Will the corporate media give him a pass if he runs for President?
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/5349/index1.html<edit>
But what would we think of Michael Bloomberg if we had been a fly on the wall in his office? Would the language and demeanor with which he wielded power tell us something?
That was a question I thought I had some answers to when I wrote a column in September based on an obscure booklet called The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg. The booklet had been prepared as a birthday present by his closest staff members and was filled with business shibboleths and office witticisms that also portrayed an on-the-fly sexism, racism, and homophobia. The woman who prepared the book, Elisabeth DeMarse, one of his closest associates at the time, confirmed its authenticity and described all the quotations as verbatim and the booklet as a tribute. Indeed, it was vivid financial-guy talk ("Make the customer think he's getting laid when he's getting fucked"). Wall Street is a place, as the booklet strikingly demonstrates, not only of economic Darwinism but of verbal Darwinism -- a place where, if you're not part of the white, male Establishment, you have to survive exactly the kind of social, ethnic, and sexual slings and arrows that appear throughout this booklet.
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The documents create a picture of not just a hostile sexual environment but a truly weird one. This isn't Clintonesque lunging on Bloomberg's part, but rather, what is alleged here is a broader, more juvenile kind of control. Bloomberg's company is a playground, or clubhouse, or frat house, with Bloomberg himself as the strangely removed but obviously volatile bully or grand master or BMOC. That Bloomberg is the boss may be much more the point than the sex -- insults, and the power to get away with insults, are more important than gratification.
There's the alleged dress code for Bloomberg women: short skirts and "fuck me" shoes. Bloomberg, in these papers, frequently admonishes his female employees on how they should dress, and on what he finds attractive.
There is, described in these documents, a detailed picture of Bloomberg's odd feelings about the marriages of his female employees.
"What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?" Bloomberg is alleged to have asked Sekiko Garrison, a senior sales executive, who is one of the plaintiffs in these papers, when he saw her engagement ring. A week later, she maintains, he said, "Still engaged? What, is he that good in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?"
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A sense of proprietorship over his female staff is another constant theme in these papers. He tells Garrison, in one instance, that he doesn't like her dress. "Your ass looks huge in it," she says he said.
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