Carolyn Heldman, an anti-Trump associate professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, has revealed herself as one of the multiple female co-workers and guests to whom Fox News Eric Bolling has texted photos of his genitals.
As mentioned here yesterday, Heldman published a Facebook post yesterday afternoon which delineated the “grave concern” her experiences with Bolling caused to her “friends and family”:
Bolling referred to me as “Dr. McHottie” on air on four different occasions, and called me “smart, beautiful, and wrong” on air twice. I pushed back with “Mr. McSexist,” but I shouldn’t have had to. This on-air behavior was perfectly acceptable to Fox executives at the time.
Bolling would also contact me via phone and text after shows, sometimes to apologize for his behavior (and then do it again), and sometimes just to talk. He said he wanted to fly me out to New York for in-studio hits and to have “fun.” He asked me to have meals with him on several occasions, but I found excuses not to go. Once, he took me up to his office in New York, showed me his baseball jerseys, and in the brief time I was there, let me know that his office was his favorite place to have sex. I know other women have had similar experiences with Bolling, which means that lots of folks at Fox knew about his behavior well before 2017.
Bolling was one of three men from whom I experienced sexual harassment and gender discrimination (the others being Bill O’Reilly and Woody Fraser).
Not addressed in Heldman’s Facebook post is whether factors other than her academic expertise maybe just maybe may have played a role in her “hundreds of appearances on Fox and Fox Business from 2008 – 2011.” (As can be seen by her bio, six years later, Heldman remains a non-tenured associate professor at a university not exactly considered one of the nation’s most academically prestigious.)
Heldman’s Facebook post also includes a rant about a colorful former Major League Baseball star who was not employed by Fox News but was merely another guest on a show: “On March 20, 2011, Lenny Dykstra persistently asked me to a party and told me that he gets ‘sexually aroused when I talk politics.'”
Dykstra, who in general is upfront about his use of steroids during his baseball career and about his personal life, has been less than timid about sharing details of how his “bloodflow” has in the past been triggered by sources other than traditional romantic activity. Last year, a New York Post article titled “Lenny Dykstra was traumatized by Darryl Strawberry’s genitals” mentioned that, for Dykstra, “Playing in the Big Apple [for the New York Mets from 1985 to 1989] was so ‘electric,’ it would give him an erection when he stepped up to bat.”
Such a revelation is actually not inconsistent with Dykstra’s track record as one of the greatest postseason/ pressure-situation baseball players of all time. A leadoff hitter who during his career was one of the smallest players in Major League Baseball, Dykstra hit 10 home runs in 112 career postseason at-bats. In contrast, during regular seasons in his 1985-1996 career, Dykstra hit only 81 home runs in 4,559 at bats.
Dykstra furthermore tended to hit post-season home runs and other extra-base hits at the most critical moments:
In Game 3 of the 1986 National League Championship Series, Dykstra’s two-run walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th gave his New York Mets a 6-5 win.
In Game 6 of that series, with the Mets losing 3-0 in the 9th inning, having managed only two hits all game, Dykstra hit a triple which triggered a rally which eventually led to a 7-6 16-inning victory which put the Mets in the World Series (which they won in dramatic fashion, most memorably involving a miraculous Game 6 comeback which actually did not involve Dykstra).
In Game 3 of the 1986 World Series, after the Mets had not managed a single-extra base hit while losing Games 1 and 2 at home to the Boston Red Sox, Dykstra led off the game with a home run off Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd.
In Game 5 of the 1993 National League Championship Series, by then having moved on to the Philadelphia Phillies, Dykstra hit a home run in the top of the 10th inning which gave his team a 4-3 lead, which they held onto to take a 3 games-to-2 lead in the series, which they eventually won. (The Phillies lost the World Series that year to the Toronto Blue Jays; during the six games of that World Series, Dykstra hit .348 with four home runs.)
