Former MSNBC contributor and ex co-host of Showtime’s The Circus, Mark Halperin fell from grace after credible allegations of sexual harassment by over one dozen women. (Mother Jones)
One afternoon last week, disgraced political pundit Mark Halperin and three women settled onto stools in the basement of a small theater in San Francisco to talk about the injustices of cancel culture and the indignity of being shamed, shunned, and ignored. Only me and two other journalists showed up. The rest of the audience consisted of employees from the public relations firm that organized the event, Upright Position Communications.
Halperin has been “canceled” since October 2017, when 14 women accused the Game Change coauthor of unwanted sexual advances and groping during and after his tenure as the political director of ABC News from 1997 to 2007. He lost a book deal; he lost a miniseries deal based on the book deal; he lost a Showtime hosting gig and his job as an MSNBC senior political analyst.
Getting canceled has come to mean anything from getting dragged on Twitter to losing your career and livelihood. Perhaps the only thing more common than getting canceled (see: Scarlett Johansson, Kanye West, the year 2020 and “love“) are the concerned op-eds, essays, news articles, podcasts, videos, and social media posts asking whether cancel culture has gone too far. It’s an opinion so mainstream Taylor Swift has written songs about it. Onstage last week, Halperin joined the chorus—at one point suggesting that the canceled are treated less fairly than murderers.
“It’s akin to being a refugee, or being in some other situation where you’re constantly under pressure and can’t stop to, unless you’re a super strong person, you can’t stop to try to rebuild that kind of confidence and self-worth that is required,” he said. After he likened life after being canceled to post-traumatic stress disorder, I asked him whether he thought of his own experience as a trauma. He said no. Throughout the event, Halperin avoided discussing the specifics of his situation but said he was describing the experiences of unnamed canceled people he has spoken with in the last two years, people “who have committed a wide range of acts—some nothing wrong at all.” Those people, Halperin said, are unable to get what he considers to be a “basic right—not just justice for them, but justice for society.”
The women’s harassment allegations against Halperin include non-consensual kissing and groping, unwanted propositions for sex, and rubbing his erections against their bodies.
AAN Staff
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