Mark Halperin, who was fired from his job as a political pundit after a slew of sexual harassment allegations, said this week that people “canceled” by the #MeToo movement are treated worse by society than murderers.
Halperin was speaking at a panel event in San Francisco this week and discussed the movement that aims to give power to victims who previously had been afraid to call out their attackers. This week, one of the most high-profile figures in the movement, disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein , was convicted of sexual assault after several women came forward to accuse him. But Halperin said that some of the people accused in the movement have become victims as well.
As Mother Jones reported, the political analyst said that being targeted in the movement is like being a refugee, in a situation in which the accused are constantly under pressure and unable to build up any confidence or self-worth.
He added that being “canceled” has a devastating impact and leaves those targeted at the lowest rungs of society.
“Murderers in our society who get out of prison are afforded an opportunity to go on with some aspect of their life,” he said. “The challenge to a lot of people who are canceled is there’s no mechanism for that, regardless of what they’ve done, regardless of whether they’ve tried to make amends.”
As the New York Post reported, Halperin was accused by 14 different women who said that he made unwanted sexual advances and groped them while he was serving as political director of ABC News from 1997 to 2007.
Halperin was fired from his post at MSNBC when the allegations came forward, but since then has been slowly rebuilding his career. As The Inquisitr reported last year, Halperin had begun to re-emerge after his 2017 firing by launching a new political blog and returning to Twitter. The report added that several of Halperin’s well-connected friends in the media were also pushing him to make a comeback.
That idea did not sit well with everyone, however. As The Washington Post noted, many of the women who accused Halperin of sexual misconduct did not want to see him work his way back into the public eye again.
“Mark Halperin repeatedly abused his position of authority in the newsroom, negatively impacting the careers of many women journalists,” journalist and Halperin accuser Lara Setrakian said. “He has proven himself unfit for leadership in our industry and a questionable narrator of the national conversation.”
