By David Futrelle
Now that we’re all talking about Michael Bloomberg’s long history of racism, might I take a moment to remind you that the billionaire presidential hopeful also has an equally long and egregious history of misogynistic remarks — which run the gamut from cringeworthy boasts about his sex life to dopey sexist jokes to crude sexual remarks to female staffers. He also (allegedly) gets really mad when women working for him get pregnant.
Let’s run down some of his greatest hits, as alleged by people who were there to hear them. (For what it’s worth, Bloomberg denies he said most of them.)
“If you looked like that, I’d do you in a second.”
One of many sexist remarks Trump allegedly said to former Bloomberg sales rep Sekiko Sakai Garrison, in this case while pointing to a woman he thought looked attractive. In a lawsuit she filed against Bloomberg in 1997, Garrison accused Bloomberg of a long list of similarly crude remarks — allegedly telling her to “kill it” when she informed him she was pregnant, asking her if her fiance was “dumb and blind” after noticing her engagement ring, and asking if she gave her boyfriend good blow jobs.
“If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s.”
One of many Bloomberg quips that were collected together by his staff in a book they called The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg,.
“I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site and doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one.”
Another quip from The Portable Bloomberg.
“Let me put it this way: I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do you think? It’s a wet dream.”
Bloomberg, who regularly boasted about his sex life, allegedly said this to a reporter back in the 2000s.
“Look at the ass on her!”
Bloomberg to a reporter after pointing out a woman at a party..
“Nice tits!”
Something Bloomberg allegedly said quite routinely about women in his general vicinity, according to one former top aide.
It’s probably no coincidence that Bloomberg and his organizations have been sued 40 times for sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, huh?
For more on Bloomberg’s misogyny, see these articles in Gawker, The Atlantic, and GQ, from which I drew these various quotes.
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It’s really scary to me how much Bloomberg has risen in the rankings. Of all the Democratic candidates, he’s the one who reminds me the most of Trump, seeing as they’re both bigoted plutocrats who act like magnets to lawsuits.
My more center-left relatives are right now mostly fans of Klobuchar (or, as they say, “feeling the Klomentum”). I’m not a fan of Klobuchar, but I’m really hoping they don’t pivot to Bloomberg.
How self-obsessed do you have to be to create a little book of things you said? IIRC Mao Zedong did the same thing.
Naglfar, it was the staff who put together the book. I don’t think he ordered them to do so. It reads to me like they thought it was funny.
Still, the larger point stands, dude’s a creep.
Here’s hoping the US won’t have to choose between two racist billionaires who violate women’s boundaries.
Bloomberg should use his largesse to help the eventual Democratic nominee which shouldn’t be him.
@Patricia
I keep wondering why Bloomberg doesn’t do just that. If he writes checks and keeps getting a seat at the table without being elected or appointed to anything official, that also means he’s not (potentially) under any legal restrictions or boundaries.
Of course, being POTUS hasn’t caused Trump to practice more decorum. I keep expecting him to drop trou and moon the MSM during one of his rallies.
@Victorious Parasol
Well, IIRC a few years ago some protestors mooned the Trump Tower with messages written on their behinds.
Anyway, now I’ve got that image in my head. For anyone else in my situation, I offer this video of a baby hedgehog as brain bleach:
https://twitter.com/PhysicsAndAstr1/status/1228007344656834561
Why do I have a sinking feeling that the Democratic convention is going to be brokered, Bloomberg will buy the nomination, and the country will be so sick of Trump that we’ll elect Bloomberg instead?
Who do y’all think will be a worse threat- four more years of Trump or eight of Bloomberg?
@ Patricia Kayden – He has declared that he plans to do so. It seems that regardless of anything else, he really does just hate Trump’s guts. Not surprising, really. Most of the NYC elite does. How can they not? They’ve had to sit next to him at dinner parties.
When I hear of employees having collected lines or comments made by their boss I expect it’s going to be a warning for fellow workers to shield them and they can avoid the worst. I worked in a lab run by a man going through a bad divorce (of his own divising). He even had the new red sports car to prove his midlife crisis was following the usual path. After a few warnings I wasn’t surprised by his ranting at his lab’s post docs over the most trivial things on a bad day. We worked around his breakdowns about monthly. No tech stayed more than a year as a result.
Then he brought in the other woman to work in the lab. She used to work at a CDC funded lab before joining our NSF grant. After chatting with a few of us I got the feeling she was learning a lot about Dr S previously unknown. I left so was around to suffer through his reaction to her breaking it off.
Documenting what a poor employer says or does helps ease future problems.
@Jokester
Unquestionably four more years of Trump, because of the further court-stacking he’d be doing, the further harm to environmental regulations, the further… everything.
But 8 years of Bloomberg would be a nightmare of “this is the best it can get with a Democrat”, a catastrophic lowering of expectations that everyone would accept simply because he can point to the honest truth: he would be better than Trump.
@Joekster, Big Titty Demon
I’m going to agree that four more years of Trump would be worse. Mainly because Bloomberg, awful as he is, is less likely to empower white supremacists through stochastic terrorism and is probably at least somewhat cognizant of climate change (I don’t know his policies).
As well, I fear with four more years of Trump that Trump would be ever worse than he has been, seeing as he knows nobody in his party will stand in his way. Worst case he could just declare himself dictator for life and they wouldn’t stop him.
And that’s from “The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg”? How’s this the least bit witty, let alone wise?? The whole cliche of “construction workers leering at women” seems classist as well as misogynist – it’s not just working-class guys who harass women. And if you want to subvert that trope, saying “women want to be catcalled because they’re desperate for attention, ha ha” isn’t very subversive.
Hell, even my eighth-grade classmate who wolf-whistled a bunch of construction guys was wittier. And she was being an annoying jerk in doing that and I don’t recommend it.
I have never heard of this man before in my life
Bloomberg was a Republican most of his life, was a cheerleader for Bush and Iraq and torture. It’s not particularly surprising he’s got this kind of history.
Personally I think he’s just looking for an opportunity to grift as well. It’s worth it to him to run just on the off chance he wins and he can preserve his tax cuts, let alone all the sweet sweet disaster capitalism he could indulge in now that Trump has established that the president can do anything he wants and no laws apply to him. Imagine what an actual competent businessman could do with that.
Naglfar:
That’s a point worth considering. I just thought Biden, on his part, seems to share Trump’s “grandpa is a little tired” energy.
Every other candidate better tear Bloomberg a new one that billionaire police state fuck.
I guess this is related, in that it’s about US politics.
https://www.gucmakale.com/wp/bipartisan-lawmakers-back-up-ivanka-trumps-womens-rights-program-to-become-law
I thought this was a spoof at first. Did Ivanka really suggest Lindsey Graham is a woman; or was that just the author of the article? I can see a real possibly of Ivanka being next president though; so I suppose it’s some (very) small comfort that she’s at least paying lip service to women’s rights and bipartisanship.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’d guess it’s just that a journalist who isn’t as familiar with US Senators might think Lindsey is a woman, that name is more common as a female name.
I don’t know much about Ivanka’s initiative, but I am highly skeptical of anything from the Trump family even if it isn’t from Donald (e.g. Melania’s anti-bullying campaign that defended her husband’s attacks on Greta Thunberg). Consequently, I’m very suspicious that Ivanka’s thing is either not going to work or has a secret agenda. That would be in line with what her father does.
My guess is that the so-called “Wit and Wisdom” compilation was prepared by Bloomberg’s staff in order to simultaneously stroke his ego and serve as an open warning to any women who work for or near him. Like that creepy media men list, but totally public. Not a bad idea, if you ask me. Of course, him not being a sexist asshole would be a better idea.
I’m pretty sure the title “Wit and wisdom” was meant to be a joke. It’s the subversive act of creatives on an oppressed staff.
I couldn’t help but read through David’s list of Bloomberg’s past sins and think “Bloomberg, he sounds like a winner…” I think a lot of Trump voters are embarrassed by the crassness and occasionally concerned by his erratic nature, but still attracted to the cruelty. Bloomberg offers them a viable alternative.
If he wins the nomination, I will vote for Bloomberg. I would vote for a loaf of bread or a wet lurgy on the sidewalk over Trump.
I still haven’t decided in the primary. Not Bloomberg, even if he is on my ballot.
In a way I was hoping Bloomberg would fulfill his threat of running for president, given that he would appeal to the moderate voters. I thought that would halve Biden’s chances of being nominated, but it’s all moot if all of Biden’s voters just switch their votes over to him.
Best case scenario would be for Biden, Buttigieg and Bloomberg to undermine each other by drawing votes from the same demographic of clueless, apathetic moderates. That being said, the possibility of that creep being elected is something to be wary of at this point.
@Naglfar
This. Shit. People kept on going about how we should be afraid to impeach Trump cuz Pence would be worse. What? Worse than concentration camps and genocide of Latinos? Worse than warmongering, destroying democracy and trying to turn the US into a theocracy?
The only person who could be worse than Trump at this point would be Adolf Hitler himself.
OT: Have you guys heard about the Nazi/incel running in a special election in Arizona for the US Senate? This asshole is a dumpster fire that previously ran a revenge porn website and then tried to sue and use the DMCA to cover up the google search results that came up under his name:
https://medium.com/@jose602/revenge-porn-shitloaf-dating-app-harasser-running-for-jeff-flakes-u-s-senate-seat-in-2018-f222e6038012
He’s been sending death threats left, right and center as well. Here’s a compilation of all the shit he’s been saying as he’s been campaigning and attempting to date on Tinder:
https://imgur.com/a/beNmsk1
Update: Mind you, the news is from 2018 but he’s running again in 2020 and the messages are recent. He is also very responsive on facebook. Approach with a hazmat suit.
@Diego Duarte
Even if this were true (not likely because let’s face it, the world’s full of repressive fucks including the most economically and culturally powerful country being the US), he sure doesn’t want it that way and wants to be like other countries that seem to be doing the exact same fucking thing he wants (ousting liberals, making a nation of one mind and effectively one race either eventually or otherwise).
Hopefully he goes to jail. Here in the UK (England and Wales at least) revenge porn is illegal thankfully. Wish the US and probably at least the “liberal haven” Canada had some sense to enact such legislation too.
@Diego Duarte
This guy sounds like a nightmare. Reading through the screenshots, I see a lot of MRA vocabulary and alt-right language. He sounds like a slightly more Nazi-oriented version of Paul Elam.
Most of the people I heard who tried to claim Pence was worse were moderates or crypto Trump supporters who didn’t want to go through with impeachment because they didn’t dislike Trump. Pence is nowhere near as awful. Plus, Pence would be unlikely to win re-election because he isn’t as charismatic or popular as Trump.
@Naglfar
It’s amazing, innit? If it’s not Joy Ann Reid singing his praises on national television, it’s all the polls putting him above the 15% threshold.
They might. There’s a particular species of Democrat I’ve seen who have been so beaten down by Trump that it’s left them with only one instinct: beat him at all costs. It’s left them so defeated and risk-averse that they’re setting their ideology aside and second-guessing themselves for what they feel is the “pragmatic/electable” candidate. Before actual votes were cast, Biden was that candidate, and it made sense. He was a former VP, a household name, had the Obama cred. He was a little long in the tooth, but he had a charm that could appeal to people. Then Iowa happened and the “electable” candidate didn’t look very electable. Now they’re scrambling for someone else. Most went to Pete, some to Klobuchar, but will go to Bloomberg.
What’s important to know about this kind of voter is that they aren’t die-hards. Their support is passive. They really don’t care about an individual candidate, they just want to beat Trump in November. If they see the media telling them “Bloomberg can beat Trump!” they’ll back him. I’m not sure if your relatives conform to this type, Naglfar, but there’s more of them than I’d like.
If there’s any candidate I feel for, it’s Liz Warren. She’s stumbled badly to the point I heard she’s pulling her ads in Nevada and South Carolina and her Nevada team is jumping ship. I’ve also heard the name Joe Rospars (her Chief Strategist) come up on TYT as the guy who’s been giving her all this terrible campaign advice. He is not serving her well at all.
But this I gotta sound off on, so tuck in for a bit of a rant. the Warren supporters I’ve encountered around the interwebs are a bewildering bunch. Crip Dyke has seen me around Wonkette and I’ll regularly stan for Bernie there. Wonkette, its readership being older and more likely female, typically skews Warren, which I understand and can appreciate. They really want a woman elected President and she’s got decent progressive bonafides. I’ve gotten into an argument or two, but it’s usually only with those that just come at me guns blazing for not-a-real-Democrat Bernie and his vicious online Bros. I try not to start slap-fights, I always remain civil (perhaps snarky, but never rude or offensive), but I won’t shy away standing my ground.
At the end, I usually think whatever, we agree to disagree. I’m Canadian anyway, pure peanut gallery. They have their reasons and Warren is solid.
But after Warren’s poor showing in New Hampshire, I saw comments contemplating alternatives. And on this ostensibly progressive website, I saw them considering Buttigieg(!), Klobuchar(!!) and Bloomberg(!!???). A couple even said outright “I’ll vote for anybody before Bernie.”
I’m like “Wait… WHAT???” Progressives on a progressive blog are seriously considering voting for an untested small-town McKinsey Democrat who blamed homophobia for his lack of black support or a racist plutocrat before socdem frontrunner Bernard Sanders??? Seriously?! Why??? Some of them justified their Pete support because they wanted to see a gay man beat Donald Trump, to which I can only say the guy probably (or at least worked for the outfit that) fixed my bread prices! You’d vote for the McKinseyite former Naval Intelligence guy who took a vacation to Somaliland for sketchy op-ed related reasons (????) over the old Jewish socdem whose commitments to equality and justice have never been in question… just because he’s gay?
I dunno, I don’t wanna be too glib, but 2016 clearly broke people. I just can’t understand how Sanders wouldn’t be at least your second choice if you’re progressive. Don’t get it.
Bloomberg is a shit in a lot of ways, and he has very odd health ideas. He would be infinitely better than Trump.
I say this as a New Yorker, and a former employee at Bloomberg. I wasn’t keen on him then. I’m not keen on him now. He is still better than Trump.
@Katamount
Because of intersectionality and White feminism. Just like there are racist skid-marxist who support Sanders, there is a significant breed of racist women and LGBT folk, who buy into the fight against patriarchy but will absolutely throw POC under the bus, first chance they get.
Both Buttigieg and Bloomberg have a racist past, which makes them more “ok” in their book than Sanders. And not saying Sanders is a saint here, given that he has been repeatedly tone deaf on racial issues, thinking he can just tackle on misogyny and racism with economic policies. But fuck it if they are going to allow a bunch of uppity POC to demand equal treatment under the law.