by Michael Swaim
The Weather Channel. The phrase brings to mind thoughts of planning your weekend, flipping through en route to According to Jim, maybe even watching a hurricane tear your crappy state a new asshole. But there is a dark side to The Weather Channel. A world of sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and corporate cover-ups. Yes, the unthinkable has happened: The Weather Channel is interesting.
The man who made it so interesting? Bob Stokes, their “lead anchor” (sorry Bob, but you’re still just a weather man). After running his original co-anchor off with physical and verbal abuse, and not getting fired for it, he realized that he was so valuable to The Weather Channel that he could get away with basically anything. What made his bland, pan-asian face and generic way of speaking so damned valuable, we’ll never know.
But the fact is his new co-anchor, Hillary Andrews, was forced to put up with three years of sexual harassment and petty sabotage during which her superiors refused to act, and ultimately laid her off. Damn, but that Bob Stokes must be some draw. And all this in the midst of a 5 billion dollar bidding war for the sale of the channel. My God, The Weather Channel, when did you become a soap opera?
Probably about the time these pages from Andrew’s deposition hit the Internet. Prepare yourselves, readers; you are about to enter the seedy cloak-and-dagger world of national weather reportage.
Excerpts From The Deposition of Hillary Andrews
Mr. Stokes repeatedly made crude sexual comments to me in the guise of discussing the weather, including “tonight looks unusually hot, with a chance of boning,” “I’m sensing a high pressure system forming in the deep south” and “make like the Santa Ana and gently blow me.”
While I was reporting, Mr. Stokes routinely replaced the map of the U.S. on the studio greenscreen with nude photos of himself flexing.
During the March 9th, 2006 broadcast of our national weather round-up, Mr. Stokes never once took his eyes from my breasts.
Mr. Stokes described my unwillingness to have sex with him to a Producer by saying “she’s got a high ‘do point.’”
By setting me up with an assignment which later proved to be fabricated, Mr. Stokes convinced me to deepthroat a barometer, and has since kept the footage playing on a loop in his dressing room.
During our time covering Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Mr. Stokes repeatedly tried to start an impromptu “Mardis Gras wet t-shirt contest” with me as its sole entrant. On several occasions, he pretended to help bail out the flooded home of a resident only so he could “accidentally” spill buckets of water onto me. When he succeeded, he invariably made a reference to his “levee being about to break” and ran to the restroom.
Mr. Stokes once told me that I had to go check the fluid levels on the studio’s Doppler Weather System. When I returned, he had masturbated onto my desk and was arching his eyebrows at me suggestively.
Whenever I try to enter the studio through the hallway leading from the dressing rooms, Mr. Stokes always stands in my way, presses himself against me, and says “Warm front. Get it? Warm front.”
Mr. Stokes once placed smiling sun logos on a map of the Eastern Seaboard in the shape of me giving oral sex.
Harrowing. We can only hope this monster’s abuses are finally brought to light, and The Weather Channel is replaced with something more wholesome and worthwhile, like foxy boxing.
When not blogging for Cracked, Michael fulfills his title of world champion watcher of female mud wrestling as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!
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May 12th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
that poor woman– why didn’t she freakin’ sue that asshole!!
May 12th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I can’t believe she didn’t fall in love with him. He’s so witty. Puns are great.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Yeah, if I were a girl I’d totally do him!
Also, did I just read she deepthroated a barometer?
May 12th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Yup. She did. And that’s not sexual harrasment - the stuff he did could be accounted as foreplay.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
come on, maturbating onto her desk. rookie mistake, bob, rookie mistake.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Wait…this is sexual harassment? Sounds like normal, everyday conversation to me.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Mr. Stokes once urinated on my leg and told me it was raining.
Mr. Stokes told me that there was going to be 6 inches going down on Christmas morning.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
The “levee being about to break and ran to the restroom” got me. Also I wish Canada’s Weather Network was as interesting.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Uh……the imagery brought on by that article made me very uncomfortable…mostly because it turned me on.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
I have always found the weather channel to be heavy with sexual tension, particulaly because on the weather chics looks like an exgirlfriend of mine.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Swaim, you deserve a Congrssional Medal of Honor for bringing this to our attention
May 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
What a bad ass.
He’s now my role model.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
he just needed a hug…..look at him!!
May 12th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I can only hope that by helping spread the word about this, I can in my own small way help to completely ruin a multi-billion dollar business deal.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
at first, I didn’t belive you, then I went and read about it through someone more ‘credible’. Sorry for not beliving you
May 13th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Hold on…
That wasn’t a joke?
May 13th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Warm Front!
hilarious.
no, but really, this guy’s a douche. i really don’t understand why some dudes feel the need to do things like this. yea, you’re screwing someone over; but nude pictures flexing on a green screen. you can’t not get busted [of course he didn’t, but that’s beside the point i’m trying to make here].
and: that kind of behavior WILL NOT get you laid. it could, but after the second warm front you know that she’s not digging the style.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I’m surprised at your comments Michael Swaim. In fact I think you should be ashamed of yourself. You should know better than to criticise someones belief system like that. Even if it does happen to be a belief-sytem that promotes masturbating on other female co-workers desks. Children need to learn about these ideas somewhere. And what better or more obvious place for them to learn about it then on the Weather Channel? How else can they be expected to make an informed decision about whether* they should force a weathergirl to deep-throat a barometer?
*Get It? Huh?!
First you attack the teaching of “creationsim” then you condemn “sexual harassment”. Well just because you think a particular practice is wrong is no reason for you to ever criticise that particular practice in the form of a humourous blog entry. Who do you think you are? Some kind of “humourous blog-writer”.
No, unless I’m otherwise mistaken (AND I’M NOT) you are a serious journalist and this is a serious article on a serious News website. Americas first serious news website (if I’m not mistaken) (AND I’M NOT!)
HOW DARE YOU HAVE ANY KIND OF BIAS WHATSOEVER?!?!?!!? Daniel O’Brien wasn’t biased when he reviewed the new Hannah Montanna movie! And we all know China really is a dystopian Orwellian Death-World, just like Chris is always saying / screaming from his rooftop in his underpants.
Quite frankly I think people like you are what’s wrong with America in general. And I feel sorry for the man you will marry one day.
Makes me sick, all this shit.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Swaim, you are a legend.
“tonight looks unusually hot, with a chance of boning,” This is perhaps the most awesome line I have ever heard. Are you sure Dan O’Brien doesn’t moonlight at the Weather Channel?
Finally, Andy Pants, you suck and are not funny.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:51 am
I’m a little confused as to what kind of assignment - fabricated or not - would require her to deepthroat a barometer. If she was that easy to fool, she probably had it coming.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Stokes: There is a 90% chance of gettting 6 inches of hard pounding tonight.
Andrews: Rain?
Stokes: Oh, there’s a 50% chance of rain too.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:14 am
He was able to do this for 3 years? Seriously? And what is more pathetic, he obviously didn’t get that she wasn’t interested in all that time. And in an aftermath of a bloody hurricane, all he was able to think about was wet t-shirts… Great.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:45 am
WOW. What an ingrate. I mean, how much more flattering can a guy get? Then she goes and sues him for his interest in her? OKAY, maybe a few of the things he did were a little over the line, but he was basically COMPLIMENTING her, right? He thought she was a pretty lady! What’s wrong with that?!
May 13th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Was she frickin serious ? I really thought these exerpts were made up by the clever minds at cracked. seriously? That is beyond insane. I would have filed a harrassment suit the second he jerked off on my desk
May 13th, 2008 at 9:45 am
The bullet points at the end of this article sound like they came from a really creepy version of Anchorman, yet people still think they are real. Idiocracy might have actually downplayed how stupid this country will be in the future.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:44 am
@Torg: Maybe she deep-throated that barometer for reasons similar to the actions of these people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam
The gist of this scam was that a person would call a fast food place and pretend to be a police officer or authority figure. They would get the management to perform increasingly degrading and sexually violating actions on their employees.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
(if you believe that is real, that is)
May 13th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Wow, I just checked out the Business Shrink article on this…that Bob guy is an asshole of enormous proportions. I find it hard to believe that in three years nobody met him in the parking lot after hours for a little therapeutic head bashing. I know I would have.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Looks like all that is done here is talk . as there was between the both of them. unfortunately people get away with alot of things these days in america. I would have shot that man or ran his ass over with a vechile. And I would say he had it coming , just like the kids who get bullied in school over and over and then everyone pays attention to whats going on in school when twenty kids DIE from one individual who was bullied and hes seeking revenge. I for one dont want people to die because there harassing someone but as i said before even speech is enough to enrage one.
remember the va tech incident?
remember the columbine incident?
remember the mall incident?
any others? Im sure there is, list goes on and on.
Hope there was a lesson learned today kids . Ain’t nobody above the law or above one another. respect others.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
whoa whoa whoa….is all that stuff that Stokes did true? or is Swaim just making funnies?
May 13th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
is this real? im serious if it is that guy is creative sure you can be straightforward but this guy is a visionary
May 13th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
To clarify, although I really don’t see why I have to, the bullet points are my humble attempt at a humorous extrapolation on the true story, the details of which you can read in the article linked in the first paragraph of the post.
To be extra clear, Bob Stokes AND the management of The Weather Channel ARE assholes of criminal proportions, and you can consider violence on them condoned by the Cracked Blog (specifically Jack O’Brien).
May 13th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Well the Dude really did say would you lick or suck ( can’t remember) my swizzle stick to the woman. Which tells me that, you Michael, are probably better at sexual harassment than he is.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
apparently, Mr Stokes is a jedi.
“you will deepthroat this barometer.” *waves hand*
that or Andrews deserved to get laid off. even if she is blonde.
hahaha…. laid….
May 14th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I can’t quite decide what is worse - that people think that the story is funny; or think that she somehow deserved the treatment she got. Hope Andrews wins her case - this is disgusting.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Honestly I think fuckers like this are barely a step up from rapist or pedophiles and If somebody EVER treated my wife or my daughters this way and I found out about it, we would not have to worry about suing them because I would feed the motherfucker his dick.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
until he choked and died!
May 14th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
then I would do the hemlich on him and then shove his dick up his ass so he would walk funny the rest of his life and people would go “Hey there goes the guy that sexually harrassed glendoor42 wife and or daughters.”
May 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
The would say that because I would make him wear a sign that said so. If he took it off I would make him eat his dick again, after it had been up his ass all that time.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Sorry, about the above I got a fever today.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Okay. How is that sexual harassment? This only proves that Bob Stokes is actually secretly awesome. Too bad he works for the Weather Channel and not a channel where people would actually know who he is.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Mm, that said, I guess it could be construed as offensive.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
[…] “tonight looks unusually hot, with a chance of boning.” […]
May 15th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I wouldn’t be surprised that the only result of this scandal winds up being Foxnews buying out his contract.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I feel stupid for not knowing whether that deposition stuff is real or made up by the writer……