Kevin Johnson Blames Teachers Union For Sexual Abuse And Harassment Allegations

It's not KJ's fault that he has multiple allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment lodged against him - it's his "enemies" in the teachers union:

Mr. Johnson suggested that the attacks were being orchestrated by political opponents, starting with the teachers’ unions. Before he took office, a nonprofit organization he created wrestled control of the Sacramento High School and turned it into a charter school, ousting the unionized teaching staff.

“I ended up turning the high school I went to into a charter high school,” he said in the interview before his announcement. “And as a result, I probably made a lot of enemies in the teachers’ union. California and Sacramento are ground zero when it comes to one of the strongest special interest groups in the country. I did what I thought was right for kids. I created problems and enemies back then, and they have been enemies for life.”

The mayor said he realized this issue would come up when he considered running for office in 2008, eight years after he retired from professional basketball. “It was very clear to me that when I had to make a decision on whether I was going to run for mayor or not, that the allegations would resurface,” he said. “I didn’t have any inkling that they would dog me throughout my political career, but that’s the reality of it.”

Perhaps he thought he could survive the allegations the way Bill Clinton survived his.

Maybe he would have, but for the video tape and the age of the girl at the time of the alleged abuse.

But bet that the allegations made against him at St. Hope, his charter school, along with the sexual harassment complaint filed against him by a Sacramento city employee and some unseemly behavior with another woman who worked for the National Conference of Black Mayors, didn't help matters.

I read somewhere last night that the national media were starting to dig into the story that Dave McKenna of Deadspin had done so much to move forward.

If that's the case, we may yet get more to this story that not only puts an end to Johnson's political career, but finishes him off Cosby-style too.

Same could happen with his wife, Michelle Rhee, since she is alleged to have helped him cover up sexual misconduct allegations at his charter school.

Kevin Johnson, Dogged By Sex Abuse Claim, Will Not Seek Re-Election

And he's claiming it's teachers union who have dredged up the 20 year old sex abuse claim:

SACRAMENTO — It should have been a high point in a career of high points: the premiere of a documentary chronicling how Kevin Johnson, the former N.B.A. All Star who as mayor helped rejuvenate this once ailing capital city, kept the Sacramento Kings from leaving for Seattle with a gleaming new basketball arena.

But hours before the premiere last week, the ESPN network, which produced the documentary, “Down in the Valley,” announced it would delay indefinitely the national release of the film. The network cited the re-emergence of an issue that has shadowed Mr. Johnson since his first campaign in 2008: A claim by a 16-year-old girl that he sexually abused her 20 years ago while he played for the Phoenix Suns.

...

Mr. Johnson has repeatedly denied the accusation and made no mention of it in his statement. In an interview on Friday, he asserted that the case was being dredged up by his opponents — including the teachers’ union, with which he has battled over the years — to hurt him politically.

“There are no truth to the allegations,” he said. “If you go back 20 years ago, they were investigated. Law enforcement obviously didn’t feel there was merit there. For me I’ve just tried to move on and go forward.”

The Phoenix Police Department investigated the claim but closed the case without filing charges. Mr. Johnson entered a draft settlement which included a $230,000 payment to his accuser. The mayor declined to comment when asked why, if the charges were unfounded, he had agreed to make a payout.

What is different this time is a videotape of a police interview in which the girl, speaking in a calm voice, describes in disconcerting detail what she said Mr. Johnson did to her, including fondling and undressing her. The release of the video, posted on Deadspin, a website devoted to sports news, put a young and vulnerable voice to claims that until now had been only a detached account found in court filings.

“People have so desperately wanted to believe in him that they’ve given him a pass on a lot of things, and I think that has worked out generally to the city’s advantage,” Steve Hansen, a Democratic City Council member and critic of Mr. Johnson’s, said before the announcement. “The wall of not knowing how to deal with his problems, but choosing to ignore the failures in hopes of the promise, has begun to collapse. Once you saw the video and read the story, it was hard to pretend it never happened.”

Johnson claims the Phoenix allegation was investigated and dispensed with 20 years ago.

But what about the abuse allegations from his St Hope charter school?

Or the sexual harassment suit filed against him by a city employee?

And how about that blaming the teachers union for dragging his name through the mud with these allegations?

Here's a guy so reflexive in his teacher-bashing that he just doesn't understand that, post-Cosby, he just can't dismiss these allegations with that shit-eating grin of his and a little help from his wife, Michelle Rhee (who allegedly helped with the St. Hope cover-up.)

Not with that video of the alleged victim:

Although Mr. Johnson argued last week that the accusation had not hurt him with voters, officials in both parties said the video would have made it hard to win a third term. After ESPN announced it was shelving the documentary, the city's Democratic leader, Ms. Asbury urged Mr. Johnson not to seek re-election

The video came at a time of heightened scrutiny of the kind of behavior that once might have been disregarded, as other figures in American public life have been discredited by accusations of sexual misconduct.

 

Here's hoping the St. Hope allegations get some more scrutiny because it's pretty clear that the Obama administration, along with his wife Rhee, helped Johnson cover them up and make them go away.

And Rhee should get some scrutiny for helping KJ cover his crimes up.

When Rhee fired teachers in D.C., she defended the firings by claiming some were sexual predators.

That turned out to be a lie from Ms. Rhee - or projection, since she appears to be married to a predator herself.

Rhee and Johnson have both fallen from grace, but given their respective crimes, they haven't fallen far enough in my estimation.

Is Bill Cosby Still On The StudentsFirst Board? (UPDATED - 10:40 AM)

StudentsFirst seems to have scrubbed their website a bit.

When I put in a Google search for Bill Cosby + Board of Directors + StudentsFirst, here's what comes up:

StudentsFirst Board of Directors | StudentsFirst.org

https://www.studentsfirst.org/board-directors

StudentsFirst

One of America's most beloved comedians of all time, Bill Cosby has captivated generations of fans with his comedy routines, iconic albums and best-selling ...

And yet, when you click on that link, you don't find the page with the Board of Directors listed or the page with Cosby listed as sitting on the board.

Instead, you just get the StudentsFirst.Org page.

I looked around the StudentsFirst website, including under the "Who We Are" tab.

The Board of Directors page seems to have disappeared from the site.

Now I see plenty of stories about Cosby joining StudentsFirst back in September 2012.

I even see a video of him talking about StudentsFirst and education reform.

But I don't see any stories about him stepping down.

Strange that StudentsFirst.org has lots of information about "Meeting Their Team" - including Michelle Rhee - and learning about their "Mission," but alas, no information about their board.

You'd think they want to publicize information about their board, especially since there are some real luminaries sitting on it, including Roland Martin, Joel Klein, Connie Chung and Bill Cosby.

It's as if something happened recently that made them decide to scrub their Board of Directors page, but rather than own up to it, they did it in the dark and hoped nobody noticed.

Now it's possible I've gotten this all wrong here and I'm just missing the information about the Board of Directors at StudentsFirst and all the wonderful members on it.

It's possible that I'm just missing the information about Cosby and his commitment to education reform and children on the Studentsfirst website.

Or it's possible that Cosby stepped down and I'm missing the notice for that on the World Wide Web.

Though I don't think this is the case - Valerie Strauss has a Washington Post piece dated August 13, 2014 about Michelle Rhee stepping down from StudentsFirst and joining Miracle Gro and Cosby is said to still be a member of the StudentsFirst board as of that date.

So it seems likely Cosby was still a member of the StudentsFirst Board of Directors when the sexual assault allegations against Cosby that have long been in the public domain went viral the past few weeks.

It seems that StudentsFirst wanted to distance themselves from the sexual assault (including statutory rape) allegations against Cosby as quickly and as quietly as they could.

If they did want to distance themselves from Cosby and the growing scandal around him, it's a shame they didn't go public and explain EXACTLY why they wanted to do that.

Berklee College of Music did just that with a scholarship Cosby sponsored at the school.

Alas, it seems the "students first" people at StudentsFirst haven't take that same route.

That's a shame - this could have been a teachable moment for us all, as the "Blame Teachers First" crowd turned on one of their own who looks to be a serial sexual assaulter.

You can bet if this was a teacher alleged to have committed these egregious acts, the StudentsFirst crowd wouldn't have gone quietly.

But they seem to have taken the coward's route out instead and scrubbed him away in the middle of the night.

If I've gotten any of this wrong, I will publicly apologize to StudentsFirst and Michelle Rhee herself  for vilifying them for secretly scrubbing their ties away to a man alleged to have committed at least 18 acts of sexual assault and more coming out every day.

Just let me know, StudentsFirst folks.

Is Bill Cosby still a member of your board or not?

UPDATED - 10:40 AM: Patrick Sullivan left the following comment on the post:

 Looks like they took their board page down. Google has a cached copy as of 10/31 that includes Cosby. This link should bring it up:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mWnrmFEAN-QJ:https://www.studentsfirst.org/board-directors

It seems Michelle Rhee and StudentsFirst did not have the guts to go public with their cutting Cosby loose.

Too bad, but not unexpected.

After all, Rhee helped sexual misconduct allegations against her husband, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, go away.

It seems Ms. Rhee and her fellow ed deformers are only looking for accountability against people who are accused of sexual misconduct when they're teachers.

13 Rape Allegations (Including One Statutory) Against Bill Cosby, But Whoopi Goldberg Still Defends Him

From the Daily News:

A shrill, backstage brawl at “The View” Wednesday left co-host Rosie Perez in tears while panelists Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell battled over how to cover the latest allegations against Bill Cosby and the racially charged upheaval in Ferguson, Mo., sources said.

O’Donnell believed the show — now overseen by ABC News — needed to delve deeper into both controversial subjects, while Goldberg wanted to steer clear of the topics altogether.

Ultimately, both news stories were discussed at length on the air by the panel.

“There’s terrible frustration and there are problems,” a source close to the show told the Daily News. “Whoopi didn’t want to talk about Cosby and Ferguson, Rosie (O’Donnell) did — how could you not? These are topics that are uncomfortable for everyone, but it’s ‘The View’ and it’s their job to talk about topics that might make some people tense.”

Whoopi was happy to bash "bad teachers" not once but twice over the summer, claiming teacher tenure protects them.

Yet she defends her pal Cosby - now with 13 public rape allegations against him including one with an underage girl of 15 - by trying to ensure "The View" steers clear of the topic.

This comes after she defended him earlier in the week and attacked one of his accusers, saying she had "lots of questions" for her.

Apparently Whoopi doesn't want to address any of those questions publicly on "The View" anymore.

Another teacher-basher exposed as a hypocrite and a phony.

Hey, Whoopi - if you have such concern for the kids, why not let "The View" cover the Cosby story, including the allegation that your friend Bill Cosby repeatedly had sex with an underage girl?

Good God - the show is supposed to cover the news.

The public implosion of the iconic Bill Cosby into sexual predator and statutory rapist certainly is news.

And like I said in an earlier post - you can bet if this was a teacher accused of these crimes, you'd be one of the first throwing stones.

Awaiting The Campbell Brown Denouncement Of Bill Cosby

Here's where education reformer Campbell Brown denounced the teachers unions for defending 97 teachers or school employees accused of sexual misconduct over a five year period in NYC.

97 teachers and staff accused (not convicted, btw - just accused) is slightly more than 0.001% of the teaching and school staff overall.

Still, Brown says this is a major problem and the system needs major reforms.

She has gone on TV and written about this repeatedly to educate the public about the need for reform.

Meanwhile fellow education reformer Bill Cosby has been accused of raping 16 women over the course of his career.

Every day now a new allegation against Cosby surfaces - there were two just yesterday (including a TMZ story in which an actress alleges Cosby assaulted her in the dressing room of the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.)

One commenter at Perdido Street School writes:

Where is Campbell Brown when you need her? Oh, she is only interested in alleged teacher predators.

Indeed, here's the silence we have from Brown on Cosby.

Another teacher-basher, Whoopi Goldberg, actually defended Cosby earlier this week, saying that she has many questions for one of Cosby's accusers.

I wonder what teacher bashers like Brown or Goldberg would be saying were there a teacher out there who had 16 allegations of sexual assault lodged against him, with a new one surfacing every day?

I bet silence (in Brown's case) and defense (in Goldberg's case) would not be the response.

Funny how that goes.

Brown's been silent on her another education reformer's alleged sexual misconduct.

Her husband, neo-con Dan Senor, sits on the board of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst even though Rhee is alleged to have helped cover up her husband, Kevin Johnson's, sexual misconduct with employees of his charter school.

The hypocrisy of education reformers like Campbell Brown and teacher bashers like Whoopi Goldberg knows no bounds.

It seems any teacher accused of anything is guilty automatically and ought to be fired.

But fellow education reformers and celebrities like Cosby and KJ - they're entitled to a stonewall defense.

Bill Cosby And Kevin Johnson - Brothers In Education Reform AND Sexual Predation

When Diane Ravitch blogged in 2012 that Bill Cosby was joining Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst board, I left the following comment on her post, comparing Cosby to Rhee's husband, Kevin Johnson:

reality-based educator

September 17, 2012 at 6:13 pm

Actually Bill Cosby was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a 32 year old woman in 2004. She tried to bring a criminal case against him in 2005, but police declined to file charges. She brought civil charges against him. Her attorneys found 10 other women who also claimed to have been drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby in the past. Nine were listed anonymously in the court documents, one made the accusations publicly. The court documents are here:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/bill-cosbys-prior-bad-acts

The LA Times covered the story, including the settlement Cosby reached with the woman, here:

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/nov/09/news/wk-cosby9

Cosby settled the 2005 case for an undisclosed amount, the alleged victim of the assault signed a non-disclosure agreement, so no other details of the case emerged. But People magazine covered the aftermath and interviewed three other women who claimed they had been drugged by Cosby and assaulted. People also reported that Cosby had paid off several women who had made these accusations in the past against Cosby.

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20059561,00.html

I have two things to say about this:

First, Cosby fits right in with Kevin Johnson, Rhee’s husband, who himself has at least two accusations of sexual misconduct lodged against him (one by a minor.)

Second, how dare anybody with so many accusations leveled against him in the past lecture people about bad behavior, as Cosby has been known to do?

I stand by that comment tonight- both the Cosby part and the KJ part.

Cosby still fits in at StudentsFirst, which was founded by a woman who made sexual misconduct allegations against her boyfriend (now husband) go away.

Cosby lost his Netflix special, NBC canceled a sitcom they were developing with him and TVLand has stopped running The Cosby Show reruns.

While Cosby is free from the criminal justice system since all of the reported acts happened long ago, his career and reputation are in tatters.

His fellow ed deformer Kevin Johnson, however, remains free and clear tonight, still in power as mayor of Sacramento, even though he's got at least two accusations against him for sexual misconduct.

Isn't it time somebody revisits the Michelle Rhee/Kevin Johnson sexual misconduct case and cover-up again?

Anthony Weiner Is Wrong - Everything HAS Changed

At yesterday's press conference to address the surfacing of new photos of his penis sent to a female he met online after he resigned from Congress, Anthony Weiner stated that not much has changed since Monday:

"I'm surprised more things hadn't come out sooner," Weiner said Tuesday. "Things aren't that much different than they were yesterday."

"I said there were more things out there," he continued. "We went through this process and worked through some of these challenges and we put it behind us."

Weiner said he was not dropping out of the race for City Hall yesterday and he reiterated that statement today:

A relaxed Anthony Weiner strolled out of his Gramercy Park apartment Wednesday and said that voters are more interested in jobs and affordable housing than the new pics of his private parts.

A day after his second sexting scandal in two years hit the headlines, Weiner said he planned to spend the day catching up on phone calls, working on his new policy book and brushing up on the issues for an evening candidates forum.

When asked about how the latest revelations are affecting him, he said, “I'm fine. I've got an amazing wife and child upstairs. I've got a comfortable life.”

He said that those calling for him to quit the mayoral race never wanted him in.

“A lot of the same people who weren't crazy about me running in the first place now want me to get out, including my opponents,” the former Democratic congressman said.

Despite the latest cringe-fest, Weiner said he expects the “conversation” among voters to stay on moving the city forward.

“This is about the city and about the aspirations of people to make things better,” he said.

As I suspected, Weiner's too arrogant and delusional to do anything other than try and hang on in this race, but he is wrong if he thinks that "Things aren't that much different than they were yesterday."

 

For one thing, the tone and tenor of the press coverage has changed.

 

Where once much of the press were enabling his campaign with fluff pieces about his family life (the People magazine article from last summer, the NY Times piece that unofficially kicked off his campaign) and how well he was being received on the campaign trail by potential voters, his press coverage has now turned decidedly negative.

 

The NY Times and the NY Daily News editorial boards called for Weiner to drop out of the race today.  

 

The NY Post, which had been supportive of his anti-union policy initiatives, didn't quite call for his dropping out but called him a "weasel" and suggested he doesn't have the character to be mayor.

 

And then there are the columnists and commentators in the newspapers and on the political sites saying things like this kind of thing from Michelle Cottle at the Daily Beast:

Anthony is assuring us that all of this is old news. That he’d already told us there were still pictures out there. That, really, as he stressed at yesterday evening’s press conference on the revelations, this doesn’t change much of anything. 

But perhaps recognizing that some people might feel like they had heard this song and dance before, this time Weiner added a fresh wrinkle. When his original sexting scandal broke, the lovely Huma promptly went underground, refusing to stand by her husband’s side during the ritual public mea culpa. But with this new installment, Weinergate 2.0 if you will, Abedin not only stood next to Weiner at the press conference, she took her turn lecturing us all that this is a private matter. Anthony has made some “horrible mistakes,” she allowed. “But I do very strongly believe that this is between us and our marriage.”

How loyal. How poignant. Somewhere in the distance, I swear I heard Hillary Clinton’s heart break for her longtime friend and surrogate daughter.

Alas, in this case, Abedin is so very wrong. This is not just about her and Anthony and their relationship. He wants a life in politics. Wants it so very, very badly. And yet, even after he was driven from Congress, even after he went into therapy, even after he and Abedin began peddling the narrative of their Long Road Back, even after he had started plotting his rehabilitation tour, the man could not keep his dick in his pants and out of cyberspace. We are not talking here about a one-time screw up or even a series of affairs. Nope. This is a kink that Weiner has indulged since before his marriage and even after it vaporized his congressional career and turned him into a national laughingstock—a kink that, by its very definition, leaves an X-rated, irrefutable, and more than slightly icky e-trail.

This is the definition of an ungovernable impulse, my friends, and, as such, it is very much the business of the good people of New York. Because, you know what? In all likelihood, Weiner is going to do this again. No matter how earnest and impassioned his apologies to us and to his wife, and no matter how very sorry he may believe himself to be, the guy is going to wake up one fine morning, look down in awe and wonder at his junk, and think, I just gotta share this with someone new!

If he’s at home with Huma and little Jordan in their Park Avenue South apartment, no biggie. But if he goes off on a sexting spree while kicking it in Gracie Mansion, just think of the potential for blackmail and general civic dysfunction. (If I were a political foe—or, say, someone with a big-ticket city contract on the line—I’d be sprinkling Twitter with honeypot traps left and right.) And please tell me that there’s not anyone left out there who still believes that putting a sexually predatory man in high elective office is going to serve as a deterrent.

None of which is to say that New Yorkers shouldn’t vote for Weiner if they decide they’re willing to overlook his particular predilection. But both he and Abedin should spare us their it’s-a-private-matter piety. With his persistent perviness, Weiner has put his dick squarely on the ballot. Now a city of 8 million will have its say. Must be quite a thrill for a guy with Weiner’s exhibitionist tendencies.

Weiner can try and convince himself that nothing has changed now that his post-resignation dalliances as "Carlos Danger" have surfaced in the news, along with new photos of his penis, but he is going to have a harder time convincing the rest of us.

You can be sure that the press will be digging for more dalliances and photos, particularly because Weiner has denied some of the story about his online escapades that was told on TheDirty.com but won't say which parts are untrue.

Leaving that sort of uncertainty in the story is just asking for trouble, asking for reporters and bloggers like the guy at TheDirty.com to keep digging for dirt.

You can bet that more will surface before all is said and done, that the press is going to feed off Weiner's wounded, skinny-ass carcass, that he will remain the focus of the race and not for good reasons.

It is true that Weiner got a good reception yesterday at the Gay Men's Health Crisis Forum after he gave his second mea culpa press conference, with audience members applauding his energy and gestures throughout.

But let's see what a few days of devastating coverage in the papers does to that kind of reception on the trail, not to mention to his poll numbers.

People are often willing to forgive politicians for their mistakes once - David Vitter and Mark Sanford are good examples of that impulse on the voters' part - but third chances are harder to come by. 

And as Michelle Cottle wrote in that Daily Beast piece I quoted from above, if anybody votes for Anthony Weiner for mayor, they have to be willing to give him fourth, fifth, sixth and perhaps infinite chances, because Weiner is a compulsive sex addict and you can be sure he isn't going to stop his online adventures now.

Not if he can suffer being exposed twice and still walk out of his apartment this morning looking fresh and rested and claiming nothing much has changed since the new penis photos surfaced.

Capitalist Patriarchy In Action

A dentist in Iowa fired his dental assistant of 10 years for being too "irresistible."

This dentist began to sexually harass the assistant a year and a half before he fired her, began to send her sexually explicit text messages six months before the firing, asked her inappropriate questions like how often she experienced orgasms and just generally behaved in a creepy and predatory way.

So long as the dentist's wife was unaware of the harassment, the dentist seemed to have no problem with his behavior or the target of his harassment.

But then, the dentist's wife found a text message:

James Knight, the boss in question, is a dentist based in Fort Hood, Iowa. The employee, Melissa Nelson, is a dental assistant. She is married with one child, and is agreed by all parties to have been an exemplary employee. Indeed, she seems to have tolerated more for the sake of her job than most people have to.

What Nelson is alleged to have done to deserve the sack is to constitute a threat to Knight's marriage. The problems began in the year and a half before the sacking. On several occasions, Knight complained that her clothing was "too tight" and revealing. About six months before the sacking, the texting began. While Nelson was willing to engage in text exchanges, she reproved him when he told her off for wearing a shirt that was too tight, and refused to respond when he asked her how frequently she experienced orgasm.

Some time before the sacking, Knight's wife, who also worked at the dental surgery, discovered one of the text exchanges on his phone. Rather than demanding that he change his behaviour, she insisted that he fire his employee. The couple consulted their pastor, and the pastor agreed: the woman had to go, for the sake of his marriage.

All of this may seem ridiculous. Indeed, it seemed sufficiently ridiculous for Nelson to take her former boss to court with the intention of suing him for sex discrimination. But the all-male panel of seven judges in the Iowa district court, which threw the case out on 21 December, saw nothing amiss. As far as Judge Mansfield was concerned, to allow a case for sex discrimination in this instance would stretch the definition of discrimination.

The judges' rationale was that the employer was motivated by emotions, above all by his commitment to his marriage, and not by gender prejudice. "Ms Nelson was fired not because of her gender but because she was a threat to the marriage of Dr Knight," the judgment says – thus identifying the blameless employee as the problem, rather than the wayward behaviour of Dr Knight.

Okay, this thing is screwed up in so many ways.

First, Dr. Knight is a hypocrite extraordinaire, having harassed the assistant for a year and a half before he discovered the object of his harassment was "endangering his marriage" - and he only discovered that because his wife caught him harassing the assistant, Melissa Nelson.

Second, the wife decides to back up the husband and blame the victim of the harassment instead of the perpetrator of the harassment.

Third, the court backs up the rationale of Dr. Knight and his wife when the assistant decides to sue him.

Yes, it's true that Nelson could have quit the job and it's also true that she engaged in text exchanges with Knight.

Nonetheless, the rationale for the firing and the court's backing of the Knights over Nelson is rather telling of our American value system.

Richard Seymour of The Guardian puts it all in perspective for us:

The assumptions and the nature of the inferences made in the court's judgment all reinforce patriarchy in its dominant "family values" register. It consistently identifies the victim as the problem. It alludes to allegations by Knight's wife that Nelson flirted with her boss. Yet all the specific evidence it describes shows that Nelson put up with, rather than instigated or encouraged, flirting. The judgment notes that Nelson did not tell her boss that she was offended by his texts and that their texting was mutually consensual. Rather than considering the power relationships condensed in such exchanges, the court tacitly identifies the woman as the temptress.

Yet the court's behaviour was not some wild aberration. The legal justification for the decision may be intensely ideological, but so is all legal reasoning. The judges were able to cite ample precedent for their decision. "Several cases," they noted, " … have found that an employer does not engage in unlawful gender discrimination by discharging a female employee who is involved in a consensual relationship that has triggered personal jealousy. This is true even though the relationship and the resulting jealousy presumably would not have existed if the employee had been male."

Despite acknowledging that the situation as such can occur only in a relationship between male employers and female employees, that gender does indeed occupy the key determining place, the court refused to "stretch the definition of discrimination" that far. Essentially, even if an employee is at no fault, as long as she is female this is just one of the burdens she has to bear. The responsibility is on her, not her male employer, to safeguard against eroticism – on pain of being fired.

At each step, Knight, his pastor and, to an extent, his wife – and certainly the Iowa district court – fell back on and fortified a particular knot or intersection of power (business, family and church). This knot might be called capitalist patriarchy. And its full arsenal – political, moral, legal, cultural – has just been placed behind sexist employers.

You have to love a system that blames the victim for the crime

And as usual, it's always the woman's fault.

Her shirt is too tight.

She's too "irresistible."

She didn't tell her boss to stop in strident enough terms.

She didn't quit.

She didn't say no.

She didn't scream "Help!" loud enough.

What a fucked up society we live in.

Patriarchy, capitalism, religion, nationalism - all mechanisms of control used to empower rich white men and oppress everybody else.

NY Times Fails To Mention Rhee/KJ Sex Abuse Scandal In Campbell Brown Story

The NY Times covered Campbell Brown's assault on teachers unions tonight.

They do mention how her husband Dan Senor sits on the board of the New York chapter of Michelle Rhee's group, StudentsFirst.

But they fail to mention how Michelle Rhee has been accused of helping a sex abuse case against her husband, former NBA star and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, go away when he was running a charter school.

Far from being an immaterial part of the story, how does Brown come off declaring the unions protectors of perverts and sex criminals when her husband sits on the board of a group run by a woman who has been accused in a Congressional committee report of helping to cover up alleged sexual misconduct by her then boyfriend and now husband?

And how can the Times cover the story without bringing this up? After all, they covered the allegations against Rhee back on November 20, 2009.

I have said it before, I will say it again - if Campbell Brown wants to go after people who protect sex criminals and perverts, she needs to look no further than Michelle Rhee.

Too bad the corporate media doesn't seem to want to connect the Rhee/Johnson sexual abuse cover-up to the Campbell Brown story.

But that's par for the course.

The media rarely have a problem dragging teachers through the mud but Michelle Rhee seems to consistently get treated with kid gloves over her alleged ethical lapses - from the widespread cheating that took place when she was chancellor of the DCPS to the allegations that she lied about her own record as a teacher to the allegations that she helped KJ cover up his sexual misconduct when he was a charter school head.

The Hypocrisy Of Campbell Brown

Eduwonk interviewed Campbell Brown post-WSJ op-ed.

Brown continues to say over and over that teachers unions are "protecting sexually predatory teachers" in the interview.

She agrees that she should have disclosed that her husband, Dan Senor, former Iraq war spokesman for the Bush administration and current Romney adviser, is a board member of the New York chapter of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, but says that is immaterial to her argument - teachers unions protect sexual predators:

Critics have seized on your husband’s [Dan Senor] affiliation with the New York chapter of Students First to discredit you. In retrospect, should you have disclosed his role as a board member in the op-ed?

Yes. Absolutely. But tell me why this matters? This is just an attempt to distract people from the problem. The teachers union is protecting these teachers and they have to stop.

Neither Brown nor Eduwonk bring up the supreme irony in all of this - Brown's husband Dan sits on the board of a group run by Michelle Rhee who was accused by a federal inspector general of helping to "fix" sexual misconduct allegations made against her then boyfriend and now husband, former NBA star and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, when he was running a Sacramento charter school, including using Americorps funds to cover up Johnson's alleged sexual misconduct.

Here is the Congressional committee report detailing those allegations and the NY Times coverage of that report.

Is the allegation in the Congressional report that Rhee helped cover up her husband's sexual misconduct when he headed a charter school "relevant" to the discussion we're having over whether teachers unions, by insisting upon due process for teachers accused of sexual misconduct, are "protecting" sexual predators?

Absolutely.

If Brown is going to accuse a group of protecting sexual predators and her husband sits on the board of a group run by a woman who has been accused by a Congressional committee of protecting a sexual predator, then that surely is relevant to not only the issue being discussed but the credibility of Brown to discuss it.

But apparently neither Brown nor Eduwonk think this is the case.

The hypocrisy these people in the education reform movement exhibit knows no bounds.

That Campbell Brown was given one of the top slots at Andy Cuomo's education reform committee forum to attack teachers unions for protecting sexual predators when she herself has a connection to a group run by a woman who has been accused of protecting a sexual predator says all you need to know about Andy Cuomo's education reform committee and says all you need to know about Campbell Brown.

Neither Campbell nor the Cuomo education reform committee are looking to protect children or put students first.

They're looking to attack unions and use any method or argument at their disposal to destroy them.

That the argument they've chosen this time happens to apply to one of their own (the infamous Michelle Rhee) doesn't seem to bother them in the least.

Why Does Michelle Rhee Protect Sexual Predators (AKA, Her Husband, Kevin Johnson)?

Seriously.

I assume Campbell Brown will get right on this and write an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal calling for the firing of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.