Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel was on a spin bike at a local gym when the news broke that longtime Today show host Matt Lauer had joined a growing list of media celebrities fired for unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct.
A gym buddy, Riegel writes in her latest column, noted at the time that she had spent a long career in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. “If I came forward with my stories none of them would be left standing,” the friend told her.
“We all have our stories,” Riegel writes. “Like my friend, I could sink careers and ruin reputations. So could just about every woman I know. Sexual harassment, in one form or another, is a deep-seated problem with which more women have had to deal with than our society has been willing to admit—at least until now.”
The recent rash of allegations and firings of high profile men suggests that most perpetrators of sexual harassment are in the nation’s media centers—New York, Hollywood and Washington D.C. But even the Deep South has its problems.
“I do know that growing up in the Deep South, as recently as the 1980s, girls were still taught to tolerate such behavior, at least to an extent. A Steel Magnolias kinda thing,” Riegel says. “The polite way to deflect unwanted advances, inappropriate behavior and suggestive, lewd remarks was with a mixture of propriety, poise and pluck because, well, that’s just how some men are—or so the thinking went. Not nice men, mind you, but some.”
Riegel says she doesn’t feel sorry for the men who are being held accountable now. Still, there’s something about the recent backlash that’s bothersome to Riegel.
“It seems as this witch hunt of celebrity sexual harassment offenders has become the ALS ice bucket challenge of late 2017—everybody’s doing it and talking about it on social media. In a few weeks, when the media tires of the story and we have more pressing matters to deal with—a nuclear war with North Korea?—the zeitgeist will have moved on, while the problem, like the inevitable incidents of fraternity hazing, will continue,” Riegel says. “Which is one of the reasons I have a problem with this whole trend. It’s a fad that appears to be spiraling out of control—et tu Garrison Keillor? The unfortunate result will more than likely be a backlash against the victims, which will only diminish the real seriousness of the issue at hand.”
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