The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Penis Politics - The Dark Side Of Politics & The Abuse Of Power Ft. Karen Hinton

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

#510: On today's episode we are joined by Karen Hinton. Karen got her start in politics and went on to become one of the most colorful and outspoken political communications professionals in Washington and New York. Best known for her role as Press Secretary to both former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill De Blasio. This episode is a deep dive into the dark side of politics and how many can abuse the powers they have been trusted with. To connect with Karen Hinton click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential. This episode is brought to you by Lexus The Lexus RX is the best-selling luxury crossover of all time and the best-selling luxury vehicle every year since it was first introduced. Never lose your edge with the all-new Lexus RX. Experience Amazing at your Lexus dealer. This episode is brought to you by NextEvo NextEvo’s Sleep CBD solutions help you get more refreshing sleep, naturally. Get a better night’s rest with Sleep CBD solutions from NextEvo Naturals. Use code SKINNY at NextEvo.com up to 25% off subscription orders of $50 or more. This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market With Thrive Market, you can shop everything from healthy pantry essentials and sustainable meat and seafood to nontoxic cleaning and beauty products- all delivered right to your door. Go to thrivemarket.com/skinny to get $80 of free groceries. This episode is brought to you by AG1 You take one scoop of AG1 and you're absorbing 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole food supported superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to help start your day right. This is the best option for easy, optimal nutrition out there. Go to athleticgreens.com/SKINNY and get a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D + 5 travel packs with your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Clinique Meet Clinique's first ever foundation to be the last step in your skincare routine. Even Better Clinical Serum Foundation is formulated with 3 serum technologies that visibly reduce dark spots, brighten and hydrate skin. Find your shade this holiday season at Clinique.com This episode is brought to you by Simisilan When your family needs relief from Pink Eye or an Earache, choose Similasan. Made with natural active ingredients, not harsh chemicals, so you can Feel Good about Feeling Better™. Go to SimilasanUSA.com/win and mention The Skinny Confidential in your entry to enter a sweepstakes $500 Visa Gift Card and a Similasan “School Essentials” prize pack. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. All right, there's a little foundation that you guys need to check out. I've been trying it and I'm into it. Meet Clinique's first foundation designed to be the last step in your skincare routine. Okay, even better Clinique serum foundation is formulated with three serum technologies that visibly reduce dark spots, brighten and hydrate skin. It's like this foundation was made for me. Here's why I like this. So many makeup products, I feel like dry out my skin. I have that like cracked look situation. This foundation was formulated with

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and you can virtually try it on. So I went on and virtually tried it on. It's amazing. Check this out. Don't call it makeup. This is skincare in just your shade. Find your shade this holiday season at Clinique.com. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Aha.

When you are not sure about the victim's accusations and you're not completely sure, then you don't have to take a position. But don't demean her. Don't be an enabler of lies told by the accused. Stay out of it. Even though you may work for him, you may be friends with him. You may like him. You may support all the other things that he's doing. This episode is raw. It's real. It's outspoken and it delivers. We're going to talk about the toxic brew of ego, entitlement, power, testosterone, and bro culture today. This episode goes all over the place. There are secrets that are spilled. We don't really get too political on this show, but if we are, we're going to have someone like Karen Hinton on the show. Somebody who's actually grown up and lived and worked in the political arena for years.

And also, I was thinking about announcing my run for some kind of political office on this one, but then after hearing this with the penis politics, I backed right out. Andrew Cuomo, Bill Clinton, and more is in this episode. We really go there. And Karen is raw. She's real. And you got to check out her book, Penis Politics. On that note, let's welcome Karen Hinton to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast. She is one of the most colorful and outspoken political communications professionals in

Washington and New York. And she opens up. Let me tell you. Here we go. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Penis politics. What a title. I love, I love a shocking title.

Jumping right into it. I love that penis politics is an incredible title, first of all. Thank you. Yeah. It gets everyone's attention. Yes. Because there definitely are penis politics. Take us back to when you first got into your career. Maybe even what the epiphany was in the beginning to even have this seed of an idea to write something like this.

Whoa, okay. Well, the beginning of my political career, and I use that political in terms of campaigns, working for elected officials, because we all have politics in our life, whether we work, ever work in a campaign or ever for an elected official, politics at home, politics and romance, politics and sports, all of that. But my career began when I was in Mississippi, where I grew up, and I decided to go to work for the first black man in Mississippi who ran for Congress since Reconstruction as a Democrat. I wanted to help him win because Mississippi has the highest percentage still today of African Americans who live there. And for decades, they never had any

representation in Congress and they needed it badly because there was no one really speaking out on their behalf. And this was in the 1980s. 1984 is when I first went to work for him. He lost. But then another black man named Micah Espy, he ran for Congress and he won. And so I was also working for him. You know, I was doing, I was a press secretary. I was trying to get coverage by the media, positive coverage from political writers in Mississippi at the time, but also national writers, because they were covering this in Mississippi, because it was seen as very historical and dynamic that finally a black man from Mississippi was being elected, which had never happened before on a national scale.

So that is what brought me into politics. He then, of course, goes to Washington Washington and he asked me to come with him. And I was so excited to do it. On the other hand, I was also teaching school at the time because the campaign had so little money. They didn't have a lot of money to pay people. So is this like a kind of like almost like volunteering when you're running the campaign in the beginning? I was running the campaign. I was like the press secretary helping him both with press work, but also with turn out the vote. Okay.

I mean, this is, you know, it's expensive to run campaigns, even in rural Mississippi. And he didn't have a lot of money. So there was, we were shopping around doing all kinds of things. And as a result, though, I decided, okay, I love teaching school. I love all my students. And I did. I was so close to all of them. And it was, without a doubt, the hardest job I've ever had in my entire life. I can imagine. Oh, my God. I cannot even begin. Teaching, teaching. Teaching, teaching. Even after working for all of these politicians, that's still-

Totally. Wow. Totally. Kids are a lot of work. Yeah. A, kids are a lot of work. B, they're in high school and they're going through their own personal dramas, you know, and it's also a racially mixed school. So you also had that dynamic. And then you had parents who were low income and they didn't have a lot of money. And it was tough for these kids. And, you know, I can tell you some more stories about that if you want to go into it. But it was a wonderful time for me, though, in so many ways, because I learned so much about young people. And even though I wasn't that old, I was 25, 26 at the time, but I was learning about what they were going through. And that really helped me, I think, when I went to Washington with Mike Espy. And that is when I first got, in my mind, what became known as penis politics.

And what was that first penis politic moment? Oh, well, I don't know about the first, but let me just say this quickly. D.C., as well as New York City, are a boys club, completely a boys club. And back in the 80s, it was- Even more. Yeah, 10 times worse than it is now. And you all pick up your online or your print papers every day, and you read about something like that happening in D.C. as well as in New York, especially in media, movie industry, finances. So D.C. was a place where it was constantly happening, not just to

me, but to all the women in my office, all the women I became friends with. They had a member of Congress hitting on them. They had chief of staff who wanted to take them on a date. And, you know, these are people who sex with them, then they could, not always, but could lose their jobs, maybe don't get that promotion, don't get their raise. So it's a constant struggle and battle about, oh my God, I don't want to go out with him. I'm not interested in him. I don't want to put myself in this situation. And plus, in some situations, not all, but in some, I'm working for him. He's my boss. And we shouldn't be doing that. But nonetheless, it happens. And it happened to me once. And there was a congressman who was just known for being very, very flirtatious. But he was single.

He was a man named Bob Carr from Michigan. And he was an incredibly nice man. He wasn't, I don't think I would have been sexually abused by any stretch, but he was a member of Congress. And I didn't want to go out with a member of Congress. But someone was trying to convince me to do it because, and he was a chief of staff, because he was trying to get Bob Carr, the congressman, to vote for something that his congressman wanted. So does that make sense?

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. And I have like kind of a side question, and then we're going to get into all this. Do you think places like Washington, D. Washington DC and politics in general attract a certain type of person? Or do you think once they get there, it can change a person? Meaning maybe it's a combination of both. Meaning like, do people go there and maybe they have a moral compass, but then they get into this kind of world and all of a sudden they're like, oh, this is what everyone else is doing. So now I'm going to do it. Or do you think it attracts a certain type

of person that already comes with those kind of personality traits to begin with? I think it's a mixed bag because it depends on the personality of the man. And I'm not talking about all men here. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about some men. And I think some men, when they get into a position of power, it could be a chief of staff, a legislative director, or a member of Congress. They suddenly feel like, okay, I have power and control and authority, and I can get away with what I thought I couldn't get away with when I wasn't that. And suddenly it empowers them. And I also believe it's contagious in the sense that another man in the office sees that happening. And he says, OK, he can flirt with her.

I can flirt with somebody, too, in the office who I like. And so it just becomes this kind of contagious form of feelings that are not welcome and toxic and bad for the women who are in the office. I have experienced a boss like that. I know exactly what you're talking about, where I wouldn't fuck him, just to be blunt. Wasn't interested in him, like, was not my vibe at all. Right. He was married. Yeah.

And he was angry that I wouldn't have sex with him. And what happened is the whole job became this underlining energy that he would punish me for things that maybe you wouldn't get punished for because I wouldn't have sex with him, even though he didn't say that. And I feel like the problem with what you're saying, not the problem with what you're saying, but the problem with what you're describing is that there's so much gray. Like I can't go to his boss and say, I didn't have sex with him, so he's putting out this energy that everything I do is wrong because that doesn't translate either. It's a lot of gray.

It is, but also I think more and more corporations, companies, I'm not talking about the office of a member of Congress because that's a different problem. But like in companies, in corporations, they do now have human resources departments who try to deal with that. But at the same time, this is where it gets gray. At the same time, you can't always trust those people to take action against someone who is harassing you, sexually abusing you in some way, and they don't take action that's needed.

What they will do, though, is they'll transfer you. They'll put you in another position away from that man. And that is nothing but enabling him as well as other men in the office to continue the practice because you're the one that gets punished. You get moved to another spot. You don't get the promotion. You don't get the worry about that anymore. And it's just, it is gray in so many ways for those reasons. And we just have to fight that now. And we have to have the courage to speak up and take that chance because we know. And that's what I wanted to do with the book is to say to women, there are so many women who face similar stories that have happened in your own life. So, you know, I'm not the only one, right?

But let me give you a flip side. And this conversation is like, I want to hear every side. I also worked in a place where there was a woman who dressed very provocatively, and every single man that walked through the door, her jaw was on the ground and she was staring at them like she wanted to have sex with them. So I also think it's important to acknowledge that sometimes it's both ways. So how do you sort of manage that? Again, it's so gray. I think you'd manage it the same way. Because if this is not just dress coding, like sometimes, you know, they'll say, well, you can't wear a blouse that is that low.

So don't wear that blouse again. That's slut shaming dress coding. But if you're in a situation where it's clear that you're coming on to a man and you want to have sex with him. That's what this is. That's obvious. Then you're to be treated, the woman is to be treated the same way a man should be treated, but rarely is, which is you file a sexual harassment complaint. Or you go to the HR and you say, this is happening, the man does.

Or if it's an employee, a client or a customer who comes in, then that woman's boss has to go to her and say, you need to change your behavior and you need to change it now. And that is so, I think, important because we can stop it. We don't have to fire someone. We don't have to fire her. She changes her behavior. If she's told to do that or she'll lose her job, then she'll change. And that's why we need this wake-up call for both men and women to stand up for whoever is being harassed in the workplace or in the home or on a sports team, you know, or anywhere in a grocery store, right? Because it's not just about women who have, quote unquote, professional careers,

but they're also women who are single mothers, let's say. They have a child, two children they need to take care of. They have a job at a grocery store. And what's happening? The boss is sexually harassing them. They can't lose their job. They need their job, right? So other people in the grocery store need to stand up for her and help her. I'm interested in the topic of this topic in general, but especially when it relates to politics. Because I think about, I run a company that's largely women. And if I behave like that, I would be ostracized, kicked out. I would have severe consequences, right?

Good. Yeah, good. And I think people sometimes get frustrated in the world of politicians because you have these characters that blatantly take advantage or abuse women. And it's almost like the severity of the punishment for a lot of these people isn't anywhere close to somebody who's maybe not in that world of politics, right? And I know you, in hindsight, I may be careful here, but you work with Clinton, you work with Cuomo, these guys, in hindsight, there's obviously documented abuse that has happened. And I feel like sometimes those type of characters don't get held to the

same standard or the same consequences as people in the general public. Exactly. I mean, it's very true of Clinton, very true of Cuomo, what you're saying, very true of Trump, and very true of this Matt Gaetz, who now they may not bring charges against him because they're not sure about what the 17-year-old girl, whether a jury will believe her or not. I mean, you know, we have to get to a place

where we are accepting women as reliable. And certainly there will be cases where it's a false claim, but they're few and far between. They're very rare. And there have been research done into this and studies where the false claims tend to go from 2% to 10%. And even then, law enforcement doesn't always use the right factors because they may say, well, there was no witness to the sexual harassment. Well, you're the perfect person to ask this to. What is your opinion?

And I would love any opinion, your real thoughts on what happened with Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Oh, gosh. I know. That's really tough. It is tough. It's very, very tough because, look, he got the most public social media support that I've ever seen anybody get on a sexual harassment charge. And of course, it was reversed because he was suing her.

And it's hard to really completely understand her side because so much of it was leaning toward him in terms of the media coverage that was received as well as the social media. So it's hard to know. But at the end of the day, if a court rules, then that's the ruling. She's appealing, as I understand, right? So if she appeals and wins, then she wins. But somebody has to make a decision. And we want our courts to be fair, obviously. And they need to start thinking about fairness to a woman so that, just like in the Matt Gates case, as well as some of the Cuomo accusers, that you don't assume that a jury or a judge is not going to believe a woman who you also find credible.

Yeah, I think the tough thing with her reflecting on that case is that I think there was another element involved, which is that she is clearly, I mean, to me, I think, allegedly, she has narcissistic personality disorder. So I think that's a whole different layer to whatever happened. Yes. Do you know what I mean? That's what I mean by this conversation. There's so much grayness to it.

Sometimes it's hard to speak in absolutes. Yes, there is. But also, just let me make this argument that you can't hold a woman accountable for everything she's done in her life prior to her own sexual harassment claim. That's very true. Because look, some of us want to go out and have sex and have fun and wear sexy clothes and blah, blah, blah. And then suddenly you get accused of doing that when you are raped or abused or harassed. No, I mean, you can't hold those things over a woman's head when you're in an investigation, when you're in a court of law, or when you're just among friends and you're

sitting around. And women sometimes will do this. They'll say, well, she's just kind of slutty. So that's probably why that guy attacked her that night, jumped on her, because she's always been so flirtatious. But when a woman says no, stop, that's what that means. It should be no. I also think, for me, if I saw that happening, I think it's also important for the person who sees it happening to call it out. If I was in here in an office and I saw a man being so inappropriate to a woman, I think it's also the person's responsibility to say something. Oh, yeah. It would have to be because you can't base a claim on a witness's testimony. It has to be the victim's testimony.

So if I saw something, they can't base it off what I saw? I don't think so. I don't think an HR department would do that. I don't think a prosecutor would do that. I mean, look, they don't even do it when the victim files a claim and then she has texts that she sent that very day, emails that she sent that day to friends telling them what happened, or she may have even had someone not see it, but know what was occurring, they don't always take their testimony or the

victim's testimony. That happened with a couple of the Cuomo accusers. So I was thinking about what's rubbing me the wrong way about this topic. It's not rubbing me the wrong way. That's not the right way. But to think about what's concerning to me in this conversation, I think sometimes when you think about a Matt Gaetz, or you think about a Donald Trump, or you think about an Andrew Cuomo, or a Bill Clinton, or a Johnny Depp, and all these public cases, and then you think that, especially in the time we live in now, people have really dug their feet in the sand and chosen sides, politically that is, right? And it's almost like if somebody on your side that you've chosen, say you're left or right, has done something completely inappropriate.

And the media is guilty of this too, right? There's a kind of like, we're going to minimize the damage that this person did because it hurts the overall party side or party line. And so what that does is it signals to the rest of the world that there's certain people that won't be held to account, which I assume would then translate down to more people in positions of power also taking advantage. Like what you said earlier, if you see like, oh, I did something inappropriate and this person just got kind of moved out of my purview, well, I can keep getting away with it. And I think what we're doing is we're showing that on a mass scale where you have these guys, particularly in positions of power, taking advantage of women, kind of getting away with it.

Large and part society moving away from it, stop talking about it. And then the women are left to say like, wait a minute, my life just got ruined because I came out and said all these things. And it signals to other women and other people that have been abused, like if you come forward, maybe there's not going to be consequences, but you're always going to be now that person. And that's my fear with all this stuff. And everybody kind of plays a part in this world. And this happens on every spectrum, every level. Yes. No, I agree. I get you completely.

I think, though, that when you are not sure about the victim's accusations, the woman's accusations, and you're not completely sure, then you don't have to take a position. But don't demean her. Don't be an enabler of lies told by the accused. Sure. Right? I mean, stay out of it. Even though you may work for him, you may be friends with him, you may like him. You may support all the other things that he's doing, which are good for you. Right. And this is what you mean when you talk about the politicians. I think what I'm saying is that's what happens.

Putting yourself in the person's shoes that may come forward. Like it takes a lot of courage to come forward because you're probably sitting there thinking like there's a good chance that I come forward and there's and nothing happens and then all of a sudden you're labeled as this person and you know i mean like this has happened to a lot of women that have come forward right yes it has and it's happened that way since adam and eve and eve right it's always been that. And that really has to stop now because it is pervasive. Now, there've been studies done that show like 83% of women face some form of sexual harassment, sexual abuse in their lifetimes, and 43% of men say the same. So this is pervasive. And we really

need to think about ways to change the work environment. Look, there's so many things about the work environment that needs changing. Discrimination, whether you work from home or you work in the office now, there's a big debate about that via post, post, in quotes, COVID. So we have to look at things. How do we improve our work environment? And this is a very important path to do that because discrimination, harassment, abuse, rape, violence, all those things are damaging to what women want through laws. So women's rights, what is women's rights? Well, I'll just name a few, right? But it's equity, pay equity. Pay equity gets impacted by sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse. Childcare for their children. If you are not close to your child care center, you get moved to another

location because you've accused your boss of sexual harassment. They move you. Now your father from your child care or you get you don't get the promotion. So child care becomes harder to pay for. There's issues around health, you know, health insurance, depression, anxiety. All these things play into women's rights. So we think about sexual harassment. Oh, I've heard women and seen women say this on social media. Oh, she should just get over it. Big deal that he patted her on the ass.

Get over it. It's a minor thing. Well, it may not be to the woman it happened to and you also don't know their background they could have been raped when they were 12 years old and you don't that I mean that you know and also like for me respect my space right don't don't touch my ass exactly one time I was at a bar and someone grabbed my stuck his finger down my my pants my husband was behind behind him didn't know my husband was there he stuck his hand down my butt crack and put his finger in my butt and michael michael i chased him i bet michael basically chased him out of i mean it was for, it's just like, I gave him a look like,

don't touch me. Don't touch me. Don't come near me. Don't get in my bubble. Like, get away. I mean, it's just, it's really crazy what people think

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N-E-X-T-E-V-O.com, promo code skinny. I would love to know if you were around during the Clinton era when everything happened with Monica Lewinsky. Yes, yes. In my book where I write about this, I had had my own experiences leading up to the information that came out about Monica Lewinsky and all of that drama to the point where I had been afraid to speak up about many of those things, including a moment with Bill Clinton. But at that point, I was like, oh my God, this woman, they're calling her a bimbo. They're calling her trailer park trash. They're calling her slutty. I mean, all these terrible names they're using to describe her in the public in order to defend the president of the United States. That's what I was alluding to earlier, by the way. Right. Yes. And, you know, I'm like, wait a minute, you're ruining her life. You're destroying her. And she's so young. She was in her early 20s when all this started. She was 21. And yeah, 21 is legal. But come on, this is in the Oval Office. This is just not in a bar. This is in the Oval Office. It's the not in a bar. This is in the Oval Office.

It's the President of the United States. Maybe she agreed to it. I know she agreed to it. But at the same time, he is abusing, harassing, pressuring a young woman in his office. And he's the leader of the country, of the world at the time. So I was just so upset, so angry. And make a long story short, I happened to have had a drink with a reporter friend of mine from the Washington Post. We had one too many one night and we were talking about Bill Clinton and the stories and everything.

This was actually pre-Monica Lewinsky. This was the woman from Arkansas who had accused him, you know, right after he won the election. And I said, well, I can tell you about something that happened to me one night. And so I told her the story where I'm in a bar, you know, I'm from Mississippi, remember? He's in Arkansas as governor then. And we happen to meet up. I don't meet with him. He just happens to be in the bar. And he comes over and sits beside me and two other political people who he already knows. But he's completely focusing on me. And he doesn't know me. I'm 24 years old.

I don't know anything about anything, you know. And he's asking me questions about the campaign that I'm in. He's asking me questions about what I thought about this policy or that policy. And God, I'm thinking, this is fabulous. Somebody's asking my opinion. Oh, my goodness, this is terrific. So I'm giving it to him. You know, we talk for 30 minutes and I'm telling him about poverty.

I'm telling him about teenage pregnancy. You know, I'm talking about illiteracy. And then suddenly he stops and he turns to the two people he knows. He has a conversation with them. But then he writes something on a napkin, pulls it up, pushes it over. I open it up and it's the name of a hotel in Greenville, Mississippi, where I was, and the room number and a question mark.

And I'm like, holy cow. And I'm looking at this and I'm so embarrassed. I'm sure I turned red all over, but I'm so embarrassed. I fold it up and I just kind of get out of the chair. I go to the restroom and I'm just sitting on the potty thinking, what do I do now? How do I get out of this? I throw it away. I shouldn't have thrown it away. I should have kept it and framed it. But I throw it away and I got up and I left. And that was it. But I was telling this reporter about this over a few drinks. And I said,

now this is all off the record because I can't talk about this publicly. But he's crazy. This is what he does. He was known as a womanizer even when he was governor. He would hit on women all the time. So this is not surprising what these women in Arkansas have been saying. Then a few years later, that's 1994, 1998 is Monica Lewinsky. And so a reporter that she knew was writing a book, Michael Isikoff, and he wrote a book called Uncovering Clinton. And it was all about the details of Monica Lewinsky and other things related to womanizing.

He wanted me to go on the record so he could put that in his book. He said, I need examples of the pattern because he had a pattern over the years. And it's hard to get more women to speak, to put it on the record. I've heard it, but I can't put it in the book. Would you please let me do it? And so he pleaded with me several times. And I finally just said, oh my gosh, I'm just going to do it. I'm done with this. I feel so badly for Lewinsky. And so it appears in his book and I'm working and stop me if I'm going on too long. No, no, you're not. I'm saying no, don't stop.

Okay. So at the time I'm working for Andrew Cuomo, he's housing secretary. He and I had had, we're the same age and he's the same age as I am when I'm working for him. And what year is this? This would be 1998. Okay. And I'm his press secretary, basically. We get into all kinds of arguments and fights over how to handle the news media. And so we had this very much a love-hate relationship.

Some days I was so pissed at him and he was pissed at me. But by that time I'd worked in Washington for almost a decade then. So I sort of knew the deal. I knew how men are. And I just would ignore him if he was doing something flirtatious. I would just, whatever, get over it, move off, get away. No. But anyway, that's another story. So I said to the to the reporter yes andrew at one point in time is thinking about firing me because i had basically exposed the president in the book and i get this from people who are close to him who tell me but he decides not to fire me because if he fires me he exposes him that's another? So he doesn't fire me, but he takes away

a job title from me as punishment because I was supposed to be confirmed by the Senate as an assistant secretary. And in Washington, it's a big deal to have assistant secretary on your resume and everybody wants it and I wanted it, but he told the white house he's pull her name there won't be a senate confirmation and so i was like oh you know i was just so enraged by the whole thing and not long after that at the end of 99 i we he and i had a big argument over another thing that i won't go into details with, but we had a huge argument and I just said, basically, fuck you.

He said, no, fuck you. And bye bye. But you see like this, that was it. I think that the, the reason,

and you know, we don't get so political on this show, but the reason so many people in this country are turned off by this world is you trust a lot of these people to kind of be the moral high ground and be the people that are going to go and represent you and set policy. And if you think about like even the pandemic, like Cuomo was all over the news everywhere. He was like the poster child of New York and what's righteous. And then all of a sudden, you realize that this guy's maybe not behaving the way, but he sat there for the last year, taking the moral high ground and telling

everybody else how they should live their life. And I think the frustration is you hear so many stories about these guys and also girls in power in these places, taking advantage of their position. And it makes it really difficult to put faith in these people because you, I mean, listen, I'm sure there's a ton of great people there. And there's a lot of people that have the right moral compass and go for the right reasons, but you have people in really large positions of power taking advantage of that regularly and not held to account the same way that, you know, someone like myself would be held to account. No, no, exactly. And you said that earlier and I agree with you completely that

look where we are. I mean, he, he resigned. He wasn't impeached. He resigned. Now he's positioning himself to try to run again. He's going to do a podcast. He just announced it. Didn't his brother do a podcast? Yeah, his brother is now on- That's a whole nother thing too. Yeah, that's a whole nother thing. The brother's there doing the media backing. I mean, that's a whole thing. He's an enabler. I mean, he joins the list of enablers. And there are a lot of examples of those kind of people who support the harasser or the abuser.

So he's now positioning himself for another run. And I don't think he'll make it. I don't think New Yorkers are going to ever vote him in again. But he's allowed to do it, even though, you know, there are four women who make serious allegations against him. And all the DAs have said they find them credible. Yet they say the law is not written that they can bring a charge. Well, this is what I'm talking about. Can I ask you a personal question?

Someone like yourself, you go, and you're there for the right reasons, and you're working with all these people to try to make positive change. And then maybe you're working with someone like that for a while and you think, hey, I'm doing the right thing and I'm making change and pushing, working on these great things to help people in their lives. And then this kind of stuff happens. Is that demoralizing in a way? Yeah. And if you get my book and read it, there are sections in it where I write very positive things about Cuomo when he was housing secretary. He did a lot of great work among low-income neighborhoods, changing the way we do public housing and making great progress. And there are other things that I write about, work that he did on Indian reservations.

And some of the poorest areas in the country are on Indian reservations. He's done a lot of great stuff. I mean, remember, he's been very big on gun safety. He's also been very big on marriage equality. So there are all these terrific things he's done, but you can't put yourself in a position where you're abusing people who work for you in your office alone and making them uncomfortable and creating situations where if you don't like it, you're out. You're out. My thing with people too is if you're out of integrity in that big area you're out of integrity in a lot

of other areas there's not just one area you're out of integrity you got it always says this really you you always say this to me you say if you're out and you're hanging out with your friend and he's cheating on his wife what what do you not think that they're going to cheat on their business partner you don't want to do business with that person because they're out of integrity with that. Yeah. The way I think about it is like, and listen, I'm no angel. I'm no Mother Teresa over here. I have my shortcomings, but I think that there are certain basic things when it comes to

integrity that you have to uphold. And I think if you don't, it kind of discredits everything else. We're using this example of Cuomo. He may have a lot of righteous endeavors that he's trying to pursue, but it calls it all into question when you're so out of integrity in other areas. And I think that's where people get frustrated. Again, not left, right, general, just with politicians, because it's like you're sitting there and you have all this hope and these are the right people, the elected officials that are

going to represent you the right way. And all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute, is this really the person I thought I knew or thought was representing me? And it shatters the whole system. And I think if you ask nine out of 10 Americans on the street now, do they believe politics is corrupt or not? Most people don't have faith in the system right now. Yeah, that's exactly right. Let's go to one thing though, that I think is so important in terms of changing behavior. And that is what we teach our kids as they grow, because they need to understand, boys and girls, what this dynamic is. And they need to recognize it, even when they're young,

junior high, high school. I even think it's important to teach. I have a two-year-old to her body part names so they can communicate. It's important that she has her own boundaries. If she doesn't want something, she needs to be able to vocalize it. Right, exactly. And I think that that's really important in terms of changing behavior is let's start with our kids. And that's a wake-up call, I think, for men and women to not only do it themselves in their workplace or in other environments, but also at home with their children. I think it's so important. And let me just kick back to something that happened to me in high school, because it's so important to have close girlfriends when you're growing up. And so many girls do, not all girls, but a lot of girls do. They have

these little packs they run in, right? And I did as well. I had three close, close girlfriends, and we made all of our decisions together. And if we were going to, and this was before cell phones, remember, and this was before online communications of any sort. So we would call each other, okay, we have to meet and we have to meet this afternoon to talk about X, Y, Z. I'm thinking about going out with Tommy. What do you guys think? We have to get an agreement.

And it was a little obsessive, but we loved doing it. We wanted to share information. So it got to a place where one day I get a phone call from my girlfriend, Janice, who is in the book. I write about this. And she says, we have to meet today, this afternoon. It's really, really important. I said, oh, of course. Yeah, we'll do it. This is a summer. She's working at the high school in the book room. I said, okay, we'll come to your place. So I call everybody, we head over. And she tells us that she's in the book room and in walks this man, a school official, who slams the door, locks it, walks over to her and basically attacks her. Now, she had known him for a while because he had been her coach in junior high.

We're now sophomores. We're now like 16 years old. And so she had tremendous respect for him. She liked him. She're now sophomores. We're now like 16 years old. And so she had tremendous respect for him. She liked him. She thought he was handsome, right? But then he starts with a kiss, and one thing leads to another, and one thing leads to another. And pretty soon they're on the floor, and you get the rest of the picture. She then is home. She calls us. We come over, and she tells us about it. And we're like, oh, my God, we have to do something about this.

What are we going to do? We need to tell your parents. We need to tell the sheriff. What are we going to do? You know, we've got to do something. She goes, no, you are not telling anybody anything. Only you three can know because you're my best friends in the world. Only you will know. You'll never tell anybody because they're going to blame me. They're going to say,

oh, I have a crush on him. And so I'm making all this up or this is what I really wanted to have happen. And he will lie. He will say I didn't, it didn't happen. And that is exactly what happened. I mean, at some point we confront him to let him know that we know, even though we're not going to tell anybody else. And he lies. He says, no, she's exaggerating. She's blowing it out of proportion. I was just trying to be nice to her.

Da, da, da, da, da. But that impacted my life. Well, heck, it impacted her life, Janice, you know, completely. It changed her life because she was smarter than me. She made better grades than me. She was attractive. She was nice, sweet. I was none of those things.

But she was like the perfect woman, girl, who I wanted to grow up and be like and couldn't. So she didn't even finish high school. She drops out of high school because she just wants to be away from it. Marries a guy who joins the Navy. They divorce a year later. She comes back when we're graduating from high school. And we want to reconnect, but it's impossible to reconnect at this point, right? Because she's gone through this traumatic moment in her life. We know about it. We experienced it with her in some ways. And we just don't know how to connect.

And I'll spare the details here. But when we turn 50, all four of us with the same age, I get a phone call from one of them and Janice has committed suicide. And I don't think that the rape itself caused the suicide, but I think decisions that she made along the way led to a place where she was not strong. She couldn't deal with other traumas in her life that she had. And so she just got to a place, I think, where she just said, I give up. I just don't want harm in my life. Especially when there's so much shame around it. I think the shame is what, from interviewing so many different people and a lot of them talking about things like this, I think the shame is like so heavy to carry by yourself. Yes, it is.

It is. And she had two husbands who passed away from one had a heart attack and one had, I believe it was a tumor. And so she lost these two people who meant so much to her, who were in many ways her foundation, because she needed them. And then they left her. And I think she finally just said, well, I'm going to go join you, right? But I do think it started in high school when that former coach, school official, decides to abuse her in that way. It changes her life forever.

Well, I think it's important to as parents to talk to our children about boundaries, about saying no, about if something happens that you're an open source to talk to, I would never, like, hearing this story, I would never want my daughter to go through something like that and not feel like she could immediately come to me. Like, it's also sad that she goes to her friends and not her parents. When you look at that story, and does she not go to her parents because she's embarrassed? Like, I just think it's very important to start the conversation young. Well, this was 1974. So my mother and I never

talked about sex. My father had passed by then, but there was never any conversations with my father about anything close to that. And I think it was true for her parents as well. Back then, especially in the Deep South, you just didn't talk about sex. You didn't talk about rape. You didn't talk about abuse. I mean, women were the housewives. And their job was to get married, have babies, and take care of the house. My father would not let my mother take a job.

And she wanted a job. He would not let her take a job he's told her that her job was to keep the house literally and then on Fridays he would he was a contractor so he hired a certain number of people and he had his checkbook and he would the ledger and he would pull it out he'd be writing everybody's checks and then he would write her a check, take it out of the ledger, hand it to her. And she would say, can't you give me just $10 more? I remember this. Can't you give me just $10 more? He goes, no, that's all you need. And my mother would get so angry, of course, you know. And then one time, just quickly, he goes out and buys deer meat that he wants.

And he thinks it's the greatest deer meat ever. Maybe it was. But he tells her the next week, he says, I'm taking the deer meat out because that's part of the groceries. Like out of the expenses. Out of the expenses. So giving you less. Can you imagine you and I with that? No, no.

I wouldn't get very far. I mean with that no no i wouldn't i wouldn't get very far i mean that's well you wouldn't even think about it now see i grew up completely different than you in the sense that my parents made sex like i could talk about all of that i could talk about it all in front of them and so i think like that that was really comforting to know that if something happened or i needed to talk about something, I could go straight to my parents. Not one way is better. I don't know different strokes for different folks. But for me, especially after this conversation too,

the open dialogue, I think, is so important. I think, and this is like with drugs, it's with sex, it's with anything that's considered taboo. What I think people, especially young parents or any parents, need to realize is it's not like this stuff doesn't happen. It's not like your children aren't going to have access to all these things or be around these things. And so, you know, my mentality is almost better coming from us talking to our children, you know, about all these things, drugs, alcohol, sex, you know, whatever they're getting into, because they're going to get exposed to it. And I would rather

have a little bit more control over that first initial few conversations, right? As opposed to leaving it to their friends or whatever, or even a tragic case like this where it's an adult taking advantage of them. I've said it once, I'll say it again. We talk about a lot of supplements on this show. We talk about a lot of vitamins. We've had a lot of different people come on and talk about this thing and that thing and what to take and what not to take. If there is one supplement, one thing that I would prescribe to everybody listening to the show when you could only pick one, it would be Athletic Greens. And here's why. Athletic Greens has everything you need packed in one punch. It's got a probiotic. It's got a prebiotic. It's got all the vitamins and daily minerals that you need. It's got the greens. As somebody who always struggled with eating salads and vegetables and still does it this day, this is an incredible product. Here's how I do it.

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of a $500 Visa gift card and Samil Hassan's School Essentials prize package. You're going to go to samilhassanusa.com to win. That's S-I-M-I-L-A-S-A-N-U-S-A.com slash win and include the Skinny Confidential in your entry. And this is just another story that women across the country could tell as well, either about themselves or someone they know. And it is not always about sex or just about sex. It is about the power, control and authority. Those are my three words, because this school official had power and control and authority over Janice. And he knew that she had a little crush on him, maybe,

that she thought he was interesting and had a lot of respect for him as a coach. We played basketball. All four of us played ball. You know, I think he realized, okay, I can do this to her, and she won't tell anybody. Because he could have picked out, you're saying he could have picked anyone. He could have picked anyone, but he picked her because he decided that there was some form of attraction. Doesn't mean that Janice wanted to have sex with him at all.

I also think these predators in power're they can smell certain things like i think they can smell maybe like if if a woman is insecure about something they'll sort of turn on that or they're easy to be manipulated they can turn on like i i've noticed like the the predator like when a lion when a lion kills a a gazelle or whatever they go for the weakest one like i almost and i'm not saying that it's the weakest woman. I'm just saying they can smell something where they can turn it. Right.

Do you know what I mean? Yes, exactly. There's some experience, some conversation, some observation that empowers them to do what they might not ever do. Where they think they're going to get away with it. Where they think they're going to get away with it. Exactly.

That is the thing that we have to stop. We have to, they cannot get away with it. Right. And yes, exactly. And that's why I think sexual harassment laws have to be tougher. And also we need stronger, braver district attorneys and prosecutors, like, come on.

You don't think a jury is going to believe a 17-year-old because maybe there were things in her life that she did that were bad. Well, so what? You know, maybe she had been paid for sex with other men. She's 17. It's against the law. He did it. You know, so come on. There's a lot of like kind of like disgruntled guys now, especially after me too. And how am I going to phrase this? That are like, well, now like, you know, I'm not going to do anything or say anything because I'm going to get in trouble for making any pass.

And like, I actually don't think that's a bad thing. I think it puts people on their toes and it's like, okay, well then at all times you should behave appropriately. Right? Yeah. I don't think it's a bad thing that men feel disheartened to maybe push the envelope or take advantage a little bit more than they would normally. Like for me, again, like I said, I work with a lot of women, mostly women. I think it's a good thing that the other men in this office and

myself like have to come in with that energy. Right. I don't think it's a bad thing. Like, God forbid, you have to be careful in what you say and how you do and what you act and how you treat people. Right. But there's a lot of guys that are like, oh, I hate this now because you can't do anything or say anything. It's like, okay, it's not a, you know. Well, okay. People are being held to account. Right. No, absolutely. And thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that because I think that is exactly right. And I see that so much in social media, you know,

with men and women complaining about how it's going to change the dynamic between- The dynamic probably should change, to your point. But it should change. Yeah, it definitely should change for many, many reasons I laid out earlier, because it's about how women can progress in our society. And could we please become part of the Constitution? Could we put the word woman, women, in the Constitution?

It doesn't exist. It's not there, especially now with the reversal of Roe v. Wade. We're not in the Constitution, and I'm going off topic here a little bit. Yes and no, I'm going off topic. The Equal Rights Amendment needs to be in the Constitution. 38 states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. It took forever, right? It started in 1970-something when we gradually, we got a lot of states to ratify it and then Phyllis Schaefeli ended it in 1982. But now it's done, 38 states. And some legal experts are using the notion about the deadline for passing the ERA by states as an excuse not to put it in the Constitution. So President Biden now is trying to get a resolution passed that will drop the

deadline. But that's not going to happen given the number of mostly men in Congress who are not going to vote for it because they're going to try to prevent the ERA from getting in the Constitution because that will stop the reversal of Roe v. Wade. That suddenly becomes a whole new dynamic for anti-abortion, pro-choice women. But again, I think this is why people are so frustrated, right? Because there's a lot of things that you're saying here. I'm like, yeah, that sounds good. And then people will take some outlandish issue or another issue, and they're like, well, that can't happen because then it'll affect this and it'll affect this. And I know these are all complex issues, but it feels like you can never get anything done.

It just feels like a lot of stuff that most of the country would want, you just can't get done because people bring out these other outlandish issues that are going on and then it stops everything. Right. I do believe that we've gotten to a place now where we have these two extremes,

the extreme left, the extreme right, and they are throwing punches constantly. And it prevents us from finding a compromise that we can get a majority or the necessary number of members of Congress to approve. That is so important. I just think, and we think about the Constitution, what's the word they use? I'm forgetting the name that they use for it. When it's literally what is in the Constitution, it's like the Second Amendment talks about firearms that are very antiquated. They're old firearms, right? Back in the 1700s. But they literally mean, it really means firearms, right? Not assault weapons. So, but okay. So if assault weapons is not written in the constitution, then why,

why are we continuing their legality? Why are we letting people buy assault weapons? It's not in the constitution, but you know, they play with this kind of verbiage and messaging that really prevents anything from happening and stopping progress. And we really need to face some of these terrifying issues. It's just so much grayness in politics. It's so difficult. I mean, there's so much gray. The problem is, in this country, we've let extreme sides rise and take over airtime. And I kept saying, I've been talking about this show take over airtime. And I kept saying, I've been talking about this show now for two years. I go, extremes get answered with other extremes. The fact that Roe v. Wade got overturned is just a byproduct of other people on the other

side being too extreme with what they were asking for. And what I'm saying is most people in the middle, the majority of this country is looking at something like that and be like, I never wanted that. How did this happen? How do we get back to this place? And it's like, well, when you have the loudest voices in the country being amplified, especially from the media, the most absurd far left, the most absurd far right, those are people that are not speaking for the majority of people. And so whenever an absurd thing gets an answer with another absurd thing, or an extreme gets an answer with another extreme. And it's a problem because a lot of us that are common sense thinkers are left in the middle being like, wait a minute, these people don't speak for me

on either side, right? Like, how did we get away? And I think, you know, like you see guys like Bill Maher talking all the time now, it's like, he's like, I've been the same. I've stayed the same. What's going on? And I think all of us kind of have common ground there, but we've allowed a lot of these extremes to kind of take hold in this country. Well, I mean, I'm clearly showing my preferences here, but I think that the election of Donald Trump did a lot to really push the extremes farther and farther away from each other, away from compromises and moderation

and ability to make decisions and get something done for the first time. But I think that was also in large part with the frustrations people felt with the general political arena. Like a guy, an outsider doesn't come in and get elected like that if there's not frustrations. And I think this country still has to address the frustrations that are going on. I'm not a Trump fan. And he's done a lot of things that I think are very harmful to the country. But a guy like that doesn't get into that position without people having a frustration to begin with.

That's right. My brother is in Mississippi still. He's a Republican and he's very conservative and he voted for Trump. And if Trump runs again, he'll vote for him again. And he and I've had this conversation over and over and over again. But if we get to a place where we're about to arm wrestle or throw a punch or whatever, we say, okay, let's just cool off here because let's find a way that we can come to some- That's a rational approach. Agreement, yes. Well, I love my brother and I want to spend time with my brother as much as possible, especially now that I'm living in New Orleans. He didn't grow horns overnight because of who's the elected official. Yeah. I think a lot of people need to remember that. It's important. We all have to figure out

how to live here together anyway. Yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. And so I think that's why we have to get to a place where Democrats only live close to Democrats and Republicans only live close to Republicans. I mean, you know, geographically, we have just dug out trenches for us to live in now with only our member of the army. And I just think that's a sick way of looking at our lives. And as voters, we need to find a way to speak to our representatives and communicate that. And I think that says, let's vote for people that are sane. What a novel idea. What a novel idea.

But let's not vote for people who are out there spreading lies. And a lot of times we know their lies, even though they may be doing some things like we talked about earlier, even though they may be doing things that we support. But if they're telling a lie that is just generating rage among a certain group of people in order to turn that base out, and I'm talking about the left and the right, I'm not just talking about Republicans, then that only furthers and intensifies the problems that we're addressing here. Yeah. I think I've been hard on the general media and I get people write in that are in the media, traditional media, all the time and say, that's not fair, not all like that. And I get it, but

let's not lie and say that a lot of this isn't about ratings and views now. And if it's a vanilla, rational, boring thought that maybe that's not the most exciting thing to plaster on the news all day. And you see, you wake up in the morning and you tune into these stories and it's the same story all day long. And is this the only information we need all day long? Oh, I know. I'm so frustrated by that on all the networks, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, because, okay, I heard that four hours ago. Do I really need to hear it again? You know, and that's, the media really does need to address itself as well. I mean, look, there are plenty of women who work in the news media

who have faced sexual harassment and abuse. That has been a problem that has been widely covered as well as the movie industry, as well as in politics. But the institution itself needs to get really serious about what is truth and what is objectivity. If you know something is a lie and you know it because you've investigated it, then don't report it. Instead, there's that he said, he said, she said, she said thing going on, right? Well, this part of the argument says this, and this other part of the argument says that.

Well, one of those might be false. So don't focus on it, right? Get away from it and just try to use information that you know to be true. And going back to how we originally started this conversation, I think it really does a huge disservice to people who come forward in a truthful and authentic way to report an abuse or talk about behavior that's not right or to talk about an issue that's important in this country because they've minimized the credibility of all these people by making it this entertainment arena as opposed to making it about the facts. We should be in a position where we could look at things objectively and say, okay, that's a bad apple, get rid of them.

Or like, okay, that's a truth we need to pay attention to, or that's an issue that we need to dive a little bit more into. But we've made it into this whole thing where it's like, we're all dug in. I'm a CNN guy, I'm a Fox guy. And whatever those two channels say, I'm parroting. Right. No, exactly. I mean, I think MSNBC definitely is the liberal channel to watch and Fox is the conservative channel to watch. CNN is a mix of both. But yeah, they just need to get away from that. I want to go back to something we talked about right at the beginning, which is the name of the book, Penis Politics. One day in the midst of just one news story after another about sexual harassment, and this is something that happened in around 2018 when,

let's finish this story. And I look at my husband and I said, my God, there's so many stories about this with the movie industry, with the media networks, as well as politicians. I said, this is nothing but penis politics. And that name just came out out of nowhere. It's not like I was sitting around thinking about what the right word should be. And when I started writing the book, the book was called Chasing Trains because it was about these four girls. We would chase trains as a way of doing something together. And it was just this train track and there was a little dusty road beside it. And we would try to race the trains. You know, it was a way to get ready for basketball season, right? You know, and so I called it Chasing Trains. Then somebody said to me, you need a

shocking title to get people to pay attention to the book because if it's called Chasing Trains, nobody will understand what that means and da, da, da, da, da. So that's how I came to call it chasing trains and I was mortified by it though because I was afraid that well what if they don't publish it or what if they don't put it in bookstores or what if you know whatever but it didn't it was shocking it is shocking but at the same time it is about us addressing a problem that people don't want to talk about. We don't really like to talk about penises in public. We don't really like to talk about vaginas in public.

But we should be talking about those things in terms of what they represent. And we should be talking about that spectrum of sexual harassment all the way to rape and everything in between. And I came to that conclusion after, I don't know if you read about this in my bio, or I don't think it was in my bio, it may have been, about the accident that I had. But I had a brain injury in 2017. And I was in a gym and I was on a treadmill. And somehow the treadmill pushed me back and I hit my head on the floor. And the floor was as hard as concrete.

It had a super thin, less than half an inch piece of carpet. I mean, tiny, tiny bit of carpet that covered the concrete. But it was hard. And I cracked my skull unconscious. Long story short, I've been in a state of recovery for five years now. And I had to stop work because I couldn't work for a long time. And I was doing, I had, but was a press secretary and I had been doing public relations and I lost a good paying job because I couldn't do it accident, though, helped me write the book to begin with. impacted my life from the time I'm in high school till today. And all the things that happened in between, not just to me, but to women I know and loved and loved working with,

that was an important step in my life that I, for the first time, I was able to just recover. Yeah. And that was everything from walking to talking and then not being able to write. So the practice was writing the book. And I never thought it would actually end up a book, but I had great editors to help me too. Well, now we have a book, Penis Politics. Everyone get one.

I'm sure there's politics of the penis in wherever you are. Yes. Where can everyone find you and your book? PenisPolitics. Everyone get one. I'm sure there's politics of the penis wherever you are. Yes. Where can everyone find you and your book? Well, you can go to www.penis.com or you can put Penis Politics in the Google and it would take you to my website and you can buy my book there or go on Amazon and buy it or read about the book and decide whether or not you want to buy it. Karen, you are amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. So are you guys, both of you.

Thank you so much for having me. Penis politics. I'm going to use that if Michael acts up. For a heavy subject, I feel like we covered a lot of ground. We did. We did. We were very on point. All right. Thank you. Do you want to win a signed copy of Karen Hinton's book Penis Politics? All you have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram

at Lauren Bostic. And of course, make sure you've rated and reviewed the skinny confidential him and her show on iTunes. All right.

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