Updated below. According to Christian Grantham at OutletRadio:
Cheryl Jacques, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign,
has been fired. According to sources that wish to remain anonymous,
HRC’s Board of Directors voted to replace Jacques with Hilary Rosen as
interim executive director. The vote took place in an emergency
conference call Monday night.
Read OutletRadio for the developing details. Here’s my own initial reaction:
Rosen is the former recording-industry lobbyist who crushed Napster and ordered onerous lawsuits against thousands of music-sharing youths and their parents. She is, quite obviously, more experienced in successful lobbying and corporate relations than Jacques.
Rosen would not be my first choice for a permanent replacement: Even though I lean somewhat toward Democratic viewpoints, I also believe that HRC needs to improve its connections with moderate Republicans and to build equal-rights efforts from the local community level upward. I am unaware of what Rosen can do to address these needs.
Conservative Republicans control Fox News and dominate the pundits of MSNBC; meanwhile, CNN’s Anderson Cooper (who should know better) skews equal-rights debates by pitting first-tier fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell against… Al Sharpton. Lacking the largesse of the religious right and corporate executives, gay equal rights advocates have little media access.
Perhap, if the report about HRC is true, then Rosen’s experience in entertainment and media will help out there.
Update:
Citing a difference in management philosophy, the Human Rights Campaign’s boards and its president, Cheryl Jacques, announced that she will resign from her position….
The boards announced that HRC Board of Directors Co-chair Michael Berman and Hilary Rosen will lead the organization through the transition while a search for a new leader is underway. Berman is president of The Duberstein Group in Washington and Rosen led HRC’s strategic efforts to defeat of the FMA. Rosen will be focused on internal, strategic issues and management.
Human Rights Campaign board members Vic Basile and Mike Berman shared the news that Cheryl Jacques has been terminated.
If this is so…
(a) I hope they ditch Rosen pretty fast. Her tenure at the RIAA paints her in a rather ugly light by my eyes. I’m sure she’s a nice person in private, but I don’t trust the woman within 50 feet of a lawyer, especially if she’s holding my money.
(b) There’s the interesting tidbit that Rosen’s partner is none other than Elizabeth Birch, the former HRC director before Jacques, so the whole thing has a whiff of nepotism about it. Birch’s indirect connection to the RIAA was actually one of the reasons I felt lukewarm about HRC in the Birch days.
I think your arguments against Rosen are exactly why she may be a good choice. What we need now more than anything is a bitchy hard-assed lawyer with media access. I actually hope she’s *not* a nice person in private. It’s time to play hardball.
From my experience with HRC and Jacques, I think she seems like a very inviting, warm person. But, some of her political tactics in the election seemed to be geared towards helping the democrats more than the GLBT community. A call for more inclusion would have been a better tactic than a rather messy attempt to “fire” GWB.