A&E’s Paul Buccieri has a problem growing by leaps and bounds. His name is Mike Rinder, hanging like an albatross around the A&E president’s neck.
Like the classic wife beater that he is, Rinder digs in his heels and refuses to admit he injured his former wife Cathy during an incident in 2010 even though her medical reports, eyewitnesses and a paramedic report all confirm she was injured in the encounter. And her surgeon stated she will never recover. Rinder doesn’t care that she lives in pain every day due to the assault.
Rinder shows his hatred toward women by publicly trashing Cathy and their daughter, Taryn, who has courageously stood up for her mother and turned her passion into a larger crusade against domestic violence at justice4mom.org. Rather than apologize like a man with character would, Rinder instead arrogantly claims Cathy wasn’t hurt that badly, showing he believes there is an acceptable level of violence he should be permitted to inflict on a woman.
Rinder shows his hatred toward women by publicly trashing Cathy and their daughter, Taryn, who has courageously stood up for her mother.
Rinder rides to the rescue of others in the closely-knit club of female abusers. Witness how he continues to try to publicly shame the four women who have accused his buddy director Paul Haggis of rape and sexual assault. Rather than let the evidence speak for itself, Rinder doubles down by continuing to push his wacky, discredited lie that the Church may have somehow been involved in the case even though the attorneys for the accusers and even one of the accusers herself has completely eviscerated Rinder’s nutty conspiracy theory.
As Rinder grows as an embarrassment to A&E, Buccieri refuses to even order an independent investigation into his violent past, something any ethical corporation would do. Perhaps it’s because Buccieri is too much of a coward and desperate to hang on to his job. Perhaps it’s because Buccieri’s own past includes involvement with a stunningly inappropriate “Jackass” episode at a high school in which male genitals were exposed to the crowd. Or maybe it’s because Buccieri hired two men to produce Rinder and Leah Remini’s show, Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman, who mentored at the feet of Harvey Weinstein, considered by many to be the worst abuser of women ever in Hollywood.
As Rinder grows as an embarrassment to A&E, Buccieri refuses to even order an independent investigation into his violent past, something any ethical corporation would do.
All this shows that despite all their lip service toward women in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it’s business as usual for A&E and corporate parents Disney and Hearst. All obviously don’t believe in “zero tolerance” toward men like Rinder who chronically mistreat, abuse and publicly attack victims.
Instead, Buccieri continues to not only support and pay Rinder, he gives him carte blanche to spread more lies, the latest featuring a failed draftsman whose work was so bad he cost the Church $400,000, and a failed litigant still bitter at having been shot down in court in an unsuccessful attempt to sue the Church.
Paul Burkhart was a draftsman who was so bad at his job he kept drawing plans and creating construction documents that were not up to code. Several times Burkhart gave wrong drawings to the architectural firms hired to do the job.
In every case, the work had to be redone, resulting in vast wasted funds. Because he couldn’t be trusted, Burkhart had to be removed from his position. The huge volume of new churches being planned as part of the Church’s largest expansion in history had to be handled by those who, unlike Burkhart, would adhere to building codes and tell the truth about the information in the plans.
That wasn’t Burkhart. When he didn’t know the correct data, he would just guess or make it up, showing how detached he is from reality. It soon became clear he was dishonest, which meant he could not be trusted with any job in the Church.
In the years Burkhart was in the Church, he was continually in low-level positions that showed he couldn’t be trusted. His history was of someone who was perennially dishonest, sloppy and untrustworthy. The Church showed him compassion and kindness to give him the opportunity to straighten out his life, which he repaid with more transgressions, dishonesty and disappointments.
Burkhart’s history showed that he learned his unethical behavior at an early age. As a teenager he shot cars using BB guns, took countless illegal drugs, ran over a dog with a car and became involved with an underaged girl. The Church wanted to help him get his life together. Instead, he cost the Church hundreds of thousands of dollars and even stole material, including intellectual property, from the Church.
Rinder’s second “guest,” Bert Schippers, abysmally failed as part of Rinder’s efforts to sue the Church. Like so many of Rinder and Remini’s sources, they remain bitter that their legal schemes collapsed under their feet.
In 2012, Schippers was pursuing with Rinder a bizarre billion-dollar plan that Rinder hoped would bankrupt the Church. But the Florida district court in 2012 saw through Schippers, ruling that he would have to resolve his grievances in religious arbitration.
The case was dismissed. Schippers turned out to be yet another dupe who teamed up with Mike Rinder in a futile attempt to shake down their former Church, only to fail miserably.
Parading Burkhart and Schippers before the cameras shows the depth of desperation to which Buccieri and A&E have sunk. They obviously want a pipeline to supply embittered sources willing to lie on camera and spread A&E’s brand of religious hate that is a cornerstone of Buccieri’s business model.
Rinder provides the pipeline and they look past Rinder’s history of domestic abuse and his vicious public attacks on victims of rape. That’s the deal. Buccieri and his corporate bosses at Disney and Hearst should be ashamed.
