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The host of The Agenda and I aren’t friends, but I’ve been on his TVOntario show a couple of times, and that was enough to convince me he was incapable of acting badly, let alone that badly.

Fortunately, Paikin enjoyed the same excellent reputation — as a consummate pro who does his homework, excruciatingly decorous always — at TVO and everywhere else.

It was that stellar reputation that allowed TVO CEO Lisa de Wilde to do the right thing, and keep Paikin on air and in the job while the investigation proceeded. It was almost shocking to see a company extend the presumption of innocence to an accused employee.

So the accusation fell flat, or rather it would have totally had it been levelled at almost any other time.

But Thomson made it first in two posts in the dreadful online publication she runs, the Women’s Post (in which she didn’t name Paikin), and she made it as #MeToo had just taken down then Ontario Conservative Leader Patrick Brown.

Photo by Tim Fraser for National Post

Indeed, in her first post, dated Jan. 31 and headlined “Guilty men fear the truth,” she wrote in part: “The two women who reported Patrick Brown have inspired other women.” Then she issued an invitation: “If you are a woman and have experienced a talk show host who used a similar line on you, please reach out to me” and gave her email address.

She wrote another piece on Feb. 2, in which she credited herself with having taken on then Toronto Mayor Rob Ford back in 2013 and “being the first to talk about his drug use and sexual misconduct.”