He’s the leering uncle you can’t uninvite to the family dinner.
He’s the weirdo in the parking lot who just stands there ogling you as you fumble with your groceries, jump into your car, lock it and get the hell out of there.
He’s Daily Beast CEO Ben Sherwood.
If you’ve wondered about the head-scratching prevalence of Daily Beast articles about porn, Pornhub, incest, “sex work,” “sex scandals” and any other noun preceded by the word “sex,” “sexy” or “sexual”; if you can’t make heads or tails of the online periodical’s insatiable obsession with the prurient and salacious; if you can’t wrap your wits around why The Daily Beast—which has been hemorrhaging millions for close to a decade—would be deranged enough to embrace a child sex trafficking apologist and a serial wife-beating bigot as theological scholars, look no further than its head honcho, Ben Sherwood, for your answer.
Like many fellow reprobates, Ben Sherwood cloaks his private beastliness in a public show of virtue.
Sherwood, CEO of The Daily Beast, is just that—a daily beast. He was accused of being just that by former Good Morning America producer Kirstyn Crawford, who sued her ex-employers for sexual misconduct in a complaint filed in September of 2021. To wit: “Benjamin Sherwood, former president of Disney-ABC Television Group and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, would regularly engage in sexually harassing behavior. During his time as president of ABC News from 2010 to 2015, Sherwood would inappropriately touch women in the newsroom on their shoulders and arms and kiss them on the head. More than one female ABC employee felt this unwelcome behavior was ‘creepy.’”
And now, as CEO, Sherwood satisfies his drooling cravings and foists them on us through his choice of “editorial” content for The Daily Beast.
Sherwood, who took the reins of the Beast this past April, is simply following that old piece of advice to would-be writers: Write about what you know. And Ben Sherwood knows. He knows sexual abuse and harassment because he’s apparently an old hand at it. So he feels most at home writing about it—as in his recent piece on the Menendez brothers, perpetrators of a heinous crime who claimed that sexual assault was their justification. A search through Sherwood’s article, however, yields no disclosure/disclaimer that Sherwood has himself been credibly accused of serial sexual harassment. Neither does a search through The Beast’s numerous articles on sex, porn, etc., reveal even a hint or “oh, by the way,” indicating that the tabloid’s poobah who calls the shots has been accused—and never cleared—of being a certified, card-carrying creep.
It was no secret. It made headlines at Fox (“Ex-ABC News boss Ben Sherwood accused of ‘creepy,’ ‘sexually harassing behavior’ at Disney-owned network”) and even at the Disney promotional rag, Inside the Magic (“Former ABC President Accused of ‘Inappropriate’ Behavior”).
Like many fellow reprobates, Ben Sherwood cloaks his private beastliness in a public show of virtue. Hence his membership on the advisory board of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, DC, a group that once partnered with National Public Radio to publish “Sexual Assault on Campus,” a stinging rebuke of the failure of colleges and government agencies to prevent sexual assaults. (It is assumed that Sherwood was consulted during the compiling of the report due to his allegedly extensive experience as a sexual harasser.)
And following the hypocrite playbook to a T, Sherwood jumped with both feet into the thick of the MeToo movement, “commending” those women who were speaking out against the powerful men in the entertainment industry who sexually abused them.
“The women who have come forward so far have shown great bravery and should be supported,” Sherwood said with his forked tongue. “At the Walt Disney Company, the values of the company are focused on preventing and dealing with these types of issues.”
Pervs of a feather flock together and Sherwood-Ortega-Rinder is a three-way for the ages.
Curiously, another sexual predator, Paul Haggis—disgraced Hollywood writer-producer and convicted rapist with $12.8 million awarded to his young victim—had, before being unmasked, also tried to associate himself with the right side of MeToo. “You have got to focus on those who may have colluded and protected him,” Haggis sniffed of the infamous Harvey Weinstein. “For me, they are as guilty as he is and in some cases more so, if I can say that. I mean, [Weinstein] was a predator and a predator is a predator.”
Yes, a predator is a predator, said the predator.
And with Paul Haggis, we have the glue that binds Sherwood to his two beasties—sorry, besties—child sex trafficking cheerleader Tony Ortega and violent woman abuser Mike Rinder.
Rinder came to Haggis’ defense, eloquently perjuring himself in court to champion the rapist’s honor and proclaimed to the world, “He is truly a gentleman. A gentle man, with impeccable manners and a generous heart.”
The jury unanimously rejected Rinder’s rapist-praise and found the “gentle man,” liable for having ripped off a young woman’s tights and forced her to perform oral sex on him before violently raping her, at which point she passed out.
With his violence against women, Haggis had set a standard to which Ben Sherwood’s friend, Rinder—who had beaten his own wife to the point of permanent disability—could one day aspire. And it’s not as though he hasn’t tried. Rinder, a confessed pathological liar who abandoned the children he calls “vermin” today, has bullied and beaten other women, and with zero remorse.
After all, as Haggis said, “A predator is a predator.”
And speaking of predators and their fans, Tony Ortega, another friend of Sherwood’s and the third side of this triangle, made his living promoting Backpage.com, a wildly lucrative online sex and child sex trafficking hub, since shuttered by the FBI, its executives convicted and doing time.
Pervs of a feather flock together and Sherwood-Ortega-Rinder is a three-way for the ages. In fact, their saga has all the makings of a dynamite Daily Beast story. It’s got everything: hypocrisy, child sex, lies, harassment, violence and bigotry. Type it up and send it to good ol’ Ben Sherwood.
But seriously, folks, why would Daily Beast owner Barry Diller—who’s been personally keeping the DB afloat on a sea of red ink for years—entrust its future to a creep who’s an indictment away from having his name enshrined on the neighborhood don’t-be-alone-in-a-room-with-this-louse registry?
Simple. Diller is a man of tradition and Ben Sherwood is not the first seedy Daily Beast exec who advocates for and comes to the defense of child sexual exploitation. Sherwood follows since-dismissed editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman, who infamously covered up a buddy’s infant porn tendencies in an article about the FBI raiding that individual’s home. Though the raid was for child pornography, Shachtman made it seem that his pal was the victim of retribution for “courageous journalism.”
Such is the abyss from which Barry Diller routinely extracts his Daily Beast crew.
Sherwood, Ortega, Rinder, et al—bestial besties bringing beast-like bedlam on a business-as-usual basis. If they had their way, everyday life would be a petri dish of bile where each human trait, impulse and emotion is converted into the most savage, debased levels of sexual degradation, sexual depravity and sexual violence—slavered over with cold indifference.
No wonder they call it The Daily Beast.
