ALSO SEE: 'Today' Show Host Matt Lauer
Fired Over 'Inappropriate Sexual Behavior'

Ann Curry Is Every Woman Cast Aside for a 'Shitty Media Man'

By Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast

29 November 17

Karma’s a bitch, at least according to fans reveling in the firing of Matt Lauer. As such, Curry has become the avatar for women whose careers suffered under the rule of bad men.

nn Curry must be celebrating.

At least that’s the fan fiction that lit up social media Wednesday morning following the news that Matt Lauer had been fired by NBC for inappropriate sexual behavior.

He’s merely the newest addition to the perv lineup of famous men and respected newscasters to lose their jobs because of reports of systemic and predatory sexual misconduct. He’s also not the first Today show host to lose their job in a shocking, sudden manner—though the previous ousting was hardly because of misconduct in any way, but, at least according to reports, because of Lauer’s reign of power, and arguably terror, at NBC.

It’s upsetting to even revisit the tape of Curry tearfully saying goodbye to her time at Today, a departure that she clearly didn’t want, as her brittle, quivering emotions made abundantly clear. Her on-air body language sitting next to Lauer seemed to confirm reports at the time that alleged Lauer had orchestrated her exodus, for reasons that purportedly included the fact that he just didn’t like her.

Some of the behind-the-scenes drama was detailed in Brian Stelter’s Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV, including the designation of the plan to oust Curry as “Operation Bambi,” because firing the kind, veteran host after just six months would be tantamount to “killing Bambi.”

Lauer would need to sign off the decision, according to Stelter’s reporting, and getting rid of Curry to make him more comfortable was ruled a priority in order to convince him to renew his contract. He reportedly told an assistant, “I can’t believe I am sitting next to this woman.”

But it’s Curry’s reported reaction to these machinations that is the most heartbreaking, made even more upsetting because of how the optics play against our current conversation about misogynistic and repercussion-free male culture, especially now with Lauer’s firing. “Curry felt that the boys’ club atmosphere behind the scenes at Today undermined her from the start, and she told friends that her final months were a form of professional torture.”

After her tearful goodbye, top Today show brass reportedly toasted her departure: “Operation Bambi was complete.”

Six years later, at least judging by reactions on Twitter, Lauer’s on the receiving end of the karma he deserves, and Bambi is dancing on his grave. According to the fan fiction reveling in Lauer’s firing, positing it as some sort of justice for Curry, the former Today show host is upgrading her orange juice to a mimosa Wednesday morning, making a victorious whooping noise, coyly sipping tea, or contemplating Ghandi quotes: “they always fall.”

It’s funny to imagine, and powerful to remember her in this moment. But rather than jokingly imagine what Ann Curry might be doing right now, maybe it’s more prudent to remember what she isn’t doing.

She isn’t the host of a top-rated morning news program that she had devoted the bulk of her career contributing to and turning into a respected source of news. She isn’t a leading television personality, with a career commensurate with her talent. She is, however, someone whose livelihood was essentially ruined in a power play by one of the many men who have since been revealed to be despicable.

Curry now joins the likes of Annabella Sciorra, Rose McGowan, and comedians Dina Min Goodman and Julia Wolov as the famous faces and bold-faced names who represent the countless women whose careers and livelihoods have been jeopardized, limited, and, in some cases, ruined because of the actions and the power of influential, predatory men.

Of course, there is no insinuation that Curry is a victim of sexual assault or harassment by Lauer. But that actually underlines how widespread and destructive the behavior of these men can be.

Power doesn’t have to be wielded sexually in order for it to be predatory or inappropriate, and if Curry, a celebrity face of the NBC News brand, could be offered as a collateral damage to the whims of those power players, imagine how many other subordinates and colleagues who might have their careers stilted for similar reasons.

That said, it is still important to think about the hidden ramifications when reports about the likes of Lauer, Weinstein, Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Brett Ratner, Kevin Spacey, Roy Price, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and too many more to name come to light. The reason the women who have come forward publicly with their stories are considered to be so brave is because they are in many ways avatars for the uncountable women whose lives were affected either directly or indirectly by the actions of these men.

There are the women who were denied job opportunities for not succumbing to advances. There are the creators whose work never saw the light of day because they didn’t play these men’s games. There are the people who left the industry disgusted and wounded by how they were treated, whose potential output and excellence was cut short. There are ambitious ones who refused to work with powerful people whom they had heard “the stories” about, or whose upward mobility was limited because they were resistant or fearful of working too close to them.

There are subordinates too afraid to speak up, talented people jaded by what they witnessed, and contributions wasted because they got caught up in the bullshit. Then there are people like Curry, who were collateral damage to the kind of lionized hubris that these men's unchecked power and behavior granted them permission to rule with.

All of this is why there was such an immediate, disgusted reaction when CNN reporter Dylan Byers lamented in a tweet the “incredible drain of talent from media/entertainment” because all these men rocked by sexual harassment scandals are losing their jobs. It’s an opinion that erases the women who were forced out of their jobs or who left their industries because of those men, and an incorrect outlook on a future which could finally see the rise of all the diverse talent that had been silenced.

Who knows, for example, how many people in the NBC newsroom have had their careers affected and their potential stifled because of Lauer’s actions?

Two words keep surfacing in tandem amid all these revelations: “reckoning” and “reconciling.”

As Guthrie herself said after she read the news about Lauer, “I do know that this reckoning, that so many organizations have been going through, is important, it’s long overdue, and it must result in workplaces where all women—all people—feel safe and respected.”

And then there’s the reconciling. "How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they have behaved badly and I don't know the answer to that," she said.

It’s certainly easy and important to have compassion for that tension. But as we keep hearing those sentiments, worded so eloquently by the likes of Guthrie and Gayle King and Sarah Silverman in reaction to their now-disgraced friends, it’s important to remember that many victims and countless unnamed women don’t have celebrity allies on TV speaking on their behalf.

That’s why in this instance we’re compelled to turn to Ann Curry, the famous example we can all cite, and all demand a little justice for. So enjoy that mimosa—but more importantly, take pride in this reckoning.

Media Erase NATO Role in Bringing Slave Markets to Libya

By Ben Norton, FAIR

29 November 17

wenty-first century slave markets. Human beings sold for a few hundred dollars. Massive protests throughout the world.

The American and British media have awakened to the grim reality in Libya, where African refugees are for sale in open-air slave markets. Yet a crucial detail in this scandal has been downplayed or even ignored in many corporate media reports: the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in bringing slavery to the North African nation.

In March 2011, NATO launched a war in Libya expressly aimed at toppling the government of longtime leader Muammar Qadhafi. The US and its allies flew some 26,000 sorties over Libya and launched hundreds of cruise missiles, destroying the government’s ability to resist rebel forces.

US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with their European counterparts, insisted the military intervention was being carried out for humanitarian reasons. But political scientist Micah Zenko (Foreign Policy, 3/22/16) used NATO’s own materials to show how “the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start.”

NATO supported an array of rebel groups fighting on the ground in Libya, many of which were dominated by Islamist extremists and harbored violently racist views. Militants in the NATO-backed rebel stronghold of Misrata even referred to themselves in 2011 as “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin”—an eerie foreshadowing of the horrors that were to come.

The war ended in October 2011. US and European aircraft attacked Qadhafi’s convoy, and he was brutally murdered by extremist rebels—sodomized with a bayonet. Secretary Clinton, who played a decisive role in the war, declared live on CBS News (10/20/11), “We came, we saw, he died!” The Libyan government dissolved soon after.

In the six years since, Libya has been roiled by chaos and bloodshed. Multiple would-be governments are competing for control of the oil-rich country, and in some areas there is still no functioning central authority. Many thousands of people have died, although the true numbers are impossible to verify. Millions of Libyans have been displaced—a staggering number, nearly one-third of the population, had fled to neighboring Tunisia by 2014.

Corporate media, however, have largely forgotten about the key role NATO played in destroying Libya’s government, destabilizing the country and empowering human traffickers.

Moreover, even the few news reports that do acknowledge NATO’s complicity in the chaos in Libya do not go a step further and detail the well-documented, violent racism of the NATO-backed Libyan rebels who ushered in slavery after ethnically cleansing and committing brutal crimes against black Libyans.

O NATO, Where Art Thou?

CNN (11/14/17) published an explosive story in mid-November that offered a firsthand look at the slave trade in Libya. The media network obtained terrifying video that shows young African refugees being auctioned, “big strong boys for farm work,” sold for as little as $400.

The flashy CNN multimedia report included bonuses galore: two videos, two animated gifs, two photos and a chart. But something was missing: The 1,000-word story made no mention of NATO, or the 2011 war that destroyed Libya’s government, or Muammar Qadhafi, or any kind of historical and political context whatsoever.

Despite these huge flaws, the CNN report was widely celebrated, and made an impact in a corporate media apparatus that otherwise cares little about North Africa. A flurry of media reports followed. These stories overwhelmingly spoke of slavery in Libya as an apolitical and timeless human rights issue, not as a political problem rooted in very recent history.

In subsequent stories, when Libyan and United Nations officials announced they would launch an investigation into the slave auctions, CNN (11/17/17, 11/20/17) again failed to mention the 2011 war, let alone NATO’s role in it.

One CNN report (11/21/17) on a UN Security Council meeting noted, “Ambassadors from Senegal to Sweden also blamed trafficking’s root causes: unstable countries, poverty, profits from slave trading and lack of legal enforcement.” But it failed to explain why Libya is unstable.

Another 1,200-word CNN follow-up article (11/23/17) was just as obfuscatory. It was only in the 35th paragraph of this 36-graf story that a Human Rights Watch researcher noted, “Libyan interim authorities have been dragging their feet on virtually all investigations they supposedly started, yet never concluded, since the 2011 uprising.” NATO’s leadership in this 2011 uprising was, however, ignored.

An Agence France-Presse news wire that was published by Voice of America (11/17/17) and other websites similarly failed to provide any historical context for the political situation in Libya. “Testimony collected by AFP in recent years has revealed a litany of rights abuses at the hands of gang leaders, human traffickers and the Libyan security forces,” the article said, but it did not recount anything that happened before 2017.