Down and out

Revelations about the sexual abuse allegations against Bill O’Reilly threaten to demolish what remains of his career after Fox News fired him earlier this year. The former anchor’s literary and TV agents both cut him loose this week after The New York Times, fresh off its scoop on Harvey Weinstein, reported previously unknown details about the accusations that cost O’Reilly his job.

O’Reilly and his representatives called the Times article a malicious smear piece with no basis in fact. The newspaper said it based its reporting on documents and interviews with anonymous sources and statements by representatives of O’Reilly and Fox News.

According to the Times, O’Reilly’s final settlement with one of his accusers before leaving Fox News totaled $32 million, an amount that dwarfs any of the known payouts Weinstein made to his alleged victims. (Those ranged from about $80,000 to $150,000, according to the Times exposé.) In total O’Reilly has reached settlements with six women who accused him of misconduct.

The woman thought to have settled with O’Reilly in January, legal analyst Lis Wiehl, has made no public statements about the agreement, not even to acknowledge it exists. According to documents the Times received from an anonymous source, the settlement paid Wiehl over time to ensure her silence and keep her from later suing O’Reilly, Fox News, or 21st Century Fox. She also had to agree to destroy any emails, texts, or other records of communication between her and O’Reilly.

Such nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) are common in sexual assault cases like O’Reilly’s and Weinstein’s and are part of the reason known habitual abusers can hold onto their positions of power for years. In denying allegations of assault, which date back to 2004, O’Reilly has repeatedly touted the lack of a paper trail of complaints against him. Wiehl even signed an affidavit saying she and O’Reilly had resolved all of their issues. O’Reilly could be telling the truth, but it is difficult to know for sure because most NDAs are designed to eliminate any evidence of misconduct.

The Times further revealed Fox News might have been complicit for a time in O’Reilly’s misconduct. Emails from Fox News and statements by O’Reilly’s representatives showed executives knew about the anchor’s settlement with Wiehl—though possibly not the amount—before they renewed his contract in February 2017. Fox News announced O’Reilly’s firing in April, one day after a meeting with British regulators about the company’s bid to buy Sky News, a 24-hour satellite news channel in the U.K. The meeting was one of several in an ongoing British government probe into the possible merger.

“We found the language used by Fox to describe some of its employees’ misconduct to us tended to downplay the harm caused and diminish the victims,” British regulators wrote in a report. “It appears to us likely that bad publicity and the associated fall-off of advertising was a major factor behind the company’s response to the allegations against Mr. O’Reilly.”

Overall, the Times article and associated documents paint a picture in which Fox News kept O’Reilly on as a cash cow until his misconduct finally threatened its bottom line. O’Reilly has since published another best-selling book, Killing England, started an online news commentary show, and reportedly had multiple TV offers. A spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday that O’Reilly had already secured new representation after his old agents dropped him.

Second chances

Can Justin Timberlake be trusted with another Super Bowl halftime show? The announcement that the National Football League chose the pop star to headline next year’s event called to mind his 2004 halftime appearance with Janet Jackson that introduced the term “wardrobe malfunction” to the American lexicon.

After Timberlake exposed Jackson’s bare chest on live TV for a split second at the end of their duet “Rock Your Body,” both of them apologized and called the incident unintentional. In a 2014 interview, show producer Beth McCarthy-Miller said the artists planned to do the stunt right as the camera shot changed at the very end of the number, but Timberlake made his move a few beats too soon. (Jackson’s publicist blamed a faulty undergarment that was supposed to stay in place.)

The Federal Communications Commission received hundreds of thousands of complaints about the show. The NFL declared MTV would never produce a halftime show again, and MTV’s parent company, Viacom, in turn banned Jackson’s music and videos from MTV, VH1, and all of its radio stations. Timberlake went on to become one of the past decade’s most successful pop stars. In recent years, he has become a father and turned toward more good, clean fun, such as starring in the movie Trolls, for which he did the upbeat single “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” The Super Bowl could give Timberlake a chance to reintroduce the world to his adult self—a chance the industry has denied Jackson or she has refused to take. —L.L.

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Memorable character

Robert Guillaume, who starred in stage musicals and TV sitcoms, has died at age 89. Guillaume was born to an unwed mother in 1927. He spent his early years in a back-alley apartment in St. Louis without plumbing or electricity. His grandmother enrolled him in a Catholic school, and Guillaume later attended St. Louis University and Washington University before going on tour with several Broadway shows. He played Nathan Detroit in the first all-African-American version of Guys and Dolls, became the first African-American to sing the title role of Phantom of the Opera, and was the voice of the mandrill Rafiki in the film version of The Lion King. Guillaume also played the acerbic butler of a governor’s mansion in Soap, a prime-time TV sitcom that satirized soap operas. That part earned him the title role in the spinoff Benson that ran from 1979 to 1986. After marrying Donna Brown in the mid-1980s, Guillame said he finally overcame the anger he harbored from his early life experiences. “To assuage bitterness requires more than human effort,” he wrote at the end of his autobiography. “Relief comes from a source we cannot see but can only feel. I am content to call that source love.” —L.L.

Dem Bones

Fall is here, and with Halloween just around the corner, sugar skull mania has arrived in the United States. Earlier this year, Muse dissected the popularity of Mexico’s Dia de Muertos in American culture. —L.L.

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