The Reputations and Reckonings of #MeToo

and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia made to travel.

Me too, time's up, the reckoning.

We're coming up on a year since the first explosive revelations of powerful men abusing and harassing women started to produce real consequences for those men.

And the revelations don't stop.

Recent days have seen more high-profile ousters like that of CBS executive Leslie Moonves.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is facing disturbing allegations that could derail his nomination, a situation that echoes the controversial process that landed Clarence Thomas on the court.

Kavanaugh's fate and the re-emergence of several men who had previously fallen from grace have us wondering: what's changed since the start of the Me Too movement?

And what hasn't?

This is Radio Atlantic.

Hi, Hi, I'm Matt Thompson, executive editor of The Atlantic.

And for one of the rare confluences in studio, with me is my esteemed co-host.

I almost filled in the word like co-host.

Alex Wagner.

Alex.

Welcome to DC.

It's great to be here.

I was, Matt.

I was here last week.

I'm not going to lie.

You weren't here.

That's true.

Because they kept us apart.

That's true.

And now the universe feels right.

Now the universe feels right.

Now dogs and cats may lay down as friends.

We are in a post-racial society

and universal basic income for all.

Indeed.

Indeed.

We are joined by our two inestimable colleagues, Megan Garber, staff writer for The Atlantic.

Megan, hello.

Hello.

Hi, Megan.

It's so great to be with you guys.

You have been writing all the things.

I'm so

brilliant analyses of what is happening to our culture in this moment or what is not happening enough in our culture.

That's right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And Jillian White, senior editor at the I.

Yo, yo, yo.

Hello.

Hi.

So, the latest high-profile man to fall from grace after horrendous accusations of sexual harassment and intimidation is Leslie Moonves, the now former head of CBS.

Meanwhile, confirmation of President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is no longer a sure bet now that Dr.

Christine Blasey Fort has accused him of having sexually sexually assaulted her when they were both high school students.

But while some men are falling from grace, others are trying very, very hard to bounce back.

Two public radio personalities who lost their jobs after charges of gross sexual misbehavior, Gian Gameshi and John Hockenberry, have just published essays in prominent media outlets.

There is a lot of stuff that I could throw into this litany, but all of this just makes it a really interesting moment to ask one question.

How has the Me Too movement changed us?

And how hasn't it?

I guess that's two questions.

Can we actually start with Brett Kavanaugh?

Yeah, sure.

Even though the final verdict on the change is not yet ours to make.

Yes.

We're in the middle of it.

Yes.

The middle of it, I think, is a really

interesting moment to assess, to stop and assess this question.

It is so striking how much the question around his confirmation brings back, of course, the Clarence Thomas hearings.

The way that his nomination plays out feels like it will absolutely be a referendum on how much things have really changed since Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

Alex, what do you think?

I mean,

I want to believe in that old adage, the moral arc of the universe is long, but bends towards justice.

And I do believe, you know, we have seen change, and we can talk about it

in a minute.

especially in the industry that I work in, the television and media industry, it's been, you know, seismic.

But has it actually, I mean, are we talking about this sort of systemic change that we need?

I'm sure we'll have lots to debate.

As far as it concerns Kavanaugh,

I like to believe that this moment is different.

If only because,

and maybe it's hat-tipping, but the fact that our president, who is normally

unleashed, full of piss and vinegar, not one to self-censor, feels or has been told enough that he needs to at least appear like it matters what the victim is saying.

And Republicans generally at least need to tip their hats to the idea that the accuser's narrative may be genuine.

That feels like a little bit of progress, right?

I mean, how substantive those feelings are and how much they're going to follow through is very much yet to be decided.

Today, it seems like they're not going to launch an FBI investigation, which is, I think, really where the rubber rubber hits the road.

Like, do you believe it enough to have

our law enforcement check it out?

And apparently, they don't.

And it's complicated by the fierceness of this partisan, this political moment, which is the midterms and the fact that the Republicans might not be able to put another one of their justices up for a nomination if they don't keep the higher chamber.

I guess my question is: and I'll ask my fellow ladies on this podcast: do we feel

like if Anita Hill had come forward in the 90s in 1991 and said, I

a similar story, both vague and specific on details, something that happened a long time ago, do we feel like the reaction would have been different

in 1991 than it is today?

Meaning, like it had been a long time ago.

Yeah, I kind of, my sense is that I feel like,

and this is why I judge that we've made progress, or my conclusion is I think we've made progress.

I feel like the conversation then was so sort of degraded around sexual violence that she wouldn't have been taken seriously at all.

Yeah, exactly.

I think it would have been so much worse.

I think it never would have even made it possibly to the hearing.

I think we wouldn't have seen.

her or heard from her unless she went to a media outlet and kind of really pushed the press to cover it.

But I don't think we would have heard from her as much as we did.

So I think in that way, I think superficially at least, things have changed as far as what's actually happening underneath and whether or not it's an actual reckoning and there's actual change and this is going to manifest into something.

I'm a little bit more dubious about that.

One of the interesting players in all of this is Diane Feinstein, right?

She's of a different generation.

She lives in this moment, but she's from a different generation.

And there's a lot of questioning about why she didn't, it seems like, ring the alarm bell more forcefully when she first found out about this.

Well, one of the ironies with her is that she, I believe, came to Congress specifically as part of the Year of the Woman that came about because people were so angry and offended

at what they saw that Anita Hill had undergone.

So she is so connected to this in so many different ways.

I mean, I think the reporting I've heard says that, you know, she really ultimately respected Ford's anonymity, and that's ultimately what she wanted to protect.

So there's some, you know, there's a dignity in that where, you know, she wanted to do what the woman wanted and what the woman requested.

And to me, that's, that's its own, you know, sign of progress.

Yeah.

I guess that it confuses me, though, on some level.

Like, was there not a way to more aggressively pursue this while trying to help this woman maintain her anonymity?

I mean, yes, definitely.

And I, one of the,

to be clear, yeah.

I mean, one of the, one of the pieces of reporting that actually struck me in that was that, and this is something that the New Yorker reported based on the deliberations that her office had undergone.

And they had said that she purposely didn't want to make the questioning that the Senate was going to do of Kavanaugh expressly political, that that was part of the logic where you just, you don't bring things like this into those questioning, that it's questionings, that it's not going to be a winning move for Democrats, et cetera, which I really was bothered by that.

And again, it's, you know, who knows whether it's fully, fully true.

But if it is true, that's the idea that you can separate politics from everything else.

Considering all that's at stake.

And I think even like saying that this is political and not moral.

Exactly.

Right.

Especially for the Supreme Court, which is there are no, there are actually no constitutional strictures on who can be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Or they're a few.

I mean, they're not.

They do not depend on credentials or professional qualifications.

It's just your compass, your internal compass.

And the idea that somehow this isn't on the merit, like this wouldn't somehow be on the traditional merits it's like well the merit is like are you an upstanding good moral person with with with your

with pointing you know morally north and

I think this absolutely falls into the category so much this is part of the thing that so deeply confuses me when everyone is saying this happened so long ago he was a kid he was a teenager The entire point of these hearings, the entire point of this process is to deduce what someone's moral character is because they will have such a huge say on the moral arc of the country and its laws.

So yeah, it's kind of relevant whether or not you potentially tried to sexually assault somebody when you were basically an adult.

Like, I don't see how that's irrelevant.

Yeah.

I think

one of the most interesting things about this moment and about asking these questions right now in the middle of the questions about Brett Kavanaugh is that actually it matters what happens on the other end of this.

If Brett Kavanaugh cannot, if his confirmation does not go through, then that sets a norm in one direction.

It sort of shifts us away from this behavior or even the accusation of this type of behavior being an acceptable thing to have out in the ether about a Supreme Court nominee.

If, on the other hand, his confirmation goes through and the questions about whether or not these allegations are true aren't given a more thorough hearing,

then that sets the norm in a very different direction about

what we as a society are willing to tolerate.

Well, I mean, and Megan, you've written about this.

This is like becomes a litmus test for male behavior, right?

And so the caution that we see in some corners is, well, if they get him on this, then we're all screwed, right?

Like this whole idea of

if X, then all of us Y.

That's a terrible mathematic metaphor.

Anyway, and it's compounded by the fact that, you know, the party pushing for his confirmation is led by Donald Trump, who has over 20 allegations of sexual misconduct himself.

So what are the implications?

So, Megan, talk a little bit about how, I mean, the Kavanaugh piece is disturbing for men generally because both of the haziness and specificity of the allegations, the timeframe involved, and the like, the rough, quote-unquote, rough housing category.

Horseplay.

Horseplay.

The horseplay argument, right?

Yeah.

I mean, that's the thing.

It's, it's so much of the conversation about this has seemed so normalizing, you know, of what Kavanaugh is alleged to have done.

You know, that this is just, you know, like Jillian said, this is, you know, kids being kids, boys being boys.

Like, you know, that's just what happens.

And there's been so much treatment, you know, among Kavanaugh's supporters, but I think also kind of in journalism in general and in media coverage, of, you know, treating this as just, you know, it's a sad fact of the world, but it just happens.

You know, this is how boys learn to be men.

And women on the other side or people on the other end of the boys' sexual desires, you know, are the ones who kind of bear the brunt of it all.

And they have to suffer through what these boys go through to become men and to learn the ways of the world.

And it is profoundly depressing the way that we've been talking about this, I I think, because it really does, yeah, it treats these things as normal instead of morally intolerable.

Well, we're sorry.

It's worth

before we proceed, because we plunged right into this, actually saying

what she has alleged.

And I'm going to quote here from your story, Megan.

Quote, Ford alleges that Kavanaugh, when he was a 17-year-old in the early 1980s, sexually assaulted her.

She was 15 at the time.

She alleges further, the details of this allegation, as they will be with any such claim of sexual violence, are crucial, that Kavanaugh, stumbling drunk at a party, corralled Ford into a bedroom with a friend of his and then pinned her down on a bed, that he groped her, grinding his body against hers, that he tried to remove her clothes and then the bathing suit she wore underneath them, that he put his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.

Just felt that it was worth actually.

Yeah, no, and I think to your point, we're always concerned about the

message this sends young men, right?

Like if you, if

we are supposed to be supportive of their of their room spring uh years, you know, like we, this is part of like men coming of age, but never, Jillian, is the conversation around what message does this send young women.

You know, I remember this moment in high school, growing up in DC.

I was with my best friend, very platonic relationship, and we were parked in Rock Creek Park as a sunset, I don't know, to just like talk or listen to music, very innocent behavior, I swear to God.

And this cop came up to us and he said, you're not supposed to be in the park at this hour.

And I said, why?

We're just, we're just friends.

We're just talking.

And he said, if he raped you right now, no one would hear you scream.

Wow.

And I remember looking at him thinking like, this is wrong.

Like, you shouldn't be, first of all, you shouldn't be.

This scenario is like entirely terrifying and not something that you should be like, like accosting a young woman with.

But also, you're shaming, you're like immediately placing the blame for this on me.

What about the dude that's driving the car that brought us out of here to begin with?

You know, like, but that is the narrative, that is the way we think of this sort of dynamic when we talk about sexual aggression, especially in the teen years.

Like, we've got to think about the young men and like what

there, it's, the frame of reference is always them rather than us.

Yeah.

And even something that has come out of this, I think one of the conversations that's been developing has been really useful in that It's brought up the conversation that goes back to kind of the Brock Turner thing of you're going to ruin this for him.

Right.

You're going to ruin this talented ingenue swimmer.

You're going to ruin a potential Supreme Court placement for Brett Kavanaugh.

And in that is absolutely no regard for the fact that these two, well, one allegedly and the other, you know, convicted, have ruined or potentially ruined the lives.

of women.

No one cares about that, but they're still trying to protect the futures or the past or whatever it is for these men.

I wanted to spend some time in this conversation talking about some of the women who have been involved in these circumstances and

how we are treating them.

Megan, you made the point

about Dianne Feinstein and her desire in part to potentially her desire to protect Ford's anonymity before

Ford herself decided to come forward with these accusations.

What else are you seeing around how women are being treated in this moment?

And have we,

how has Me Too changed us and not changed us on that front?

It's such a good question.

I'm sorry to say

things are not great, I think, on that score.

I think,

you know, we mentioned the essays that the,

I'll, I'll point to the one that the radio host John Hawkinberry wrote, which was one of these recent documents of, you know, alleged reckoning with his own implication in Me Too.

And one of the things that was striking about that essay, it was about 7,000, I believe, words long.

It had a lot to say about John Hockenberry.

It had very little to say about the women on the other end.

And, I mean, to the extent that he actually kind of did a revisionist treatment of what they had alleged, and Harper's, in the treatment of that essay, put as a footnote, as a literal footnote to the story, the women say something else in tiny font.

And that was basically it.

And it was just, I mean, it was a sadly perfect metaphor for, I think, a lot of what's been happening because very often the women are not named.

The women are not really even looked at, you know, with any substantial treatment.

It really is about, you know, how does this affect the men?

What about the men?

What is owed to the men?

What should the men have, you know, as part of their career?

Or how do they embark on a spiritual journey that will right them, right?

Like they're going to go and build houses for the homeless and that's going to be their project instead of calling the women that they can at least recall harassing or otherwise, you know, displaying inappropriate behavior towards and apologizing, right?

You never actually hear.

Caitlin Flanagan has an amazing piece in The Atlantic, and she talks about someone who tried to rape her and the fact that he came to her twice and apologized to her, and that that actually meant something to her.

But in this, in this moment, with all of the men who've been failed by various allegations, you literally never hear about any one of them.

You didn't hear about Leslie Moonvez calling Ileana Douglas.

You don't hear about Matt Lauer calling the 20-some-year-old assistant.

You know, none of them, as much as they wear the

hair sweater,

at least in terms of rhetoric, you never get a sense that they're actually trying to right the wrongs.

Yeah.

It made me think about, I mean, two references I'll just throw in the conversation.

First, Hannah Gatsby's

immortal

tirade soliloquy at the end of Nanette, her comedy special that we have mentioned a few times on this show.

But I'm not going to spoil too much of her point, but just the part of it in which she talks about reputation, reputation, the reputations of these men and the concern that that reputation

plays.

There's no

question that someone like Leslie Moonves

is going to be fine.

Well, he's made quite a bit of money.

Yes.

I mean, financial, there is this sort of reality here when you topple kings of the industry.

They tend to be, they're going to be fine because they have a lot of money in the bank.

Right.

But someone like Monica Lewinsky, for example,

wrote in

her widely circulated searching Vanity Fair essay from a few years ago, wrote about

not having those resources to fall back on, about struggling at times because

her options for how to make a living were quite limited by the experience that she went through.

And she

in many, many ways was probably one of the most significant victims of that entire affair.

One other name that came to mind was Harriet Myers, oddly enough.

In the early 2000s, some of you may remember that President George W.

Bush had nominated his then-White House counsel, Harriet Myers, to

fill the Supreme Court slot that had been vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor.

And she was raked over the coals in the media.

Her intellect was called into question.

Of course, her looks became a matter of...

I mean, what else is new, brother?

But

it struck me that I don't even know what happened to Harriet Myers.

You know, I think it's findable.

She's Googleable.

So one can know what's happened to Harriet Myers.

It is knowable.

Yes.

But

who

was concerned about her reputation at that moment?

She was in the same position that Brett Kavanaugh is in now, in the middle of a conference, in the middle of having just been nominated to the Supreme Court and having her nomination called into question, her credentials certainly called into question.

What ultimately sunk her nomination was the fact that she was not satisfactory to conservatives, primarily.

They felt that Bush had not done his due diligence, but there were all these other things in the water.

When you go back and review the tape, actually, Dianne Feinstein is in this story, too.

She talked about how sexist it felt, the treatment that was being applied to Harriet Myers in that moment.

And it just, it's striking how little we have thought about Harriet Myers' reputation

since that process.

I feel like it's striking how little we think about the reputation of women in the same way as the reputation of men.

When we talk about a man's reputation, we mean it in this aggrandizing, look at what he's built, look at how great he is, that type of way.

Most of the time when you're talking about a woman's reputation, you are talking in negative terms.

It's related to...

She's got a reputation.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It is absurd.

So when you ask about what happened to Myers and what we were thinking about her reputation, it's that she doesn't have one.

It's all about the same.

It's as if women don't get reputation.

You either have a bad reputation or you don't have a reputation.

Right, but you don't get a illustrious professional reputation that could be damaged because

you don't get the Teflon coating of a reputation the way that men do.

In this instance, right, Brett Kavanaugh, the president, has gone out of his way to say he has an illustrious career.

He ascended the ladder.

He has this reputation as if that's a rejoinder for, but he might have tried to rape someone.

There is no world in which I can imagine any woman being able to push back on claims of sexual assault by virtue of her quote-unquote reputation.

Yeah.

And also reputation has been such an important and intimate part of the Me Too stories.

I mean, you look at Louis C.K., for example, and in my mind, what he did was that was wrong was not just the offenses and violations in the moment that he is now admitted to, but it was also afterwards, once the rumors started getting out that he had been doing this, effectively just called the women liars and said that didn't happen.

And of course, that's going to affect negatively their reputations and that's going to affect their careers.

And that kind of thing is such a common element of these stories.

And we don't talk about it that much because it's not as easy to prove as other things.

Not that even those other things are easy to prove.

But, you know, it's even murkier.

And yet it's such an important part of this.

Yeah.

It is almost as though

reputation for...

A man is almost always an asset and for a woman is always almost always a liability.

Yep.

Yep.

We're like, yes,

correct.

You should hear about our reputations.

You all have

to do that.

But it is a, I think it's a good idea.

I would totally draw down a mortgage on any of y'all's reputation.

Well, maybe finally women can have some good reputations.

You know what I mean?

So one of the other contextual details here is that the Senate Judiciary Committee

the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee is entirely composed of men.

There has already been some speculation about how the Judiciary Committee would or will in subsequent hearings grapple with this optic.

It was floated in a few stories in the recent days that they would engage female staffers, perhaps, to ask questions.

The whole idea is just...

It's a sad state of affairs that the composition of the Republican Party is on track to get whiter and more male in the coming years than it already is now.

And right now, there's not a single woman sitting on the Judiciary Committee that is a Republican.

How do we possibly avoid talking about the optic?

Because we do.

Like this has not been front and center in all of the coverage of

Kavanaugh, of Lefer Kavanaugh that I have seen.

How do we possibly avoid talking about the fact that Roe versus Wade is the single biggest aspect of the litmus test.

It is on the record as being the thing that the federal society is most concerned with in getting Brett Gavinaugh onto that list.

That

if this nominee, if the next Supreme Court justice

is expected to do one thing

for conservatives, it is to help with the mission to overturn Roe.

How do we possibly avoid talking about the fact

how it seems that a committee of all men

is going to be leading,

could be leading the questioning process?

Not only that, I mean, like the idea that it would be men dismantling women's access to reproductive care is one piece of it, but the idea that you might have making that decision to men who have been accused of sexual indiscretion makes it even tougher, I think, to swallow, right?

Yeah.

Just of all the handmaid's taily kind of things

in the water here, that confluence of facts feels the most freaking gilead to me.

Right.

Like sexually maybe promiscuous and then deciding that women are going to have less access to health care.

Yeah.

Layers and layers of irony there.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I don't have much of a question of that other than that.

How can this be?

But it is.

But in fact, it is.

But that is why you're seeing a real, I mean, as much as the Republicans say, we want this woman, she's always referred to as this woman, this woman to come forward, the worst thing in the world for them would be the optics of Christine Blasey Ford sitting there getting grilled by 11 nearly octogenarian white men.

Have you ever heard an even remotely entertainable defense of that optic?

No, no, and the Republicans know it.

I mean, there's not, it's not a coincidence.

The year of the woman happened after Anita Hill, right?

Like that was a bad moment for gender and the, and the, and the GOP.

And they, they have a midterm around the corner.

So nobody wants to add more fuel to an already blazing fire of women trying to right

generations, generations decades of wrongs

megan one of the pieces that you um wrote for us recently was about the notion of the the phantom reckoning um the zombie-like quality of these men who have fallen from grace and are returning what do you think a reckoning

would actually encompass, a real reckoning?

Two things.

I would say.

First of all, real soul searching on the part of the people who have been implicated in me too.

Not performative, you know, apology making and charity doing and all this kind of stuff.

That's fine.

But actual soul searching and empathy on the part of these men, trying to, and I say men, it's not all men, but yeah, mostly men.

You know, really trying to think about what was it like for the people on the other end of their actions, you know, in the moment, but also over time.

How did they affect those people's minds and sense of self and careers and all of that?

And to really try to put themselves in those other people's shoes.

I mean, it's sort of kindergarten morality, right?

Like it's so basic and yet it doesn't seem to have been done, you know, for the most part among these people.

So I would say that, first of all, the very sort of intimate,

you know, reckoning that I would hope would be done.

But then on the other side, I think, you know, as a culture, we really have to think about what are the conditions that got us here in the first place.

You know, what it's not just about, you know, a guy at a corporation doing things.

This is about the culture that we have built together.

And I really would love for us to think, you know, really systemically, how do we make this world better for the people that exist within it?

And I don't think we've seen really either dimension of those coming to full fruition.

Jillian, one of the aspects of this.

of the Phantom Reckoning,

as Megan eloquently put it, is

that all of the figures, for the most part, most of the figures that we are hearing about and discussing are prominent individuals, are people who occupy positions of power, which, you know,

one would expect.

But certainly the behavior that's been surfaced has implications for our interpersonal interactions and what we should, what we owe to one another and what sort of ethic we are developing around our behavior as a society.

What would you hope to excavate from

the Phantom Reckoning, from Le Fer Cavanaugh?

And it's...

You just want to use the French.

I always say Le Fer, whatever.

Lefe, whoever it is.

It's a tick.

I should get rid of it.

But what would you hope to excavate from all of this for

ordinary folks?

I mean,

I have said this a million times, but I think that it is no coincidence that part of the way Me Too started was talking about abuses that had happened essentially in the workplace or between people who had the power to give jobs give money give all of these other things and I think the way that this could resonate and yet still has not resonated for ordinary people would be an actual look at all of the ways that sexual harassment sexual assault gender inequality affects people who are subject to people who are in power, who are abusing them in various ways, and created an actual system of change, an actual system of reporting, an actual system of accountability.

None of that has happened.

You've had people who have been high profile enough that they have gotten in trouble, that they have gotten fired, that they have gotten fined.

There has not been any type of wholesale change or reckoning with the way companies deal with superiors who sexually assault or sexually harass the people underneath them.

And I think until that happens, the way that this resonates for ordinary folks in a real way is pretty minimal because everyone can sit there, or as many people as they want can sit there and say, this has happened to me too.

But the fact of the matter is also a lot of the people who have come out and started the whole Me Too movement, or not started, but kind of started this recent wave, Hollywood actresses, for instance, they have a lot more power and a lot more cushion to be able to say, this has happened to me, and we're going to band together and we're going to talk about it.

You know,

immigrants who are just trying to get by on a a job don't necessarily have that ability.

People who are working

hourly shifts don't really have the ability to lose that job because somebody's doing something to them.

And nothing in that system has actually changed, and nothing in HR has actually changed.

And I think until we fix those reporting mechanisms and fix those methods of holding people accountable, the trickle down to ordinary folk who are dealing with this on a daily basis and are still getting hurt on a daily basis is going to be minimal.

It feels worth remembering that the originator of the Me Too hashtag was an ordinary person.

Exactly.

Without a huge broadcast platform, Toronto Burke.

Toronto Burke.

Well, but

I interviewed Toronto Burke a couple months ago, and she said, and I think this is worth keeping in mind,

you can't pack everything into Me Too.

Economic injustice is its own issue.

Sexual violence is its own issue.

And she thinks, you know, if we're going to solve this problem, it has to be a focus on this specific problem.

I am going to diverge with my brilliant colleagues a little bit on this because as someone who worked at NBC News and currently is employed by CBS News, I think it does matter when you have major figureheads like Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose and Leslie Moonves go down.

I think it sends a message to other men in the company.

I think the fact that the CBS board is reconstituting itself with more women so that maybe next time the board won't okay a package that allows someone to leave with a $120 million parachute, no matter what it is that he has done wrong.

I mean,

that document never should have been signed.

We should never have had a board structure that allowed everyone to be in someone's pocket in the way that Leslie Moonvez had that board.

Those systems are changing.

I think that if we're going to make any headway on sexual violence in the workplace, sexual predation, sexual harassment, you need more women everywhere at every level.

I want it, I would like to see the day, and I do think that this is possible, where not having gender equity or better gender representation will be like not being quite fluent in English.

You can't do business at this level in, let's say, media without women at the table.

And I think we're getting, I mean, I do think that, I mean, having worked in these organizations, these men were like gods.

The idea that they would have been dismissed overnight on the air was unfathomable last year.

And to see that all happen from the front row, I got to tell you, it feels pretty,

it feels seismic.

I mean, and I do think corporate changes are meaningful.

Will they solve all the problems?

No.

But like, it was a real, I think,

statement to say, we're kicking off older white men from this board and we're bringing in women.

And that's the kind of concrete change that I think could lead to an actual reckoning.

So I actually agree with that, that like, these changes at the top are meaningful because at the very least, it scares the hell out of people, right?

It scares people into acting right, or it scares people into moving toward acting right.

And it scares certainly companies and boards into kind of cracking down and thinking, okay, how do we prevent this in the future?

My fear, and

I hope I'm so wrong about this, my fear is that before this trickles all the way down and out of like the CBSs and out of like all these big publications and out of all of these big shiny places, the movement could die down.

And then what is the incentive for, you know,

a guy who is the foreman at

some shop who has been harassing women for the past 20 years?

And like, I mean, he's not part of anything big and fancy, and no one has come to him and told him that he has to, you know, change his behavior.

And the women or the men that he's harassing.

don't feel like they have any power.

Like, my concern is that this whole movement, that all of the momentum that we have, if that slows down before it hits that level, all those people who were kind of most vulnerable in the first place will never really reap the benefits.

But I also agree that's hard to shove this all into one thing.

I mean, we are talking about generations, lifetimes of this type of behavior never really being called into account.

You know, I don't think it can all get solved at once.

I just worry that the very last people to benefit are going to be the people who need it the most.

I think about that a lot, actually when it comes to journalism and what journalists owe, you know, to the very people that you're talking about.

This week, for example, there was a big strike at McDonald's.

A bunch of McDonald's employees walked out and

that story was sort of talked about, but not really, because

in something that's telling of the moment, everyone was talking about Kavanaugh, right?

And so, and I do worry sometimes about journalism's systemic ability to, you know, talk about those stories, you know, and keep paying attention to, you know, the stories that involve people who are, you know, to most viewers, most readers, et cetera, are going to be anonymous, and yet their stories are no less important.

And in fact, in some ways, more important.

They really need to be told.

And I don't know how journalism fixes that problem, but I think it is a big one.

We need to start chasing all the shiny, powerful objects.

Yeah.

I mean, that's it.

Yeah.

There is no better way

for me to engage the nuance and complexity of what you just shared than to let our listeners sit with that for a minute.

So

stick around.

We'll be right back with the closing segment, Keepers.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Well, with the name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills.

Try it at progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law, not available in all states.

And we are back with the question that I ask our guests, my co-hosts, and our listeners every week.

What is it that you have heard, read, watched, listened to, seen, experienced recently that you do not want to forget?

First, we will hear a keeper from our listener, Peter.

My keeper is matchbox cars.

I was at lunch Friday at a local diner, the kind of place where it seems like everything comes with pancakes on the side.

And I looked over at a a table next to me, and there was a father and son.

The dad was early 30s.

The boy looked to be about four or five.

And in an age when everybody expects to see the kid with a screen in his hands and no interaction between he and dad, I noticed that the table was filled with five or six matchbox cars, and they were very engaged in driving them around the tabletop.

Great to see and something not to be forgotten.

Thanks.

Oh, man.

I love that one.

Right on Matchbox.

This podcast is also supported by Matchbox, right?

You're one of our advertisers.

That's a great story.

I love that story, Peter.

Chili and White.

And you're coming to me.

What is your keeper?

So this is going to seem very basic.

But my keeper this week is hiking.

I mean,

that's not basic.

That's delightful.

Clear your mind.

Exactly.

So, as someone who spends virtually all of my time in front of my computer, attached to my phone, watching the news, it's pretty hard to disconnect and leave any of those behind.

But I spent last weekend in California, Ojai specifically.

There are turtles there.

Yeah.

I mean, the whole thing is just what's even happening.

It's just so beautiful.

The air is so fresh.

You just put your phone away.

Don't get snookered in.

Don't get snookered in by that state, Jillian.

Your wildfires of drought.

I know.

And it's like

fall into the ocean and exactly.

It's going to be the island of California that

turtles go.

I just went on this lovely hike for maybe about an hour, hour and a half during it.

Realized that my partner is a little more afraid of hikes than I am, which was also hilarious.

Learned things about each other.

But it was just an hour and a half of just talking with my friends in fresh air and stopping to marvel at nature, which is something that, you know, you you can't exactly do in Rock Creek Park in D.C.

It's not quite the same.

So I just thought to myself, this is something I need to do a little bit more.

Came back to my phone and my computer a bit more refreshed.

So that is my keeper.

It's a good one.

That's wonderful.

Beautiful.

Jealous.

Megan Garver.

Sure.

Well, I'm going to change mine actually to piggyback onto that one because I too love hiking so much.

And I would say, if at all possible, if you have access to a dog.

Hi, your keeper is a dog.

My keeper, it's specifically my dog, who is objectively the best.

But I would just say, I kind of dog?

He is a mix.

He's a rescue, so we don't exactly know, but he's pit and maybe like a German short-haired pointer.

He's, yeah, he's very cute.

He's got spots.

But I would say, in all seriousness, I've been seeking out sources of joy and delight and calmness and refuge, et cetera.

And nature definitely gives me that, but my dog also gives me that.

And even if you are are not an owner of a dog, you can go to a dog park.

And it's only like moderately weird if you're there without a dog.

I think it's, I think everyone would understand.

So I would say hang out with a dog, cuddle with a dog, play with a dog.

I mean, cats are best.

Cats are fine.

Also, dogs are better.

It's fine.

Oh, no.

It's starting also.

We didn't begin this talking about cats laying down with dogs.

Alex, Lagno, what you want to keep.

I mean, I'm not going to change my keeper.

I just want to say I've talked about my cat Rooster, who's my therapy cat, like many times on this program, and he's pretty amazing.

Anyway, my keeper, I think, apropos for this week's theme of women versus men is killing Eve.

I'm so late to the party.

Oh, God.

And I think Sandra O's a total badass.

And as an Asian-American lady, I'm like, go ascend every, like, climb every mountain, Sandra O.

But I'm also particularly smitten with the character of villanelle because we rarely see women who are bosses and mean and kind of bitchy and also heroes.

So

I love the show and it's awesome and everyone should watch it.

It's intriguing.

It'll grab you by the neck like from episode one.

And what better time to support state-supported media like the BBC than right now?

Wonderful.

Killing Eve and Sandra O.

Mykeeper

is a tweet.

I'm sorry.

It's a tweet from my friend Linda Holmes, who I've shouted out on this podcast before, but is also relevant to this conversation.

Linda tweets.

I am 100% in for a discussion of the moral and ethical and cultural questions about how much people should be cast out for their transgressions.

The logical starting point should be the Ava DuVernay documentary 13th and other scholarship on mass incarceration.

What a turn of a point from Linda.

I thought that was quite a way to expand the field of thinking that we bring into a conversation like this.

And I very much appreciate Linda for it and for much

else.

All that is to say thank you.

Thank you once again.

Thank you guys for another insightful, illuminating Radio Atlantic.

Once again, that'll do it for this week's Radio Atlantic.

This episode was produced and edited by Kevin Townsend.

Catherine Wells is the Atlantic's executive producer for podcasting.

Thanks to my esteemed co-host, Alex Wagner, and to our inestimable guests, Jillian White and Megan Garber.

Special thanks to our colleague, Kim Lau.

Our theme music is the Battle Hymn of the Republic, as immortalized by the one and only John Batiste.

What is your keeper?

Call us at 202-266-7600 and leave us a voicemail with your contact information.

Check us out at theatlantic.com slash radio.

Make sure to catch the show notes in the episode description.

And if you like what you're hearing, rate and review us in Apple Podcasts and subscribe in your preferred podcast app.

But most importantly, thank you for listening.

May you reserve some empathy for those all around you, far from the headlines, who may need it most.

We'll see you next week.