Andrew if he appeared on other networks.

“When this all finally comes out, it will put an end to the big cry fest going on at CNN over Zucker’s ousting,” they said.

WarnerMedia chief executive Jason Kilar met with CNN staff in DC on Monday the idea of a severance package for Cuomo was talked about and staff did not appear to be on board.

Jake Tapper, the host of the CNN show “The Lead” referred to Cuomo as a “terrorist” who wants to attack the network.

“How do we get past this perception that this is the bad guy winning?” New York Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum reported.

You can't! They're all bad guys.

“Did you think about what message it sends to the journalists in the company and also to the larger public that someone can be found to break with those journalistic standards and then get paid handsomely for it?” CNN host Don Lemon said, the Wall Street Journal reported.

It's a sad commentary considering how journalistic standards have fallen so far in recent decades.

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Dallas Cowboys paid $2.4MN to settle cheerleader allegations – report

An NFL team paid off cheerleaders who accused a team executive of voyeurism,

according to a new report

© Tom Pennington / Getty Images

NFL team the Dallas Cowboys reached a confidential $2.4 million settlement with four cheerleaders who accused a senior team executive of voyeurism including recording them while in their dressing rooms, according to a report.

The four members of the cheerleading squad were each paid $399,523.27, according to ESPN, which says that the rest of the money was used to pay associated legal costs after they made allegations that former senior vice president for public relations and communications Richard Dalrymple recorded them with his cell phone while they were in a state of undress.

Dalrymple retired from the Cowboys after 32 years of service earlier this month.

The 2015 complaint alleged that Dalrymple gained entry to their locker room using a security key card and was subsequently discovered by the women attempting to record them with his iPhone.

An internal investigation conducted by the team found no firm evidence of any impropriety on Dalrymple's behalf, according to the outlet – but the team hierarchy allegedly saw fit to issue him with a written warning. 

Dalrymple vigorously denied the allegations against him in a statement. "People who know me – co-workers, the media and colleagues – know who I am and what I'm about," Dalrymple said.

"I understand the very serious nature of these claims and do not take them lightly. The accusations are, however, false. One was accidental and the other simply did not happen. Everything that was alleged was thoroughly investigated years ago, and I co-operated fully."

Figures within the Cowboys also indicated to the report that no wrongdoing was found in their investigation.

"If any wrongdoing had been found, Rich would have been terminated immediately," said Jim Wilkinson, a communications expert employed by the team.

"Everyone involved felt just terrible about this unfortunate incident."

Even though no wrongdoing had been found!? Weird! $2.4m is a lot of money to pay for 'no wrongdoing'!

The report also suggested that Dalrymple's retirement came around the same time as he became aware of various reporters' interest in the matter – although Dalrymple said that this timing was merely coincidental.

The account also quotes a former Cowboys cheerleader who was not involved in the incident as saying that the alleged voyeurism was common knowledge amongst the cheerleading squad.

It also details how the team allegedly conducted a forensic analysis of Dalrymple's work phone but found no evidence of photographs being taken.

Dalrymple is said to have denied owning a personal cell phone and told investigators that he did enter the locker room, mistakenly thinking it was empty while wanting to use the bathroom.

"It was a 'he said, she said' – and the team chose to believe Dalrymple's side of things," ESPN quoted an unnamed source as saying. "But four women swore this happened."

None of the four women who made the reported complaint are currently employed by the team.

I'll bet! But they have $400,000 dollars.

Prince Andrew settles sex abuse lawsuit

The financial terms of the settlement between the British royal and his accuser

Virginia Giuffre have not been revealed

FILE PHOTO. Prince Andrew. 

Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, has reached a settlement with Virginia Giuffre, who had accused the senior British royal of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, according to a court filing in New York on Tuesday.

The 61-year-old Duke of York agreed to pay a confidential financial sum to Giuffre, both parties announced in a joint statement attached to the court document. Andrew will also make a "substantial donation" to a charity that supports "victims' rights."

The settlement comes weeks before Prince Andrew was set to be required to participate in a deposition under oath, during which he would have been questioned by Giuffre's lawyers about her accusations. The joint statement from Prince Andrew and Giuffre reportedly says that the British royal does not admit to any of the accusations against him.

The court documents also show the prince claiming that he "regrets his association" with convicted billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. "Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms Giuffre's character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks," the linked statement said, adding that the Briton "regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others."

“He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims,” the filing adds.

Andrew’s legal team had tried to get the lawsuit thrown out on a technicality by claiming a previous deal between Giuffre and Epstein meant that she was barred from pursuing a case against the royal. However, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected this, allowing the case to proceed to trial. Following the court's refusal to dismiss the suit, Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew had returned his "military affiliations and royal patronages" to Queen Elizabeth and would "continue not to undertake any public duties."

It's rumoured that the Queen, herself, will pay Andrew's settlement. I wonder if that's how he got to be the way he is?

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Perverted Lives of the Rich and Famous > Man United ace arrested in 'extremely shocking' rape; CNN boss 'quits'; Anna Duggar needs help

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Police continue to quiz arrested England ace Mason Greenwood,

20, over 'rape and assault of 18-year-old student'

Manchester United suspend player after 'shocking' footage circulated

on social media - as father of 'victim' says her account 'was hacked'

By LIZ HULL and EMINE SINMAZ FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 18:29 EST, 30 January 2022

England footballer Mason Greenwood was in police custody last night after being arrested over allegations of rape and assault.

The Manchester United forward, 20, was detained after distressing pictures and audio circulated on social media earlier in the day alleging he attacked an 18-year-old student.

The images appeared to show the woman bloodied and bruised.

Another post included a voice recording of a conversation between a man and a woman, dated October last year, which purportedly chronicled the woman being attacked.

Within hours of the messages emerging and spreading across social media, his club put out a statement saying it was aware of them and they were making inquiries ‘to establish the full circumstances’.

It added: ‘Manchester United does not condone violence of any kind.’

Mason Greenwood (pictured with England manager Gareth Southgate) is at the centre of a police investigation and has been arrested on suspicion of rape and assault this weekend

The woman was interviewed by plain clothes officers at her family home yesterday afternoon.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester police said they had launched an investigation after being made ‘aware of online social media images and videos posted by a woman reporting incidents of physical violence’.

He added: ‘Following inquiries we can confirm a man in his 20s has since been arrested on suspicion of rape and assault. He remains in custody for questioning. Inquiries are ongoing.’

Forensic officers also arrived at Greenwood’s £2million mansion in the upmarket village of Bowdon, Cheshire, yesterday evening.

Manchester United suspended the rising star, who earns a reported £75,000 a week, shortly before news of his arrest emerged. In a second statement, the club hierarchy said the player would ‘not return to training or play matches until further notice’.

News of Greenwood’s suspension and arrest is also likely to put his lucrative sponsorship deal with Nike at risk. Yesterday a spokesman for the sports brand said they were ‘deeply concerned by the disturbing allegations’ and would be ‘closely monitoring the situation’.

The allegedly incriminating posts were online for just a few hours before being deleted. The woman’s father told the Daily Mail his daughter believed her Instagram account had been hacked.

Speaking from his £1million home in an upmarket Cheshire village, the company director, 61, described the allegations as ‘dreadful’.

‘I’m just coming to terms with it,’ he said. ‘As a father you don’t want to know things like this are happening to your daughter. She is devastated. But she is safe. It is in the hands of the police now.’

Campaigners and women’s charities also welcomed the investigation into the ‘shocking’ allegations.

Former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal said the pictures, and particularly the voice note, were ‘shocking in the extreme’. ‘Manchester United must deal with it but it is also clearly a police matter,’ he said.

There is much more to this story, being called football's #MeToo moment, at the Daily Mail.

CNN president quits

Jeff Zucker failed to disclose romantic relationship with colleague

that came up during Chris Cuomo probe

Jeff Zucker © Mike Coppola / Getty Images for CNN

Jeff Zucker announced his resignation as president of CNN and chairman of Warner Media’s news and sports division on Wednesday, after nine years at the cable channel’s helm. 

As the reason for his move, Zucker said that he failed to disclose in a timely manner a “consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” that he said “evolved in recent years.” 

According to the New York Times, the person in question is Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. Gollust said on Wednesday that she would remain at CNN.

“Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years,” she said in a statement. “Recently, our relationship changed during Covid. I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time.”

Gollust and Zucker’s relationship came up during the investigation into the CNN tenure of Chris Cuomo, the younger brother of the now-former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo. CNN fired Cuomo in December 2021, saying he inappropriately used his position at the network to help his brother defend charges of sexual harassment. Andrew Cuomo had resigned in August, dogged by the accusations which did not result in criminal charges.

“Together, we had nine great years,” Zucker said in a memo to CNN employees on Wednesday. “I certainly wish my tenure here had ended differently. But it was an amazing run. And I loved every minute.”

Zucker, 56, came to CNN in 2013. He previously worked at NBC Entertainment, where he green-lit the reality TV hit ‘The Apprentice’, starring real-estate mogul and future US President Donald Trump. Riding on that show’s success, among other things, Zucker was promoted to chief executive of NBC Universal in February 2007. Just three years later, in June 2010, Comcast offered him up to $40 million to resign, after acquiring the company.

One unnamed TV executive told the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd at the time that Zucker was “a case study in the most destructive media executive ever to exist” who had “taken a once-great network and literally destroyed it.”

So, I'm wondering if the affair is a cover for his being fired. It used to be that if you were fired for sexual indiscretions that it would be covered with another excuse. That now seems to be reversed. 

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Anna Duggar - In a really bad place thanks to Josh

By CARLY STERN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 14:40 EST, 4 February 2022 

Anna Duggar has broken her silence about her sex offender husband Josh Duggar's child porn conviction, defending him and appearing to insist that he is innocent. 

Anna, 33, shared a short message on Twitter and Instagram on Thursday, her first since announcing the birth of their seventh child in November. 

'There is more to the story,' Anna wrote. 

Though she didn't elaborate, she included a link to her husband's motion for acquittal or a new trial.

Anna had accompanied Josh to court every day of the trial in December, and appears to believe the defense's argument that someone else could have been behind the horrific trove of photos and videos of children being sexually abused that were found on Josh's computer.

Yet she seems to be the only one steadfastly sticking by him: Several members of Josh's family had released statements in support of the conviction, and no one has liked Anna's post or tweet.

Anna Duggar has broken her silence about her sex offender husband Josh Duggar's child porn conviction, defending him and appearing to insist that he is innocent 

Anna has turned off comments on her Instagram posts, which has only got about 2,000 likes in 18 hours — far less than her previous post on November 15, which announced the arrival of her daughter Madyson Lily and got over 96,000 likes.

Though her sister Priscilla liked the post, not a single member of the Duggar family has.

Many of the Duggars — including Jill and Derick Dillard, Jessa and Ben Seewald, Joy Anna and Austin Forsyth, and Jinger and Jeremy Vuolo — wrote statements following Josh's conviction in which they expressed approval of the outcome. 

Though none of the Duggars approved of her post about Josh, however, they don't seem to be shunning Anna, who was present at the family's ugly sweater party in December.

While Anna managed to avoid critical comments on Instagram, they have flooded in on Twitter, with users calling her 'delusional' and 'brainwashed.'

'No dear just stop and save yourself. Have some self-respect,' wrote one.

There is a lot more on this story at The Daily Mail.

Anna seems to blame Josh's parents and Joe Biden for this conviction. I have personally witnessed someone who is a chronic liar cover up his sin by telling his wife and friends only as much as they can take without turning on him. Always blaming someone else, he put his wife and friends in an awful place. If that's what has happened here, Anna's going to need some serious help when she allows herself to believe the truth and comes to terms with it. IMHO Josh is despicable for putting her through this. Please pray for her.

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Shocking Events in Canada, Sweden, India and N. Ireland on Today's Global PnP List

Couple found guilty of sexually assaulting young girl go free because case took too long

Justice Sandra Zinchuk found the couple's case took

45 months from start to finish

By Riley Laychuk, CBC News 

A Manitoba judge has ruled that a couple's case taking nearly 46 months from the first court date to conviction was too long, and stayed their convictions. (Bert Savard/CBC)

A Manitoba couple convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl over a five-year period have had their convictions thrown out in a Portage la Prairie courtroom after a judge ruled their case was unreasonably delayed.

The two were charged with sexual assault and two counts of sexual interference each in July 2013. They were convicted in May 2017, nearly four years later, but their convictions were tossed after filing a motion with the court, saying it took too long.

"I find that the delay in this case was unreasonable," Justice Sandra Zinchuk said in her decision last week.

Man accused of sexually assaulting child walks free due to court delays

Sex assault cases in Alberta collapse due to excessive delays

CBC News is not naming the couple to protect the identity of the victim, who was a minor at the time of the offences.

The ruling follows the Jordan decision, as it has come to be known — a July 8, 2016, ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that set aside drug convictions in a British Columbia case due to unreasonable delay.

Supreme Court sets new deadlines for completing trials

In a 5-4 ruling, the court said the old means of determining whether proceedings had taken too long were inadequate. Under the new framework, unreasonable delay was to be presumed if proceedings topped 18 months in provincial court or 30 months in superior court.

Not meant to send a message to victims 

Scott Newman is a Winnipeg defence lawyer and spokesperson for the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association of Manitoba. He said that while he couldn't speak to this specific case, as a whole, it's important for the criminal justice system to function in a timely manner. 

"It's never meant to send a message to anyone involved in a particular case," said Newman. "It's meant to send a future message, to say 'get your house in order.'" 

"This will happen again unless you have the criminal justice system running efficiently and running appropriately and delivering timely justice for everyone." 

Newman said timely justice is important because "people's memories fade, it gets harder to defend yourself from allegations particularly when you don't know about them until you're arrested later."

He also said moving cases through the courts in a reasonable time is good for society as a whole.

"It's important for everyone to know that justice is delivered in a timely fashion … not just for the accused persons, for victims of crime, for the public at large to know that the criminal justice system is functioning efficiently." 

Case adjourned several times 

Court heard the couple's case was adjourned several times to allow them to file for legal aid, before they eventually decided to represent themselves — a delay that Zinchuk deemed to be acceptable.

"There would generally be some acceptable delay in retaining acceptable counsel. An accused is entitled to take legitimate steps to respond to charges," said Zinchuk . "There is no evidence that either accused delayed or hindered their legal aid application."

That was followed by delays in setting pretrial dates after a motion by the Crown asked that defence counsel be appointed in order to cross-examine the complainant in the case. Zinchuk also said the 10-month span between the date both the defence and Crown were ready to set trial dates and the actual trial was longer than it should have been. 

'This was not a complex case … There was one Crown witness and both accused testified.'

- Justice Sandra Zinchuk

The couple's case finally went to trial in May 2017. On the first day of the trial, the couple filed a motion to have the case thrown out due to the length of time it took.

Zinchuk ruled to proceed with the trial and the two were ultimately found guilty, nearly 46 months after they were charged. They were due to be sentenced Dec. 12, but Zinchuk instead ruled the length of time was longer than the acceptable length of 30 months set out in the Supreme Court of Canada's Jordan ruling.

And for some reason she didn't know that in May?

"The delays noted above are not the result of action or inaction of either accused," Zinchuk told court. "There was delay in the range of 14 months which was not caused by the defence.

"This was not a complex case," she said. "There was one Crown witness and both accused testified … there were no pretrial motions or charter issues."

Zinchuk also said the case also didn't involve a large number of charges, other significant requirements or expert evidence that may have also caused delays. 

The justice compared the couple's case to another, in which the Supreme Court ruled was unreasonably delayed. 

Kenneth Gavin Williamson waited nearly three years to be tried on charges related to sex offences against a minor decades ago. The Supreme Court agreed the Ontario man's delay was unreasonable and endorsed a lower court's stay of proceedings.

65 motions filed in Manitoba 

According to Manitoba Justice, 65 delay motions on Criminal Code matters in Manitoba have been filed, as of last week.  Of these, nine remain outstanding.

Twenty-five have been dismissed by the court, 10 were stayed, 18 were resolved or withdrawn by counsel and three were successful, which led to the court staying the charge, a spokesperson said.

It is not clear if these most recent dismissals are reflected in these numbers. 

So, in these cases of child sex abuse, how is the child protected from further abuse? While the Jordan decision is not meant to send a message to victims, it does. It tells them the rights of the criminal are more important than the rights of the victim in Canada. It's a sorry state when a criminal feels more protected by society than an innocent child.

CBC's decision against airing Transgender Kids doc should leave everyone unsettled

Political correctness takes precedence over science at CBC

By Debra W. Soh, for CBC News 

To be clear, Zucker wasn't against transitioning for transgender people. He simply challenged the notion that every single child who says he or she is of the wrong gender is actually transgender.

(Jim Ross/New York Times)

Last week, CBC was scheduled to air the controversial BBC documentary Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? but scrapped the plan the day of, citing audience feedback and its own "further review of the doc." Activists had argued that the film was "harmful" and poised to "feed transphobia."

In actuality, the documentary offers a rare and factual perspective on the politicization of gender therapy by featuring interviews with Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and international research expert on gender dysphoria in children. (Zucker also happens to be a former colleague of mine.)

Although his research and approach to therapy are scientifically sound, they counter transgender orthodoxy in ways on which I will elaborate below.

Zucker's approach

But first, some background: in December of 2015, Zucker was fired from his position at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), where he had served as head of the Child, Youth, and Family Gender Identity Clinic. Many activists who had petitioned for his removal claimed victory.

The majority of gender dysphoric children desist by puberty

What was so controversial about Zucker's approach? In short, he did not blindly follow the current popular dogma of affirming young children who say they want to transition to the opposite sex. Instead, Zucker's therapy was informed by research that shows that the majority of gender dysphoric children desist by puberty.

Indeed, across all 11 studies conducted on this topic, including research published in the last five years, about 60 to 90 per cent of gender dysphoric children grow up to be gay in adulthood, not transgender.

Zucker's approach was not about "curing" transgender kids or conducting "reparative" or "conversion therapy," as some of his critics contend. Rather, it was about recognizing that it simply doesn't make sense for a child to undergo the challenges of a social or physical transition if they are likely to grow comfortable in the body they already have, on their own. That is the so-called "harmful" view the documentary explores.

To be clear, Zucker wasn't against transitioning for transgender people; he published academic studies supporting the use of hormonal blockers and cross-sex hormones for patients upon reaching puberty. He simply challenged the notion that every single child who says he or she is of the wrong gender is actually transgender.

The film also discusses the subject of detransitioning: a process whereby people who have transitioned end up regretting it and transition back to their birth sex. It also shed light on the theory that underlying conditions can be mistaken for gender dysphoria, including autism and borderline personality disorder.

Detransitioning sounds like a nightmare. I expect there are physical limits to it, but the psychological horror of realizing you have mutilated your body and mind, and it was all a big mistake must be extraordinary. 

And how many of those people commit suicide rather than transitioning back? We know more than 40% of trans attempt suicide. The politically correct would like to blame bullying by straight people for those suicide attempts, but I think they are deflecting the blame from where it belongs - on those who encourage children to transition before puberty.

When Transgender Kids was released earlier this year, I sensed a feeling of relief among my colleagues in sexology that someone was finally willing to challenge the "gender affirmative" approach, especially in a way that was made for public consumption.

Nowadays, clinicians face extreme pressure to endorse the early transitioning model for their young patients, even when it may not be the best way forward for them. That's certainly the message that Zucker's firing sent, and it speaks all the more to why the film needed to be aired.

Controversy in the U.K.

This is not the first time Transgender Kids has encountered controversy. Upon first airing in the U.K., the film was widely protested and has since been removed from the BBC's website. That's not altogether surprising: in extreme cases, transgender activists have harassed and intimidated sex researchers who produce work that counters their political agenda. That's a big reason why you'll be hard-pressed to find many new studies countering the early transitioning approach.

Ontario's extreme liberal laws

More recently, this activism has influenced Canadian policy by way of Ontario's Bill 77 —  the Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act of 2015 —which incorrectly conflates therapeutic approaches like Zucker's with unethical attempts to change a person's sexual orientation. And Bill 89 earlier this year, which writes gender ideology into child welfare laws and justifies intervention on the part of the government if a parent does not affirm a child's gender identity or expression.

Now the activism has made its way to Canada's publicly funded national broadcaster, which has opted against airing dissenting views on this issue. This should have individuals on both sides of the debate feeling unsettled.

Supporting transgender people, including their right to dignity, support and medical intervention, isn't at odds with taking a scientifically guided approach to determining the best outcomes for children. But as is commonly the case with political movements, these nuances only complicate the narrative and cede opportunities for activists to gain further ground.

Those complicit in the silencing of legitimate science have lost sight of the forest for the trees. The issue is no longer about what's in the best interest of these children, but about winning, at any cost, the ideological war.

I have seen CBC reporters mock people who don't take science as their god. And yet, here they have science bow down to the god of political correctness because some people started screaming. The consequence is that the erroneous and horrific practice of transitioning children before puberty will continue unabated and even undiscussed as the sexual abuse of children that it is.

This is another example where children have no voice, especially those children who are abused.

CBC is supporting this practice of child sexual abuse, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves; I certainly am ashamed of them.

Swedish police retract safety advice to women despite

3rd gang rape in 1 month

The New Normal - Sweden

© Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP

Police in the Swedish city of Malmo have retracted advice given to women in the city following the brutal gang-rape of a 17-year-old girl. The force advised women not to go out alone after dark following the vicious attack.

Officers issued the warning over the weekend following the assault, which occurred on Saturday, and marked the third such vicious rape committed by unknown perpetrators in the city in less than a month.

The original warning, reported by various Swedish media outlets, said that women should avoid venturing out after dark without someone for company. Considering it gets dark quite early in Sweden at this time of year, that would mean women should avoid being in the streets alone after approximately 3pm local time.

However, following criticism, Malmo police issued a formal statement on Monday retracting those remarks, describing them as “unfortunate and unclear.”

“My advice is to behave as usual and not act on fear,” said police spokesperson Mats Karlsson, as cited by SVT.

In other words, We're OK with you getting gang-raped as long as we are not criticized.

So far, police have not linked this most recent incident to the previous two but are also not ruling out a connection. In this latest case, there is no CCTV footage to analyze but police are attempting to recover footage from surrounding areas in a bid to catch the attackers.

Sexual abuse at observation home in India:

minister says action taken

PTI

Nagpur, Maharashtra Women and Child Welfare Minister Pankaja Munde today told the Legislative Council here that administrative officers have been charged under the POCSO Act in connection with an incident of sexual abuse of minors at an observation home in Pune.

MLC Jaidev Gaikwad, during the question hour, sought a status report on the case.

The minister informed that concerned officers were charged under the relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (for negligence), and disciplinary action has been initiated against them.

The minister also informed that action has also been taken against ten juveniles involved in the incident.

Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde asked what steps the government had taken so that such incidents do not happen again in observation homes and orphanages.

Pankaja Munde said children who have the background of `being in conflict with law (who are held for commission of offences) and other children should be kept seriously.

"Many children in observation homes have a background of being in conflict with law. Children from such background and those with normal background should not be kept under one roof," she said.

Her department will prepare a proposal in this regard, she said.

Security at these institutions would be tightened, the minister assured. 

Northern Ireland MLA breaks silence on brother's child sexual assault conviction

SDLP assembly member Pat Catney. Picture by Mal McCann

      

AN SDLP MLA has spoken publicly for the first time about his adopted brother's recent conviction on sex charges.

Pat Catney (63) said his brother Jim's sexual assualt of a young girl as indefensible.

The Lagan Valley representative, who previously owned the Kitchen Bar in Belfast city centre, said he was shocked by his brother's actions and that his thoughts were with the victim.

In May this year, James Catney (67) received a three-year sentence, suspended for three years, after pleading guilty to three counts of gross indecency and three of indecent assault.

Wow! No jail time! Northern Ireland is obviously the place to be if you're a paedophile.

He was placed on the sex offenders register for life and made the subject of a sexual offences prevention order.

His younger brother, Pat, who was elected to the assembly in March, told the Belfast Telegraph, the episode was a "dark time" for everyone concerned, but added that his sibling has not been disowned by the family.

"I try to be protective of him but we have to think of the victim," said Mr Catney.

He said the family felt a "sense of shame" over the case.

"We didn't know anything about it. It came as a complete shock. Jim was out of our lives for a long time, maybe 30 years."

That's curious. Why was he out of your lives for 30 years, which would have begun not long before his offending? Was it because you knew he was a pervert even then?

The offences took place on dates between December 31 1990 and January 1 1994 when James Catney was aged between 41 and 44 and the victim aged between eight and 11.

The court heard that Catney had developed behavioural problems from the age of 16 when he discovered he had been adopted and started to abuse alcohol.

"I spoke to Jim about what he did and how wrong that was; he understood that," said Mr Catney.

The Dangers of Transgender Ideology in Medicine

Casualties of a Social, Psychological, and Medical Fad

by  Daniel Payne

Dr. Paul McHugh is optimistic that the ascendency of transgender ideology is a passing fad. Yet the damage that transgender ideology can wreak in even just ten or fifteen years—the hormones, the surgery, the irreversible decisions, the mutilated bodies—is considerable.

If popular opinion is to be believed, living as if one were the opposite sex is simply a healthy variant on a spectrum rather than a mental disease in need of serious treatment. What transgender individuals need, the thinking goes, is not to be told that they are delusional and in need of psychotherapy; it is for society to accept them as they are, and for medical and psychological professionals to help them “transition” to their “true gender.”

There is precious little evidence to support such a claim. Yet there seems to be a determined campaign, waged by activists and politicized medical officials, to suppress or otherwise ignore any dissent on the matter, even within the medical and psychiatric professions.

The “misalignment” of one’s body and one’s gender identity is one of the core tenets of transgender ideology. Most (though not all) transgender individuals feel the need to alter their physically healthy bodies—with genital surgery, with hormones, with breast augmentation or elective mastectomies—in order to reflect their “true” identities.

What drives so many doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists to affirm transgenderism rather than deny it? Where is the evidence to support such bizarre clinical practice?

Where's the Evidence?

You might be surprised to learn that the evidence is sorely lacking. We have been led to believe that there is a scientific consensus on this issue: that gender affirmation and “transitioning” have been scientifically proven to be the correct approaches to dealing with transgenderism in both children and adults. This appears to be largely false.

A few years ago, the medical consultation company Hayes, Inc., released several overviews of the numerous medical and scientific studies that have been performed on transgender populations. Hayes, which bills itself as promoting “better healthcare decisions using fiercely unbiased evidence,” is a low-profile but longstanding player in the medical evidence field. Since its founding in 1989, Hayes “has become an industry leader in providing unbiased, timely, clinically focused, evidence-based research and analysis to health plans, insurers, hospitals, healthcare systems, ACOs and government agencies.”

The Hayes reports are the damning indictments of the transgender industry that you’ve never heard of. Getting my hands on the reports entailed some difficulty; Hayes, Inc., did not respond to my requests for them, and indeed they did not respond to any of my inquires at all, leaving me to seek them out elsewhere. Eventually a sympathetic doctor offered me some copies. What they revealed was, to put it mildly, rather shocking.

The reports, released between May 9 and May 19, 2014, survey the three major types of medical treatment most often sought by transgender individuals: “sex reassignment surgery,” “hormone therapy,” and “ancillary procedures and services.” The reports draw from the literature of peer-reviewed publications over the span of at least a decade’s worth of studies and concern themselves with outcomes ranging from “psychological well-being” and “sexual function and satisfaction” to “safety outcomes” and “quality of life.”

Though the surveys note certain positive post-treatment changes in patient populations—say, an improvement of quality of life for some individuals who underwent “sex reassignment surgery,” and a reduction in anxiety and depression in some patients subject to “hormone therapy”—the overall “quality of evidence” for every category of treatment was rated “very low.”

The low-quality ratings were given for a variety of reasons: “limitations of individual studies,” “lack of randomization of patients to treatment groups,” “failure to control for confounders,” “unknown or short follow-up intervals,” “variable follow-up duration,” “possible recall bias and selection bias,” “lack of objective and validated outcome measures,” “lack of blinded outcome assessments,” “lack of baseline data for self-rated outcome measures,” and many others. In other words, there appears to be very little evidence to support the treatment plans proposed by the modern medical transgender zeitgeist.

Gender Dysphoria in Children 

This troubling dearth of evidence would be alarming enough if this phenomenon were limited solely to adults. But in recent years, transgender activists have set their sights on encouraging children to embrace transgender identities.

The Endocrine Society, a professional medical organization based in Washington, DC, recently stipulated that children under sixteen years old can safely begin hormone treatment therapy, even though its own research indicates that there are insufficient data to support its recommendations. In a recent “Clinical Practice Guideline” surveying the state of “Endocrine Treatment of Gender-Dysphoric/ Gender-Incongruent Persons,” the Endocrine Society laid out a “Summary of Recommendations” detailing how physicians and mental health professionals should treat individuals who experience gender dysphoria. The Society rates each of its recommendations on a four-point scale of quality of evidence: “very low,” “low,” “moderate,” or “high.”

Not a single one of the guidelines is backed by “high” quality evidence. Of the twenty-eight recommendations, only three scored “moderate.” The rest were either “low” or “very low.”

Among the recommendations that scored “low” are those that adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria should “undergo treatment to suppress pubertal development;” that sixteen-year-olds should be allowed to undergo “partly irreversible” hormone therapy; and that children younger than sixteen should be allowed to receive hormone therapy in some cases. Some of the very low ratings include permitting individuals to undergo “genital surgery” and “breast surgery.”

The guidelines also make several ungraded recommendations for which “direct evidence . . . was either unavailable or not systematically appraised and considered out of the scope of this guideline.” Among those ungraded statements: the suggestion that clinicians consider whether or not hysterectomies (the removal of the uterus) and oophorectomies (the removal of the ovaries) are “medically necessary” as part of “gender-affirming surgery.” That is to say, the Society does not even give the lowest possible grade on its evidentiary scale for a surgical medical directive that renders women permanently, irreversibly sterile.

This past June, the American College of Pediatricians released a policy statement titled “Gender Dysphoria in Children” that asserts that there is a “vigorous, albeit suppressed, debate among physicians, therapists, and academics regarding what is fast becoming the new treatment standard for GD [gender dysphoria] in children.” Disputing the growing trend of using hormone therapy to treat children with gender dysphoria, the College states that “a review of the current literature suggests that this protocol is founded upon an unscientific gender ideology, lacks an evidence base, and violates the long-standing ethical principle of ‘First do no harm.’”

“There is not a single large, randomized, controlled study,” the College points out, “that documents the alleged benefits and potential harms to gender-dysphoric children from pubertal suppression and decades of cross-sex hormone use. Nor is there a single long-term, large, randomized, controlled study that compares the outcomes of various psychotherapeutic interventions for childhood GD with those of pubertal suppression followed by decades of toxic synthetic steroids.”

Noting the proliferation of transgender clinics and transgender-affirming doctors across the country in recent years, the College notes the staggering levels of persistent gender dysphoria among young patients placed on puberty blockers:

In a follow-up study of their first 70 pre-pubertal candidates to receive puberty suppression, de Vries and colleagues documented that all subjects eventually embraced a transgender identity and requested cross-sex hormones. This is cause for concern. Normally, 80 percent to 95 percent of pre-pubertal youth with GD do not persist in their GD. To have 100 percent of pre-pubertal children choose cross-sex hormones suggests that the protocol itself inevitably leads the individual to identify as transgender. There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young child with GD to socially impersonate the opposite sex and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating the opposite sex will alter the structure and function of the child’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that will make identity alignment with the child’s biologic sex less likely…

“The treatment of GD in childhood with hormones,” the College declares, “effectively amounts to mass experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable of providing informed consent.”

Branding Heterodoxy as Hate

Dr. Michelle Cretella, the president of the American College of Pediatricians and the lead author of the above-cited policy statement on gender dysphoria in children, says that the deck is stacked against professionals who wish to speak out against the current fashionable stance on transgenderism. “Not only is there a profound lack of diversity of philosophical worldviews among medical school faculty and professional medical guilds,” she told me, “but also, staunch transgender physician activists—some of them trans-identified—[have] achieved positions of authority allowing them to craft the current standards of care.” In this environment, Cretella argues, “no one is free to dissent without being punished. Such punishments range from being “passed over for promotions” to “demoted from Chairmanship positions” to suffering “loss of research funding” and being subject to “severe harassment by peers [and] death threats from activists.”

“And this censorship continues,” she says, “even as those ‘expert’ physicians admit that their recommendations have no long term scientific evidence to back them.”

Consider the example of Paul McHugh, a renowned physician who has been put through the wringer for his stance on gender dysphoria. Dr. McHugh, who is a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, was for twenty years the Psychiatrist in Chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. By his own account, he has had extensive experience in observing and interacting with individuals identifying as transgender. In 1979 he shut down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins, claiming that the treatments it offered were ineffective for helping people with gender dysphoria.

McHugh’s ongoing heterodoxy on transgender ideology—he has been outspoken in his belief that it is deeply flawed and misguided—has earned him the unrelenting ire of progressive activists across the country. The Human Rights Campaign devotes an entire website to “exposing” McHugh, accusing him of providing “junk science” to “anti-LGBT activists.” The Daily Beast directly accused McHugh of being “anti-LGBT.” ThinkProgress claimed that “social conservatives depend on [McHugh] to justify anti-transgender hate.” Slate called him “a dinosaur” with “outdated, anti-LGBTQ views.” The Huffington Post accused McHugh of “endanger[ing] the lives of transgender youth.”

“They try to stop you in any way they know how,” McHugh told me over the phone when I asked about the often vicious criticism directed toward him. “They’ll brand you a hate person. They’ll try to get your university downgraded.” McHugh claims there are many more professionals who believe as he does on the subject of transgenderism who are keeping their mouths shut. “There are lots of people who agree with me,” he says, “but who don’t want to be brought forth. They fear the difficulties aren’t worth it.”

That is not an unreasonable fear. Take the case of Dr. Kenneth Zucker. For several decades Zucker ran Toronto’s Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic (GIC). The clinic was the subject of some controversy due to its cautious approach to identifying and treating gender dysphoria: rather than go full steam ahead when a child experienced gender dysphoria, psychiatrists and clinicians at the GIC were more circumspect, mindful of the possibility that an overwhelming majority of children end up “desisting,” or abandoning their transgender identity.

By reliable accounts, the GIC under Zucker was a warm, welcoming, therapeutic environment. But the clinic’s wary approach to transgender affirmation earned it the ire of activists; an external review of the clinic eventually led to Zucker's being fired from his long-held position there, to the delight of transgender partisans. Yet in a fantastic piece at New York Magazine last year, Jesse Singal detailed the utterly shoddy and tissue-thin charges on the basis of which Zucker was publicly smeared and eventually dismissed. The external review itself ended up being a slapdash, largely unverified document that took the accusations against Zucker at face value without verifying any of them.

Beyond such smear campaigns and professional ramifications, there is a quiet but critical effort underway to criminalize professional dissent on the matter of gender identity—not simply as a matter of public debate but as a matter of private practice. The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, put forward in April of this year in Congress, would expressly forbid mental health professionals from attempting to “change another individual’s . . . gender identity.” If the TFPA passes, medical professionals who try to offer psychological treatment to patients with gender dysphoria to help them accept their bodily identity will be treated like criminals by the federal government of the United States.

Cause for Optimism?

Yet Paul McHugh is optimistic—more optimistic, anyway, then you would expect from a man who has spent many recent years being slandered as some kind of Nazi devil-doctor. “This has happened before,” he told me. “This isn’t the only psychiatric craze I’ve been involved in. The ‘recovered memories’ of child sex abuse from the 1990s had exactly the same kind of pressure behind it. People insisted you’d better not speak against it, because then you’d be considered a champion of pedophilia.”

In the past, McHugh points out, activists have “seized on psychiatry to defend things that are indefensible.” Psychiatry, he says, “goes into a craze once every twenty to twenty-five years. They always do it for the same reasons . . . You had the eugenics business with [the support of] Oliver Wendell Holmes, frontal lobotomies that won the Nobel Prize, the psychoanalysis craze with the influx of European psychoanalysts . . . and now this one.”

These crazes do not go on forever, McHugh says. “They last for ten or fifteen years. Eventually they fall apart. And that’s what will happen here.”

He is probably right. But the damage that transgender ideology can wreak in ten or fifteen years—the hormones, the surgery, the irreversible decisions, the mutilated bodies—is considerable. When this ideological zeitgeist collapses, we will be left with thousands and thousands of individuals whose lives will have been forever altered by a passing fad. What will we say to them then? And what will the promoters and enablers of this fad say to themselves?

Daniel Payne is an assistant editor at The College Fix, a daily higher education news website that trains young student reporters in the craft of journalism. His work has appeared at The Federalist, National Review Online, Reason, Front Porch Republic and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia and he blogs at Trial of the Century.

The Perverted Lives of the Rich and Famous > Oscar Pistorius parole denied; Don Lemon's misogynistic behaviour

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Oscar Pistorius denied parole in South Africa in girlfriend's death

By Clyde Hughes

Oscar Pistorius, shown in this file photo at the London 2012 Summer Olympics on August 5, 2012. He was denied parole on Friday in connection with his girlfriend's death. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

March 31 (UPI) -- The South African authorities on Friday denied parole to disgraced paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, who was convicted in 2017 for the shooting death of his girlfriend at his home.

Pistorius, who gained worldwide notoriety for sprinting with blade-like prosthetics, fell from grace in the 2013 death of Reeva Steenkamp in what the paralympic athlete said was an accidental shooting.

Reeva Steencamp

The parole board with South Africa's Department of Correction Services said it found that Pistorius had not finished the minimum detention period to be freed. Steenkamp's parents have opposed Pistorius' attempts at early release.

The department said Pistorius, 36, would not be considered for parole again until August 2024.

"While we welcome today's decision, today is not a cause for celebration," June and Barry Steenkamp said, according to The Guardian. "We miss Reeva terribly and will do so for the rest of our lives. We believe in justice and hope that it continues to prevail."

While Pistorius has continued to maintain that he had mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar at the time of the shooting, her parents have not accepted his explanation and until he does they will always oppose his release.

"Unless he comes clean, they don't feel that he is rehabilitated," the family's attorney Tania Koen said, according to NBC News.

Pistorius, who is serving a 13-year sentence for the shooting, had maintained he should be considered for parole earlier and sued for that right. South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeals ruled in 2021 that Pistorius's sentence should have started in 2014 when he was sentenced to the less serious culpable homicide and not in 2017 when the same court extended his sentence from six to 13 years.

CNN’s Don Lemon has long history of sexist, ‘diva-like behavior’: report

By Ariel Zilber and Natalie O'Neill

April 5, 2023 1:59pm  Updated

NYPost

Embattled CNN host Don Lemon has an appalling history of workplace misogyny that began decades before his sexist on-air comments — including allegedly threatening and demeaning former colleagues such as Soledad O’Brien , Kyra Phillips and Nancy Grace, according to a bombshell report.

Lemon — who sparked outrage in February when he declared that 51-year-old GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley was not “in her prime” — engaged in disrespectful, “diva-like” behavior often directed at his female co-workers, according to a damning expose in Variety published Wednesday.

The “CNN This Morning” co-host, 57, has allegedly called a female producer fat to her face, accused O’Brien of not being black and sent Phillips a menacing text message because he was jealous, according to the report.

“There was a time when it appeared that Black people were most often the subject of his ire. Now, it seems to me that when he says something offensive, there’s almost always a woman on the other side,” Goldie Taylor, a former CNN consultant, told Variety. “I’m never surprised when Don gets in trouble.”

In 2008, while working as co-anchor of CNN’s “Live From,” Lemon was passed over for Phillips to cover the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

CNN's Don Lemon has a history of misogynistic behavior that includes run-ins with past colleagues Soledad O'Brien and Nancy Grace, according to a report.

Enraged, he allegedly vented his jealousy by ripping up pictures and leaving them on Phillips’ desk, two sources who worked at CNN at the time told the outlet.

She later received a threatening text message from Lemon while out with co-workers.

“Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it,” read the message sent to Phillips’ phone from an anonymous number that was later reportedly traced to Lemon.

CNN conducted an investigation into the text, removed Lemon from his co-anchoring duties alongside Phillips and demoted him to weekends, according to Variety.

A spokesperson for Lemon contended that he never sent the text.

“Don says the incident never occurred and that he was never notified of any investigation,” the rep told The Post. “CNN cannot corroborate the alleged events from 15 years ago.”

Around the same time, Lemon allegedly mocked former CNN and Headline News anchor Nancy Grace on the air by mimicking her, stunning fellow colleagues, according to Variety.

Grace thinks he’s “an ass” who was generally “rude, dismissive and really unfamiliar with the [news] content being discussed,” a person close to Grace said.

Lemon soon earned a reputation for mistreating women in the newsroom, sources said.

“That was the beginning of when you knew that Don was kind of volatile and didn’t say good things about women,” said one person who reportedly witnessed Lemon mocking Grace.

When O’Brien landed the coveted gig of hosting CNN’s high profile 2008 docuseries “Black in America,” Lemon allegedly humiliated her because he had sour grapes, according to the report.

During an editorial call with roughly 30 staffers, Lemon suggested O’Brien — who is white and Afro-Cuban — isn’t actually black, two witnesses told Variety.

“Don has long had a habit of saying idiotic and inaccurate things, so it sounds pretty on brand for him,” said O’Brien, who wasn’t present during the phone call.

A CNN spokesperson told The Post, “Don denies making any related remark in a derogatory way.”

“Don, Soledad, and others, have in the past correctly referred to her Afro-Cuban heritage as it is a unique part of her personal story,” the rep added.

In 2008, Lemon reportedly told staffers that he doubted Soledad O’Brien was really black.

Getty Images

Lemon was also known around the company for flouting the rules, according to the report.

Just a year after joining CNN in 2006, the then-41-year-old Lemon started dating a 22-year-old junior staffer despite the disparity in age as well as the power dynamic, the report said.

CNN insiders told Variety that Lemon, who reportedly showed up late to the newsroom and skipped editorial meetings, was allowed to skirt the rules because of his close friendship with Turner Broadcasting chairman and CEO Phil Kent.

“As fast as you could make a rule, Don would bend it,” said one senior executive at the time.

Lemon also had the backing of Jeff Zucker, who was hired to run CNN in 2013.

Six months after Zucker’s arrival, Lemon gave a controversial on-air monologue in which he told black people to “pull up your pants.”

Lemon is also alleged to have mocked CNN and Headline News anchor Nancy Grace.

Getty Images

“Walking around with your ass and your underwear showing is not OK,” Lemon said during the broadcast. “In fact, it comes from prison when they take away belts from the prisoner so that they can’t make a weapon.”

Lemon added: “And then it evolved into which role a prisoner would have during male-on-male prison sex.”

Despite his incendiary statements, Lemon kept his job — even as co-workers complained, according to the report.

Goldie Taylor, a former CNN consultant, said she was blacklisted by the network for criticizing Lemon’s comments.

In 2014, Lemon once again drew widespread criticism when he told a Bill Cosby rape accuser that she could have prevented the attack by biting the comedian’s penis.

In September, he sparked more outrage when he used a sexist stereotype on air to explain why political commentator S.E. Cupp had verbally stumbled over a statistic about Republicans.

“Is it fair to say this because I’m not a mommy, but is it mommy brain?” he asked Cupp, prompting an awkward silence.

“No, Don, I just forgot what I was going to say,” she replied.

In February, Lemon triggered an uproar when he claimed Haley was not “in her prime” due to her age, and was ordered to undergo sensitivity training.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” actress Michelle Yeoh, 60, later appeared to take a jab at Lemon during her Oscars acceptance speech — urging ladies to not let “anyone tell you you are ever past your prime.”

On Wednesday, former CNN contributor Mary Katharine Ham pointed out that Zucker kept Lemon at CNN despite multiple screw-ups — while the women who had problems with him are no longer at the station.

“SO STRANGE, it’s all the women in this story who took issue w Lemon during the Zucker era who are no longer at CNN, not Lemon. Especially weird considering how many very righteous #metoo segments we all did. Huh,” she tweeted in reaction to the Variety piece.

Lemon also drew sharp criticism for giving advice to Jussie Smollett, the disgraced actor who fabricated claims that he was the victim of a Chicago gang assault by a mob of Trump supporters, while reporting on the sensational case.

“He should have been benched in that instance. No question,” said one long-time colleague.

A CNN spokesperson defended Lemon’s interaction with the star, and called the entire Variety story flawed.

“CNN reviewed the [Smollett] incident in question at the time and found that any interaction was an act of journalism as Don was attempting to prompt a response from Mr. Smollett and book him for his show,” a spokesperson for the network said.

“The story, which is riddled with patently false anecdotes and no concrete evidence, is entirely based on unsourced, unsubstantiated, 15-year-old anonymous gossip,” the spokesperson said.

“It’s amazing and disappointing that Variety would be so reckless.”

It's not so amazing that CNN would be so reckless!

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