Court Papers Porn: The 'Village Voice' Sex Harassment Suit
The good news, at least, is that there are apparently limits to the Voice's usually suffocating blanket of politically correct leftyism. The bad news, on the other hand, is that these few examples of heterodoxy appear not in the page of the frequently stultifying weekly but rather in terminology Voice EIC Don Forst uses to address his gay, female, or Asian staffers. At least, so says a complaint filed this week in Federal District Court in New York by Richard Goldstein, a 61-year-old veteran editor at the paper who was forced out last year and is charging harassment and age discrimination.
Our favorite bits of the complaint:
Beginning in or about 1997, plaintiff was subjected to ongoing sexual harassment by Forst, consisting principally of numerous insulting comments concerning his sex, his sexual behavior, and his sexual orientation. Among other things, Forst called plaintiff an "ass-licker," criticized his movements as "prancing" and "dancelike," said he "walk[ed] like a ballerina," insinuated falsely that plaintiff was having sexual relations with a male co-worked whose work he was editing, called him "slut boy" and "pussy boy," and made various comments about plaintiff's body (referring repeatedly to plaintiff's "dick" and "ass"). ...
While at the voice, Forst referred to lesbians as "toads," and to a Vietnamese employee as a "yellow bastard." He referred to a lesbian editor as "a man-hating hyke," and made improper comments of a sexual nature to at least two female editors as well as to a female production worker. He forced plaintiff to sit in on private meetings held with another male manager while they made salacious comments concerning the heterosexual prostitution ads in the paper.
Want more? The Smoking Gun has the whole thing.
