Campaign Action
House Speaker Paul Ryan said some things about the rampant cesspool of sexual harassment that is the House of Representatives, and apparently thinks that's all he needs to do. He really doesn't thing that he needs to kick out Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Republican who paid out $84,000 in taxpayer funds to hush up one of his victims and then ruined her professional life, black-balling her for any future work in public service. Ryan does need to kick him out. Actually, he needed to get rid of this monster last week.
A peek into the inner workings of his office reveals the kind of hostile work environment, rife with sexual innuendo, that prompted Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, to call Congress "the worst" place for women to work. […]
The refrigerator in the "bullpen" — the open area where aides worked — was filled with beer, and sometimes happy hour would begin at 4:30 p.m., which his aides called "beer-thirty." Ms. Peace said women would discuss which male lobbyists had texted them pictures of their genitals, and both men and women would talk about strip clubs and whether certain Fox News anchors had breast implants.
"There were numerous lewd comments that were made either about female reporters' breast size, or other reporters' breast size as well as female lobbyists and their appearance that would go on," the other former aide said. "On any given week you were prone to either ridicule, rude comments, acts of aggression or rage."
In the office, the congressman was known to like redheads. In her complaint, Ms. Greene said Mr. Farenthold "regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘redhead patrol' to keep him out of trouble."
This is disgusting. This isn't what the American taxpayers—or voters—expect from out employees on Capitol Hill. Ryan isn't just turning a blind eye to this behavior, he's encouraging it by refusing to do anything about Farenthold. If he thinks he'll be able to weather this storm of truth from women in politics and in society, he's wrong. But he's going to find out soon enough.