Accusations of Inappropriate Behavior
He received public attention in 1987 when it became public knowledge that he was having an affair with Kati Marton, the wife of ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings.
In 1998, Cohen was involved in a dispute with editorial aide Devon Spurgeon that was ultimately mediated by Washington Post management. Cohen reportedly asked Spurgeon questions about "casual sex", told her to "stand up and turn around", and gave her the "silent treatment" for three weeks. Cohen contended that "it was a personality dispute at an office, but it had nothing to do with sexual harassment as the term applies today." Post management concluded that Spurgeon had been subjected to a "hostile working environment" but not to "sexual harassment" and that Cohen was guilty of "inappropriate behavior."
Read more about this topic: Richard Cohen (columnist)
Famous quotes containing the words accusations and/or behavior:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the systems ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)