Bloomberg Allegedly Didn't Want 'Fat Women' Representing His Company, and Other Fucked Up Tales
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Don’t you just love that slow drip, drip, drip of stories about presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg being an absolute creep? It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and on Sunday, Business Insider published a fresh batch of nauseating allegations for everyone to pore over.
Forty current and former Bloomberg LP employees have come out on the record about the toxic “trading floor” culture at Bloomberg, where they allege that Bloomberg made sexist comments in the workplace as recently as 2014; where a male editor retained his job after several reports of sexual harassment; and where black women were so discouraged with their experiences that they warned their alma mater—a historically black college—not to let Bloomberg recruit at the university.
The lengthy exposé of misconduct includes several accusations that line up with what has been previously reported about the bro culture at Bloomberg. For example, when Bloomberg allegedly denied a woman by the name of Maggie Berry a raise in the ‘90s due to her weight:
According to this former Bloomberg employee, in the 1990s Berry was proposed as a candidate for a promotion into a job that required interacting with clients. According to the source, Bloomberg dismissed the idea based on Berry’s physical appearance, saying, “I will not have that fat woman representing my company.” He ultimately hired a man for the job, the former Bloomberg employee said.
Berry, who has worked for Bloomberg for 25 years, defended him and said, “Having Mike’s backing and support has allowed me, and many other women at Bloomberg, to progress into management positions overseeing a significant part of our business.” She is, conveniently, featured in a campaign ad about how much Bloomberg supports women in the workplace.
Here are some other charming moments from the Business Insider piece:
Bloomberg and other top male colleagues, she said, would call out “SFU” as a code when certain women walked by — to make clear they thought the woman was “short, fat, and ugly,” the former employee said. Bloomberg developed nicknames for women he found unattractive, the former employee said, calling one woman “dogface” behind her back and another woman “Stopatruckski” — which rhymed with her last name — in reference to her weight. Once, while describing a female higher-up at the company, Bloomberg remarked, “Don’t let the lesbian get you down!”
Regarding sexual harassment hush-ups:
A different former employee, explaining her own decision not to speak for the record about her experiences [with sexual harassment about Bloomberg LP], said she did feel pressure not to come forward. “The full force of the Bloomberg machine, when it’s directed at you, is pretty intense,” the former employee said. “Never underestimate how scary it has been for so many women.”
And those NDAs:
Another former Bloomberg employee who signed an NDA said, “I would gladly talk on the record about this, but I can’t. I’ve been waiting for a long time to have my experience come out, but also at the same time living with fear about talking about it. And it doesn’t seem fair that I went through this thing — this is my life — and I’m not even allowed to share what happened to me. This is why it would suck if Bloomberg was elected president. He silenced all these people. We don’t know half the things that have gone on at his company.”
And remember that letter that those women sent to their HBCU about Bloomberg recruiting? Here’s an excerpt:
“This organization does not have people of color sitting on their management committee, or in visible senior leadership roles, and the ones that do have direct reports have acted in irrepressible ways towards young women of color,” the letter reads. “The experiences shared with me range from being solicited for sexual favors to get ahead, to young women in their first year of work taking medical leave based on their severe emotional and mental stress experienced at the organization. Bloomberg LP will spend money investing in unconscious bias conversations but fail to acknowledge the conscious decision-making had by a select few that continue to marginalize people at the company.”
Nauseating.
Rich people have each other’s backs through thick and thin, especially rich people who want to piss off President Trump. That’s apparently why Rosie O’Donnell helping former Trump goon Michael Cohen pen a tell-all book about the president.
A source has told Page Six that “outspoken Trump loather” O’Donnell visited Cohen at the upstate New York medium-security facility where he is serving a three-year sentence for tax evasion and bank fraud and talked. The two have allegedly “bonded over Trump, and [O’Donnell is] helping him with his book, which is now highly critical of the president.”
Fuck the book. I, for one, want to watch the bad Lifetime movie about these two developing an unlikely friendship in the unlikeliest of places. [Page Six]
- Former President Barack Obama congratulated Joe Biden on his South Carolina primary win, but still won’t endorse him. Tease of the century. [New York Post]
- There were a ton of other endorsements today for Biden, however, including from Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Harry Reid, and… Cher, who has been stanning Biden for a minute now, but is really letting her Joe flag fly today.
- Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren received the endorsement of EMILY’s List:
- And Bernie Sanders has the support of Miss Major, an LGBTQ activist who participated in the Stonewall Uprising:
- Bloomberg didn’t receive any exciting endorsements today, but he sure spent a lot of money on coronavirus ads:
- Ivanka Trump is officially a Republican now. [New York Times]