New Roy Moore accuser will disclose allegations at Gloria Allred presser today

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84. You're welcome. That's exactly what happened.

What else happened:

Evidently, somebody'd noticed I had spoken to Gloria Allred. There were a few calls coming into the station complaining about what had happened on the air. Granted, my dad and my husband were among them, but there were evidently more than two. The behavior toward me changed a little. Suddenly the GM was calling me into his office, to offer me a "lovely parting gift" of $3,000. My dad heard that and said "if you can get $3,000, you can get $50,000." I'd already suspected as much. The GM also "suggested" to me that if I pursued any sort of redress (like if I sued), "you might never get hired in this city again."

DAYUM I learned so much during that little bit of time! In my head, I was already busy calculating financial and other costs. Okay so $50 grand? And indeed WHAT IF it winds up that nobody will hire me from here on if I sue (and presumably win)? Will $50 grand be enough to live on? Anything I could do preemptively, aside from maybe hiring Gloria Allred to take my case, in which it would be splashy and noisy and covered coast-to-coast? I calculated my "worth", as in clout, and name-recognition value. As in - was I prominent enough, at least locally, that I had some weight to throw around? Answer: NO. "News chick" on rock stations. Never mind that you worked morning drive, on-air. It was the (male) morning jock you worked with, who got the big paycheck, programming's priority, and all the promotional attention. Morning show was the heaviest of the heavy-weights in the pecking order. Still is. All your high-priced big-name talent is on in the morning. All the must-buy advertisers are on in the morning. A good morning show can carry the whole rest of the day and do well in the ratings. Afternoon drive in radio is big, too, but secondary to morning drive.

Success is like that. "The Tonight Show" alone, during Johnny Carson's day, provided one quarter of ALL of NBC's revenue. ONE out of every FOUR dollars the network brought in came from the Carson show. "Today" much the same, especially when Carson was king of late nights. People would fall asleep with their TVs tuned to his channel, and sure enough, they'd wake up the next morning to check on the news - on NBC's morning monolith. Johnny's parking spot on the lot was PRIMO. Do note, btw, that his longtime nightly sidekick Ed McMahon DIDN'T have a parking space that close to the stage door. Nor did he have that size paycheck or promotional prominence.

Anyway - my instinct was to lay low, take the three grand, and leave quietly because THAT reinforced that I had some dignity. I did already have an ace in the hole, though, and nobody at the station knew about that. I was getting ready to leave anyway. I had another job lined up at NBC Radio. I've occasionally mentioned being part of that network's experiment - a news network that programmed to rock stations. Nobody cared about such things until John Lennon got shot. We were already up and running by then, and our New York reporter's coverage was referenced in Rolling Stone magazine's coverage of it.

But I gotta tell ya - I know what it is and how it feels when you read about your replacement in the trade papers - before anybody in charge has the decency to tell you. And because the programming, music department, and upper management got the trades before they filtered all the way down the hall to where the newsroom was, EVERYBODY'D read about me in the pop/rock column, being replaced by the new jock's morning man before I saw it. This "hilarious" moment ensued, wherein I had indeed read the column and saw that I was about to be replaced, and by whom. So as I approached the hallway to the other side of the building, who should come breathlessly hustling out of his office but the program director. He sure was a piece of work. The same guy who roared hot bile and burning asphalt (accessorized with strings of swear words) at all of us at various times, and whose temper was usually dialed up to about two-thousand degrees Fahrenheit (except for the way he fawned over the new morning jock and his on-air entourage), was much different at this moment. He was serious in demeanor, his facial expression was earnest and troubled, his eyes were great big, and his chin was tipped downward instead of jutting out, as if to jam his way into your comfort zone and intimidate you (notice with trump sometimes! Same posture!). He was nervous. He called me by name and said "I need to talk to you." I knew what it was about. I smiled and said so. I believe my comment was "I'll bet you do." We didn't talk for long. At that point, I figured any encounter with him was irrelevant. I was already outta there.

One of the other jocks, in the meantime, let it be known to me that he had a copy of that morning show disaster and wanted to make sure I had it (should I need it for any reason...). He beckoned me through the news booth glass window to come into the studio while he was on the air. He said he wanted to give me a hug. I complied and while we were hugging, he slipped me his copy in a little bag. Wanted to make sure no one saw. I did have a few friends there.

Oddly enough, two jobs later, I was being interviewed by the manager and news director of the FM sister station to that other one. The horrific incident there a few years earlier came up in the conversation. At one point, the news director, a rather brilliant and highly creative woman (who wound up being really terrific to work for/with) blurted out, "so you sued, right?" I corrected the record eagerly, because I never did sue. I liked my work and I wanted to be able to keep doing it. I knew women who suffered abuse and sued, and won. They won A LOT. Which was GOOD. Because that's what they lived on, from then on. They never worked in that capacity again. Btw - they wound up hiring me at that FM station.

I heard Gloria Allred's next client promo'd just a little bit ago. My reaction is: "God Bless Gloria. Standing up for us again! Taking our side when nobody else will! And making the guilty SWEAT."