Lifting the Veil & 'Broadchurch'

Matt Laurer and Charlie Rose 

Watching the news unfold this week has been an even more surreal experience than usual in the post-inauguration era.

Lately it seems like every time the alert sound on my iPhone pings, another hole gets punched in the fabric of the media-driven reality in which many of us live here in America.

Rape, sexually-related assault, harassment or inappropriate contact against anyone is obviously a heinous violation against one's body, mind and spirit - to say nothing of one's personal rights.

But to me there's something deeply unsettling about watching the fleeting veil of money, power, fame and influence being lifted from the steady parade of American media icons who've wielded such a grip on our mainstream popular culture.

Revealing them to be serial sexual predators who knowingly and repeatedly (over the course of years) used their positions to cajole, intimidate or force women into dubious encounters of a sexualized nature.

These are men, arguably vain to varying degrees, who've made careers and fortunes by being arbiters of taste, popular entertainment, intellectual achievement, political power - and often morality and ethics.

Knowing a little something of the darker side of the Hollywood film industry, the allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein were disturbing, but they weren't "surprising" in the conventional sense.

Los Angeles is rife with sleazy dirtbags who play on the fears and desires of those they perceive to be weaker than they are in order to incorporate sex into a kind of sick power dynamic that functions like a narcotic for some people - Harvey was one of them.

Charlie Rose interviewing Natalie Portman

But the disturbing allegations of serial sexual misconduct with subordinates and co-workers leveled against people like Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose is a deeply troubling look into the extent of the mistreatment of women in the workplace in America.

One that also forces all of us to look at ourselves - and ask how it is that people in positions of power can mistreat others when so many are aware of their actions.

I mean if even half the allegations against Lauer and Rose are true, and this sordid business was going on within large and influential media institutions (NBC and PBS), how bad is it in smaller offices and workplaces across America?

Places where the media spotlight is far less likely to shine the light of truth.

I can't even count the number of quiet evenings that I've tuned into PBS and watched Charlie Rose sit across that dark round table and interview the famous and the influential.

Over the years I've gained genuine insight into so many people and ideas watching Rose use his particular interview style to coax usually elusive people into revealing things about themselves and what they do and think - in part because they are aware of the cache of his show.

But learning about the way he was treating female staffers - or the fact that he surrounded himself with younger female subordinates - it leaves me feeling untethered from reality.

It's not like I thought Rose was some kind of media demigod without personal flaws, but he certainly struck me as an evolved intellectual who respected people.

Olivia Colman & David Tennant in Broadchurch 

It's clear that something of a Pandora's Box has been opened and more people of power and influence are sure to be named.

But too often lost in the public being "shocked" at these revelations and the subsequent toppling of careers and reputations, are the ways in which their behavior affected the lives of the people they mistreated and in some cases abused.

This week I've sought refuge from the news and Trump's incessant tweets by watching season three of the brilliant Netflix series Broadchurch starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman as Detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller.

If you haven't seen it, the show is a detective procedural - mystery set in the fictional town of Broadchurch on the English coast.

The first two seasons focused on the tragic murder of a local boy and the ways in which the killing disrupted the lives of the people who inhabit the small town - and the toll it took on the personal lives of determined detectives Hardy and Miller as they worked to solve the case.

But the third, and sadly, final season focuses on the rape of a local woman and the detectives' efforts to track down a serial rapist.

Jodie Whittaker as the rape counselor and  Julie
Hesmondhalgh as the victim in Broadchurch

The beautiful setting and camera shots contrast with the disturbing nature of the crimes that have taken place in the seemingly tranquil seaside town.

But it's a first class procedural and I was genuinely moved as the first episode literally walks the viewer through the ways the detectives investigate the crime of rape.

Including graphic scenes as the victim goes through treatment at a rape crisis center and the ways in which evidence is carefully cataloged.


While I'm only four episodes in, the storyline has forced me to sit back and view the allegations against people like Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose not from the shock of what they did - but to try and view their actions from the perspective of their co-workers and subordinates who were their victims.

Broadchurch, while obviously just a fictional TV show, has helped me, as a man, gain some degree of insight into just how devastating the crime of sexual assault is and how it impacts the lives of those who are affected by it.

And during a time when people like the delusional Republican "activist" James O'Keefe has the temerity to pay a woman to go to the Washington Post to lie about being sexually assaulted just to undermine the credibility of women who've come forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Republican senate candidate Roy Moore, I think that's important. 

The scope of the crime, and the shock of learning who allegedly committed it, should not overshadow the victims of their behavior - nor should their suffering be used as some kind of political tool.

Rape isn't Republican or Democrat, it's just rape.

And as the veil is lifted on people once viewed as media icons, the truth of just how extensive sexual assault is, is finally being revealed - and there's nothing political about it.