Corporate smear campaigns happen all the time
"Opposition research” on employees is not unusual within companies. It serves as insurance that executives won't go rogue. Sometimes it doesn't work.
On May 9, Tucker Carlson revealed his plans to reimagine his cancelled Fox show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” — for Twitter. He announced his plans with a low budget video on — where else — Twitter.
The video has had 24 million views in about 24 hours. This 3 minute video is leagues ahead of competitor Andersen Cooper (CNN), whose show averages about 700k nightly viewers. And many multiples ahead of “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC which garners about 1.45 million viewers in its 10 p.m. slot. Tucker’s Twitter video trumps his own average viewership from his defunct Fox show which averaged about 3.25 million total viewers in its 8 p.m. slot.
Leading up to Carlson’s announcement yesterday, I watched one leaked video after another appear in The New York Times or via Media Matters. The wonder where they could have possibly come from! videos were almost certainly an attempt by Fox to turn his loyal fans against him thus returning viewership to the news network. Presumably it was also a scorched earth approach, trying to ensure that the guy never works again.
The traction of yesterday’s video seems proof that the never works again part is a non-starter. The hoped for about-face back to Fox by Tucker’s fans may be a non-starter as well, but that remains to be seen.
As I watched the endless stream of not particularly interesting Tucker videos leaked by Fox, I couldn’t help but imagine that my former employer has poured over every email, text and utterance of mine from my 23 years at the company. I presume they’ve hoped to find something that paints me in an unflattering — racist? homophobic? generally bigoted? angry? thieving? corrupt? — light.
I’m not comparing myself to Tucker in terms of my centrality to the company’s identity or results. Nowhere near. Maybe Levi’s just doesn’t care enough to bother when it comes to me, at least not after the fact of my working there. Though I do know through the grapevine that there have been executive team meltdowns over my book and some employees are starting to question the leadership team’s motives. As in: could they actually be as greedy, uncaring and phony as Jen has laid out?
That said, Levi’s engaged in pre-ousting opposition research and weaponized it to push me out the door.
If you don’t toe the company line, corporate America will attempt to ruin you. If you say things the company disagrees with — even if those things have nothing to do with work, and your value to the company is clear (driving viewership, revenue, fan engagement) — they will attempt to demolish your reputation. The vast majority of folks fall in line. Thus, Corporate America is where free speech goes to die.
This kind of opposition research (“oppo research”) or keeping of receipts for insurance purposes (aka blackmail), is common in corporate America.
But now, in the absence of any leaked, incriminating emails or texts from me, I can only assume they haven’t found anything that is compellingly controversial.
Here is what Bloomberg came up with instead: a quote from an executive administrative assistant, Brian Nixon, featured in an article by Claire Suddath titled “How One Rogue Exec Thrust Levi’s Into the Culture Wars” that ran last April.
“She was repeatedly attacking obese people, old people. She was anti-vax, anti-mask, and that wasn’t following the science, in my mind. We were making decisions as a company on masking policies, and it felt like she didn’t believe in any of that.”
Bloomberg offered no “proof” of these assertions by Nixon. And Suddath left out the part about how I only challenged masking for very young children — pre-schoolers in diapers — a requirement that made the U.S. an outlier across the globe. And there’s been nothing since from Levi’s, other than to say that I dared to challenge government scientists. Their official statement includes this:
“Jen went beyond calling for school re-openings and began using her platform to criticize public health guidelines and government scientists, effectively undermining the company’s health and safety policies. . .”
Given Fauci’s recent remark that masks probably only work at the margins, I’d offer up that I was, in fact, following the science albeit before government scientists declared it “the science.” Here is what Fauci said to The New York Times reporter David Wallace-Wells about two weeks ago:
"From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins—maybe 10 percent."
Assumedly this marginal protection was for adults, not babies. If adults can only achieve a (made up) 10% level of protection, what about toddlers incapable of even putting their own shoes on? I’m going to go with zero. A zero percent level of protection for 2-year-olds.
In my imagined scenario of Levi’s madly searching for egregious indiscretions on my part, I think they would have found that I adhered to every covid rule in the office. More ardently than many, given that I was already in a heap of trouble and attempting to salvage my career without sacrificing my integrity by silencing myself and succumbing to the mob.
Once the San Francisco headquarters opened for optional in-person work, I went to my office a few days a week. Working one day in my glass-walled office, our head of H.R. entered to say hello. She told me I could remove my mask, it was just us. The company had recently relaxed the masking policy — though I can’t recall specifically to what. The policy changed so often it was hard to keep track. Masking for all, vaccinated can take off masks, there’s a surge everyone put the masks back on, masks in distribution centers but not at corporate, 2 masks, no masks, and on and on. Finally it was ok, fine, just don’t come in at all.
I responded no thanks to my H.R. peer. I didn’t need anyone — though there was no one there except my administrative assistant — claiming I’d thwarted the rules and tried to kill the head of human resources with my covid denialism.
At any rate, I’ve been pondering the fact that oppo research in companies is not unusual. Often, when a leader is being targeted for an ousting — based on failure to deliver results — rather than fire the person, there will be an unofficial investigation. The powers that be are hoping to find expense report violations, or drunkenness at a company event, or maybe absconding with a product sample for personal use (something explicitly forbidden in most apparel companies, but often ignored for those who are lucky enough to be sample size).
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