In an ideal world, bosses would refrain from sleeping with subordinates, so as not to cause jealousy and tension in the office. But we’re not in an ideal world. Otherwise, we’d already have health care for everyone and Glenn Beck wouldn’t have any influence over the White House.
After David Letterman acknowledged that he’d had flings with young assistants, some commentators talked about it in the same breath as Roman Polanski, who drugged and sodomized a 13-year-old. That’s outrageous.
Sexual harassment entails pressuring or penalizing a staffer or making the office atmosphere hostile. Despite the blustering of the attorney of the alleged execrable extortionist, Joe Halderman, there’s no evidence yet that Letterman was guilty of that.
People sometimes fuck people they’ve met at work. Unfortunately it simply isn’t possible to decree that interns shall only fuck interns, assistants shall only fuck assistants, staffers shall only fuck staffers, managers shall only fuck managers, and the boss shall… well, the boss doesn’t get to fuck anyone at work, ever. In an ideal world, like Dowd says, no one would fuck a subordinate. But real life is messier. So we have to judge workplace romances/dalliances on a case-by-case basis. The question isn’t, “Did someone sleep with someone with less power?” but this slightly more complicated series of questions: “How was the affair conducted? Was the power imbalance exploited by the more powerful person—or, as is sometimes the case, was the power imbalance exploited by the less powerful person? Is there a pattern here? Pressure? Predation? Is this a hostile workplace environment?”
Two people can have consensual sex even in the face of a power imbalance. It infantilizes the less powerful person and makes a cartoon villain of the more powerful person to insist that mutual consent isn’t possible.
And for the record/trolls: No, I’ve never fucked an intern or a staffer at the Stranger. And I’ve never fucked anyone on Ann Lander’s desk. And I’ve never made love in the sun. And I’ve never been to paradise. And I’ve never been to me.
Word.
Dan, you really should be to you sometime.
Ha, nice — I love the edit.
Please please please Dan! Fuck someone on Ann’s desk TONIGHT! I don’t care if it’s the boyfriend-cum-Can-Husband or one of the TSARY. You’ve been writing at that desk for too long not so as to have it besmirched by santorum!
Also, didn’t I hear from someone like Madonna or Sandra Bernhardt that Dave was a bdsm bottom?
If so, that really puts the power dynamic in a whole new light.
Sure no big deal, and I’m sure the people at work not fucking him received the same treatment at work as those who were.
But they are at risk.
In honour of your birthday, take your beloved and go find some sun, Dan. Think of the vitamin D, it’s worth it.
gee Dan,
the Boss dilemma has an easy solution;
go fuck yourself…
Yeah, you might meet the love/trick of a lifetime in the workplace. And, if you’re not a shithead, you might be able to dip the wick in an ethical manner. But if your only potential pool of partners is the office, your life is seriously out of balance.
Dan, whoever did the harassment prevention training at The Stranger is doing a kick-ass job. 🙂
Good Morning Dan,
I agree with you and Dowd on this one. However, it is good counsel too avoid not having affairs at the office (literally and figuratively). The reasons are fairly obvious. And, I believe that asking (read: hitting on) someone out the FIRST (and only one time if that person is an adult) time doesn’t constitute sexual harrassment. Your second paragraph (Two people…) is especially succinct.
Agree with every word.
But that song. That song. I’d forgotten it ever existed.
8
but try not to let Terry find out . . .
You don’t realize how great sex can be until you’ve fucked a subordinate or two.
until he proves otherwise, letterman is EXACTLY LIKE POLANSKI. this is america after all.
….. or, as the Kinsey Sicks sing it:
“I’ve been through parasites, but I’ve never had VD.”
Have you been undressed by kings, though?
She is so right! Outrageous to mention them in the same breath! Like she (and you) just did again!
@5, i never heard that, don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s a lot of tooth-gaps.
I’m with you, Dan. And we act like there is no way that the subordinates were getting anything out of it. It was consensual, afterall. I would be quite content banging Stewart/Colbert as a subordinate.
I agree that it “infantilizes the less powerful person and makes a cartoon villain of the more powerful person to insist that mutual consent isn’t possible.” And yes, to mention Letterman in the same breath as Polanski is to posit a moral universe in which sane, decent people can’t even breathe.
What you never address in this dispatch is: if the less powerful person receives benefits that do not accrue to peers who did not fuck the boss, do those peers have a right to complain? I believe that, without infintilizing anyone, they do.
(To her credit, Dowd at least raises this point, and seems to resolve it in Letterman’s favor).
I agree that it “infantilizes the less powerful person and makes a cartoon villain of the more powerful person to insist that mutual consent isn’t possible.” And yes, to mention Letterman in the same breath as Polanski is to posit a moral universe in which sane, decent people can’t even breathe.
What you never address in this dispatch is: if the less powerful person receives benefits that do not accrue to peers who did not fuck the boss, do those peers have a right to complain? I believe that, without infintilizing anyone, we can acknowledge that they do.
(To her credit, Dowd at least raises this point, and seems to resolve it in Letterman’s favor).
I agree, Quintus, if the subordinate is getting ahead because of the sex, there is certainly a problem with that. But that’s an entirely different issue. It is possible for an affair to take place without leading to benefits in the workplace.
Dan, I wish you didn’t sound convincing when you said you’d never fucked an intern or anyone on Ann Landers’ desk (although maybe you’ve been fucked on it), because your trolls – and frankly I, too – much prefer to think of you as a rabid degenerate who foams at the mouth and converts little children to homosexuality.
Don’t ruin our image of you. Please.
1)Dan is part owner of The Stranger so he is free to fuck other partners.
2)notice he says he did not FUCK on the AL desk…this gives him an out so he doesn’t have to admit to the non-stop salad tossing/frottaging/dirty sanchezing that occurs at every opportunity.
@26: I have never engaged in any sexual activity, of any sort or stripe, anywhere on or near Ann Lander’s desk. I have not fucked on it, or been fucked on it. I have not tossed salads on it, I have not had my salad tossed upon it. Etc.
Hmm. I wonder if Ann Landers ever fucked anybody on Ann Landers’ desk.
That desk needs some sex on it. Even if it’s just a dry hump.
At least get a bee jay UNDER the desk.
You guys miss that the “I’ve” in “And I’ve never fucked anyone on Ann Lander’s desk” is italicized, meaning that Dan seems to positively know that it has been fucked upon before. Desk besmirched. Fini
Argh! What’s more frustrating? That I had to be reminded of that old song? Or given the mental image of Ann Landers getting banged on her work desk?
Or that Dan’s theorizing out of sex-advice-columnist thin air? If you’d ever been herded like cattle into a room in a big corporate workplace and forced to suffer through hours of indoctrination on this subject, you’d certainly get the impression that nobody of disparate rank should get it on. Heck, I came out of those classes almost convinced I shouldn’t even talk to the opposite sex…
Of course, the males in my workplace who needed that education the most didn’t change their behavior one fucking whit, so it may have been a waste of hundreds of employee hours.
This is lawyer turf, alas. We can have all of the opinions we want about libidos and romance and such, but this is all lawyer turf now.
What @31 said. Speculation should be tomorrow’s Slog Poll.
What the hell is the point of being rich and famous if you can’t fuck the staff?
This is the entertainment biz, not the offices of Citibank. If Dave violated some rule (or, much less likely, the law), he should be punished, but he probably pays more in speeding tickets every week than anything he’d be docked for this behavior, which I predict will be $0.
Let’s get back to talking about cutting off Polanski’s balls.
@28: I hope he gave the top a light bleaching when he got it. Who knows what that woman could have been up to?