Can the #MeToo Movement Accept a Late Entry? (Tom Brokaw Edition)

FILE - This April 15, 2015 file photo, Tom Brokaw attends the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival opening night premiere of "Live From New York!" at The Beacon Theatre in New York. Brokaw is challenging fellow journalists to write more about the scourge of “fake news.” The 77-year-old Brokaw, longtime anchor at NBC’s “Nightly News” before stepping down in 2004, accepted an award from Syracuse University on Tuesday. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Well, we’re not done with the #MeToo movement, just yet.

Tom Brokaw, the storied NBC News anchor, in all his pompous glory, has been accused of “inappropriate behavior” by two women back in the 1990s.

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Both women claim attempts at forcible kissing and unwelcome advances. One woman is remaining anonymous (for now) but the second woman is Linda Vester, a former NBC News employee.

Vester claims that once, Brokaw, who was 30 years older, invited himself over to her hotel room in New York, where he attempted to kiss her.

“What do you want from me?” Vester said she asked him.

“An affair of more than passing affection,” she recalled him saying.

He then made a move to kiss her, but she resisted. He left, and she told a friend, who corroborated the story to the Washington Post.

A year later, there was another incident, this time in full view of others.

“We were in the Denver bureau, and there was a conference room. I’m standing there, and Tom Brokaw enters through the door and grabs me from behind and proceeds to tickle me up and down my waist,” Vester said.

“I jumped a foot and I looked at a guy who was the senior editor of ‘Nightly,’ and his jaw was hanging open. Nobody acted like anything wrong was happening, but I was humiliated.”

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Vester claims she didn’t report the incident at the time, because she feared it would negatively affect her career. She was working for a different NBC program at that time, had no relationship with Brokaw, working or otherwise.

Her attorney is Ari Wilkenfeld. He’s also the attorney of the first accuser of fellow disgraced NBC anchor, Matt Lauer.

Wilkenfeld claims his client isn’t seeking any sort of monetary compensation. She just wants to get her story out there.

“Linda has shown incredible courage and conviction coming forward to share the details of her experiences working at NBC,” Wilkenfield told the newspaper. “She does so at her own expense and peril. She wants nothing for herself.”

The second woman accusing Brokaw of inappropriate behavior has a rather bizarre story.

She was a production assistant at NBC, when Brokaw took her hands and held them against his chest.

 “He put my hands under his jacket and against his chest and pulled me in so close and asked me, ‘How is your job search going?’  ” she said. Brokaw later invited her to his office, which she refused, she said. The woman says she left the network shortly after the incident.

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I don’t even know what to make of that.

So is Brokaw copping to any of these accusations?

Of course he isn’t.

“I met with Linda Vester on two occasions, both at her request, 23 years ago, because she wanted advice with respect to her career at NBC,” he said in a statement issued by NBC.

“The meetings were brief, cordial and appropriate, and despite Linda’s allegations, I made no romantic overtures towards her, at that time or any other.”

That’s what they all say. I notice you’re not mentioning the incident with the chest touching (whatever that is).

Actually the timing of these stories seems a little late.

Does the #MeToo movement have that kind of steam, anymore? Are these stories too vanilla?

I guess we’re about to see.

 

 

 

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