#MeToo run amok

Movements collapse when they become more interested in collecting heads than advancing their cause

Accused.
(Image credit: Brain light / Alamy Stock Photo)

Movements collapse when they become more interested in collecting heads than advancing their cause. Unfortunately, the very worthy #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and abuse might have just reached that point.

Last Friday, #MeToo took down Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Henderson, the editorial page editor of the liberal Detroit Free Press (or Freep as it is called locally). Henderson was fired for "inappropriate behavior" — even though no women actively complained about it — that allegedly violated the newspaper's "zero tolerance policy." But if this standard — both too vague and too strict — is going to be religiously enforced on workplace interactions in the post-Harvey Weinstein era, few men — or, women, for that matter — will ever feel safe in their jobs.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.