Does Lisa Bloom Deserve Redemption?

[DonViejo]

She was half of a mother-daughter team that rewrote the rules of going after sexual harassers. Then she got caught on the wrong side of the biggest sexual harassment story in a generation. What was she thinking?

By LIZA MUNDY May/June 2018

You remember Bill O’Reilly. Even now that so much time—what, months? A year!—has passed. Tall man. Loud. He reigned as one of the most powerful men in cable television, until all of a sudden, he did not, thanks in part to attorney Lisa Bloom.

Bloom, just now, is recounting the details of what she calls Operation O’Reilly. An affable Los Angeleno, she is sitting over coffee in the lounge of Manhattan’s NYLO hotel on a Thursday in March, wearing a zip-up oatmeal-colored sweater, plaid trousers and reading glasses dangling from a chain. In the late months of 2016, Bloom remembers, the New York Times was preparing a bombshell story revealing that O’Reilly and his employer, Fox News, had paid some $13 million in confidential settlements to five women accusing him of sexual harassment. The paper had tracked down Wendy Walsh, an occasional guest on “The O’Reilly Factor” whose lucrative offer to become a contributor had vanished, she said, after she rebuffed an O’Reilly advance. Walsh was free to talk, but she was worried and wanted to know what Bloom thought. Should she go on the record? “Who do you think you’re talking to, Wendy?” Bloom said.

Who Walsh was talking to, of course, was one of the most media-savvy practitioners of women’s-rights law, a two-fisted celebrity feminist who learned her trade at the knee of her mother, the pugnacious Gloria Allred. The names Allred and Bloom are synonymous with aggressive legal strategy on behalf of wronged women, and relentless public-relations campaigns against rich and influential men. During a 42-year career, Allred—the more famous of the two—has pioneered scorched-earth tactics that Bloom, who has her own firm, has largely adopted. Over the years, mother and daughter have represented, to take a few examples, female Marines whose male colleagues posted nude photos of them (Allred); a woman who claimed an Uber driver groped and verbally abused her (Bloom); women who accuse President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct (both); and women who say they were drugged and sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby, who was recently found guilty of doing just that to one of his dozens of accusers (again, both Allred and Bloom).

When the Times story about O’Reilly was published, Bloom turned to a stock tactic: holding a news conference to “publicly shame” O’Reilly, whom Walsh could not sue because the statute of limitations had expired. Then, Bloom moved to stock tactic No. 2: “Keep the story alive in the news,” as she puts it. In the Times article, a 21st Century Fox executive had pointed out that none of the victims had called Fox’s sexual harassment hotline. Bloom found the number, had Walsh phone in her complaint, videotaped it, posted it on social media and tweeted at Fox, taunting the network to investigate. The spectacle brought forth another accuser, and Bloom ran the same drill. Advertisers were fleeing “The O’Reilly Factor”; protesters ringed the Fox building; and, lo and behold, Bill O’Reilly was fired.

The ouster of cable TV’s most puissant strongman was transformational: Beyond one man and his accusers, it signaled to harassment victims that it was possible to speak out and be believed. This tectonic shift would help usher in the #MeToo movement, one of the most remarkable and, so far, unstoppable civil rights campaigns of the modern era, as woman after woman has come forward—and men have suffered consequences.

more
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/28/lisa-bloom-harvey-weinstein-gloria-allred-me-too-218011

[WhiteTara]

1. To seek redemption, you need to have done something wrong.

tell me her sin again?

[mythology]

2. Perhaps you missed this in the article

Those who cheered the momentum of #MeToo struggled to understand Bloom’s role. Further reporting in the Times and the New Yorker established that she wasn’t just being used to whitewash Weinstein’s reputation. She had been working—hard—to deny allegations, pressure reporters and, according to some accounts, discredit victims, using her trademark hardball tactics in the service of precisely the kind of person she would normally be trying to take down.

[WhiteTara]

4. Oh, right. Weinstein.

I forgot that. Yes, that was stupid on her part, but he's probably a very persuasive and charming too.

[DesertRat]

3. Kathy Griffin says she had a bad experience with Lisa Bloom

It's long, involved story if anyone's interested in the details the link is below. Here are a couple of Kathy's quotes:

There’s right and wrong, and I think it’s time to expose some stuff. I hired her [Bloom] for a couple of days during my Trump mask scandal. It didn’t go well.

“If you want my Lisa Bloom statement, anybody, OK, here it is. Yes, I got Bloomed. Yes, I did not have a good experience with her. I felt that she and her husband exacerbated my personal situation. That horrible press conference was a disaster.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-got-bloomed-kathy-griffin-dishes-on-her-feud-with-fame-whore-lawyer-lisa-bloomand-bloom-returns-fire