When #MeToo began taking off, Hollywood launched #TimesUp as a kind of counteprogramming. Oprah gave a speech, celebrities wore black dresses and the whole thing was run by Obama allies.
Then #TimesUp spent years enabling and covering for sexual predators over and over again.
Here’s a brief capsule summary of the Time’s Up greatest hits.
Lisa Borders, the CEO of Time’s Up, resigned from her post this week after following sexual assault allegations against her son, the gender equality group announced.
When a documentary about the women alleging that they had been raped by Russell Simmons, a celebrity hip-hop producer who was also a pal of racist Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, was close to release, Oprah Winfrey pulled out, under pressure from Simmons.
Time’s Up not only joined Oprah in refusing to support the victims, but allegedly started a whispering campaign to sabotage the documentary.
One of the group’s top members, Dr. Esther Choo, has been accused of silencing a woman who’s trying to report sexual harassment—and Time’s Up leadership is standing by Choo.
When Tara Reade accused Joe Biden of sexual assault. Reade had initially reached out to people at Time’s Up only to be told that the organization legally couldn’t support her because Biden was a political candidate.
The whole thing reached a boiling point with Time’s Up’s work with Cuomo which occasioned a public letter from a number of women, some of whom had turned to Time’s Up for support.
We were dismayed yet unsurprised to see TIME’S UP leaders Roberta Kaplan and Tina Tchen named in the 165 page Attorney General’s report investigating the allegations of sexual harassment by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In the detailed report, Kaplan and Tchen, in their roles at TIME’S UP, weaponized their knowledge of survivors experiences to help Governor Cuomo and his office retaliate against at least one of nearly a dozen women who were courageous in speaking up about the myriad of ways he abused his power and violated their bodies in the workplace. Furthermore, we were vexed to see TIME’S UP board member, Hilary Rosen, characterize this breach of trust as ‘a good deed being punished’ and that it’s normal for TIME’S UP to “[do] what they always do, give good advice to politicians to tell the truth and not attack their accusers.”
Some of these women claim that while Time’s Up claimed to provide support to victims, that was also a front.
For those of us who have worked directly with you, we haven’t received the wraparound support that you’ve promised in the press. TIME’S UP leadership has looked the other way while lawyers, funded by the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, mishandled and neglected cases, missed statutes of limitations deadlines denying us our day in court, and even berating and patronizing survivors during meetings while bungling their cases.
In our experiences, it felt as if TIME’S UP preferred to enable the delays in our cases to the point of dangerous escalation to give the organization the opportunity to swoop in at the last minute, offering minimal solutions to be the heroes for press and donors.
That’s legally the most serious accusation which could have actual consequences for the lawyers involved.
Roberta Kaplan has already resigned. I suspect Tina Chen and a bunch of the other Democrat operatives will be pushed into stepping down, though Chen, an Obama crony, has proven to be remarkably shameless.
But I suspect the organization itself, which has outworn its original function as #MeToo counterprogramming by the industry, will just shut down. It serves no function except providing employment to people who will be employed in some other political silo.
The #MeToo movement ran out of steam a while back. Time’s Up was just a helpful tool for killing it. Now its work is done.
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