Was it a Freudian slip of the keyboard?
FNC’s Greta Van Susteren came out with a counter demand over the weekend when she defended her view of Gretchen Carlson‘s sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes. She said she didn’t know anything. What she did know was this: Carlson was unhappy in her job. What Carlson had asserted had never happened to her and she hadn’t even heard any gossip about it. And that was that, until a certain Washington Post opinion reporter came along to cast doubt on Van Susteren’s account.
“I would like an apology from Wimple who is a smear merchant,” she wrote on her Gretawire Blog, misspelling The Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple‘s name.
But was it an accident or the unconscious truth?
She’s talking about the guy who writes a rarely reported media blog and has a weird tendency to issue moral dictums from above. For instance, Wimple (yes, I’m writing it this way on purpose) wrote an entire post about morality at Fox News, insisting in several graphs that Van Susteren was essentially less than moral for saying that she had never heard of Ailes sexually harassing anyone, let alone Carlson. And then especially immoral for not coming forward after other accounts surfaced and expressing remorse for what she had never heard. WTF?
Wemple demanded that she apologize. To Carlson.
“Perhaps the most outspoken was Greta Van Susteren, who ditched caution and prudence with these words: ‘Of course, the first thing that occurred to me is that, unfortunately, we have a disgruntled employee, a colleague,’ she told People. ‘I read that her show wasn’t being renewed and, being a lawyer, I thought she got angry. I deal with Roger Ailes often. I’ve often been alone with Roger Ailes in his office over the course of 15 years and I’ve never seen anything like what I’m reading about in the papers and the magazine.’ She also suggested that what Carlson alleged simply didn’t happen: ‘People come to me because I’ve been there so long. That’s why this doesn’t have any ring of truth to me. I would have heard it. People don’t keep things silent.’
After a number of women came forward with stories similar to Carlson’s — prompting Ailes’s departure from Fox News — the Erik Wemple Blog asked Van Susteren whether she would apologize to Carlson for dissing her account.”
That sneaked under Van Susteren’s skin. Apologize? She insisted her account was above reproach.
Wimple says Carlson suggested that Van Susteren suggested that what happened to Carlson hadn’t happened. But that isn’t exactly the truth. She said she hadn’t experienced what Carlson said she had and felt she would’ve known if this was happening throughout the company. That’s a lot different than flat out saying ‘Gretchen Carlson is lying. This never happened.’
After writing Wemple’s name correctly twice, Van Susteren hilariously began writing his name like this: “Wimple.”
It’s not hard to think Van Susteren was at least unconsciously voicing that Wemple or “Wimple” is wimpy. Which he most definitely is. Or worse — was Van Susteren thinking of Mr. Whipple, who squeezed the Charmin in TV toilet paper commercials? Another possibility of her thought process: Pimple. It rhymes with “Wimple” and often epitomizes his personality.
Wimple has an air about him — the whiff of someone who issues his opinions without caring about facts.
Van Susteren isn’t the first woman in Washington whom Wemple has Wimpled.
And she likely won’t be the last.
Perhaps Wimple should clean up the shitstorms in own house before casting aspersions on others.