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Malignant Dwarf Jeff Zucker Forced to Resign From CNN Over Sleazy Sex Affair

Posted on | February 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Malignant Dwarf Jeff Zucker Forced to Resign From CNN Over Sleazy Sex Affair

In his landmark 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, economist Friedrich Hayek included a chapter entitled “Why the Worst Get on Top,” explaining why collectivist regimes are always run by evil people.

What Hayek said of 20th-century totalitarian systems could be applied to dishonest propaganda operations like CNN, i.e., that to “be a useful assistant” in such an organization, someone must “be prepared actively to break every moral rule he has ever known . . . they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything.” When the basic purpose of an organization — its raison d’être — is to deceive people, no honest person is likely to seek employment there, and those who advance to the leadership of the organization are sure to be notorious liars, who would be considered unworthy of trust by all decent and moral people. Such was self-evidently the case with CNN and Jeff Zucker:

CNN’s top boss, Jeff Zucker, resigned from the network Wednesday after he didn’t disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at the company that’s long been considered the worst kept secret in television.
Zucker, who has helmed the cable network for nine years, told colleagues in a memo that his relationship with CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust came up during a probe into Chris Cuomo’s alleged sexual misconduct.
“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Zucker wrote in the memo, shared on Twitter by CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
“I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years,” he wrote. “I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”
Gollust, who previously worked as former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s communications director, released a statement confirming the relationship.
“Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years. Recently our relationship changed during COVID,” said Gollust, who is staying with the network.
“I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time. I’m incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do everyday.” . . .
Rumors about Zucker, 56, and Gollust’s affair have been circulating in the media world for years, but the pair have repeatedly, and vehemently, denied they were in a relationship when asked numerous times by Page Six.
Zucker was allegedly so brazen about his relationship with Gollust, he moved her into the same Upper East Side building where he lived with his then-wife of 21 years Caryn Zucker before the two divorced, sources said.

Everybody knew about this “worst kept secret”:

Female employees at CNN are furious that chief spokesperson Allison Gollust is keeping her job after “lying” about her affair with newly resigned CEO Jeff Zucker “for years,” sources told The Post.
“Why is she allowed to keep her job?” a CNN insider railed.
“CNN is supposed to be a transparent news network. How does she get away with lying about their affair for so long?”
Early Wednesday, Zucker sent a memo to colleagues announcing he’d be retiring after his relationship with Gollust came to light during CNN’s probe into Chris Cuomo. He called the relationship “consensual” and told staff that he wished he’d disclosed it sooner.
Gollust released a statement shortly after saying that she and Zucker had been professional colleagues for over 20 years but their relationship “changed during COVID.”
One insider called the comments “a total lie.”
“They’ve been together for years,” the source dished.
“And she’s still lying about it today — the statement she made that ‘recently our relationship changed during COVID’ is a total lie.”

Do you see how Hayek’s observation about totalitarianism applies? The people now complaining about Gollust getting to keep her job were themselves implicated in covering up the Zucker-Gollust affair — if everybody knew it had been going on “for years,” why didn’t they say anything? Or, perhaps more to the point, if they felt Zucker’s behavior was unethical, why didn’t they quit and go work somewhere else?

But that’s just it, you see — everybody at CNN wanted to work at CNN. They wanted to work for Jeff Zucker, an unethical man running an unethical organization, which was staffed by unethical employees. The entire organization is corrupt, from top to bottom.

CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota said Wednesday on “Newsroom” that the undisclosed relationship between CNN chief Jeff Zucker and Executive Vice President Allison Gollust is between “two consenting adults,” so it should not have caused Zucker to step down.
Camerota said, “I want to say something personal for a moment. I feel it deeply personally, but I think I speak for all of us and our colleagues. This is an incredible loss. It’s an incredible loss. Jeff is a remarkable person and an incredible leader. He has this uncanny ability to make, I think, every one of us feel special and valuable in our own way even though he is managing an international news organization of thousands of people. I just know he had this unique ability to make us feel special. I don’t think that comes around all the time. I think, again, it’s an incredible loss. I just think it’s so regrettable how it happened. If what you are reporting is true, these are two consenting adults who are both executives. That they can’t have a private relationship feels wrong on some level.”

You may ask yourself why Camerota is engaging in this shameless toadying toward Zucker, even after he’s no longer her boss. But you see that toadying up to Zucker was a prerequisite to employment at CNN, and everyone there was in a sort of ass-kissing competition, to see who could most be more obsequious toward their loathsome boss. The habit of heaping undeserved praise on Zucker was so deeply trained into Camerota that she can’t break it now, as Ace says of Brian Stelter, “They say that if you take the chain off a dog that’s been chained for ten years, it still won’t walk more than a chain’s length from the stake.”

CNN was a cult of personality, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Mao’s Communist China. Total loyalty to Zucker was the only condition of employment; ability counted for very little, and as for integrity — well, no one with integrity would ever work at CNN.




 

Category: CNN

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