Meeropol = Ivy Meeropol, the documentarian who made a movie about the man, Roy Cohn, who "helped to send her grandparents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, to the electric chair, leaving her father orphaned at the age of ten." Now, Meeropol has a movie about E. Jean Carroll.
A few days ago, Carroll finally received the $5.6 million she won in her lawsuit against Trump, and Meeropol said: "This historic moment shows that our legal system — established almost 250 years ago to serve as a check against absolute power — still works. E Jean used to sign off from her television show in the mid-Nineties saying, 'Fate loves the fearless,' and it couldn’t be more appropriate today...."
Much has been made of the fact that Carroll is not a perfect MeToo victim.
"When Paula Jones brought a civil lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton for acts he allegedly committed prior to his Presidency, we rejected his argument that he enjoyed temporary immunity from the lawsuit while serving as President. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President's decisionmaking is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. The 'justifying purposes' of the immunity we recognized in Fitzgerald, and the one we recognize today, are not that the President must be immune because he is the President; rather, they are to ensure that the President can undertake his constitutionally designated functions effectively, free from undue pressures or distortions. '[I]t [is] the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who perform[s] it, that inform[s] our immunity analysis.' The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President's unofficial acts."
Where is the line between official and unofficial in the charges against Trump? The lower courts rushed through the question, which means the issues are not properly developed for the Supreme Court:
Set in the 1990s, the 10-episode series revisits the miasma of scandal and innuendo that shrouded the Clinton White House: Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton; Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky; Lewinsky’s friendship with Linda Tripp; and the tangle of lies, half-truths and illicit recordings that were ultimately detailed in the Starr Report, the infamous and lurid document prepared by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr....
From the group interview with Annaleigh Ashford (Paula Jones), Sarah Paulson (Linda Tripp), Beanie Feldstein (Monica Lewinsky), and Ryan Murphy (who isn't really identified in the article/we're just told it's "Ryan Murphy's 'Impeachment'):
"He was the vice president of the United States for eight years. He’s been a front-page news figure since the 1980s. Thought experiment: Imagine that an allegation came forward against Ken Starr. We all know that, because Starr was involved in pursuing the Lewinsky story, any whiff of sexual impropriety would instantly be framed as a hypocrisy story even long after Starr has left public service. Biden chaired the Hill-Thomas hearings in 1991; how is that not the same thing? We were constantly told that the Kavanaugh allegations should be judged by a low bar because the hearings were 'a job interview' and he’d be confirmed to a powerful, life-tenured job. Well, presidents have a lot more power than any individual Supreme Court justice, including the power to appoint lots of life-tenured federal judges and justices. Isn’t this Biden’s job interview?"
In my view, the Christine Blasey Ford and Tara Reade accusations are at just about exactly the same level in seriousness, importance, and credibility. The obvious difference is which political party supports the accused. If you don't treat them the same, you're showing that you're doing partisan politics. It's what we saw in the 90s with Anita Hill and Paula Jones. I know I've treated like cases alike on a principled basis and I have done it for decades. But I don't see too many other people stepping up to that challenge.
"The questions we’ve asked ourselves and one another have become defining. Are we morally compromised in our defense of him or sexually uptight in our condemnation? Are we shills for having not believed he should have resigned, or doing the bidding of a vindictive right wing if we say that, in retrospect, he probably should have?"
Meanwhile, how much energy and time have been spent circling round this man and how we’ve felt about him, when in fact his behaviors were symptomatic of far broader and more damaging assumptions about men, power, and access to — as Trump has so memorably voiced it — pussies?
You wouldn't have spent all that time if you'd been consistent in the first place. Anyone who cared at all about feminism back then already knew the "far broader" picture! That is feminism. If you'd put feminism over party politics at the time, you'd have easily processed the Clinton story long ago.
After all, Clinton was elected president during a period that may turn out to be an aberration, just as the kinds of dominating, sexually aggressive behaviors that had been norms for his West Wing predecessors had become officially unacceptable, and 24 years before those behaviors would again become a presidential norm. So yes, Clinton got in trouble, yet still managed to sail out of office beloved by many, his reputation as the Big Dog mostly only enhanced by revelations of his exploits.
I don't understand the logic of this "After all... So yes" rhetoric. I feel that I'd need to rewrite those 2 sentences to begin to understand them. I invite your efforts. Here's mine: Although Clinton became President after America had officially rejected sexual harassment in the workplace, many people gave him a pass and even loved him more because he did it anyway.
But the election of Trump over Clinton’s wife, and the broad conversation around sexual assault and harassment that has erupted in its wake, has recast his behavior more profoundly.
Ha ha. What's "profound" about partisan politics? It's not profound. It's laughably shallow!
The buffoonery, the smallness and tantrums of Trump, has helped make clear what always should have been: that the out-of-control behavior toward women by powerful men, the lack of self-control or amount of self-regard that undergirded their reckless treatment of women, spoke not of virility or authority but of their immaturity.
To "undergird" is to fasten something securely from the under-side. According to this sentence, lack of self-control undergirded recklessness. When I see writing like this, my hypothesis is that the writer is declining to be straightforward. Here's my paraphrase: Things that are perfectly visible go in and out of focus depending on what you want to see.
I'm overhearing the television, so I'm not going to link to anything, but I keep hearing the indicia of elite status — notably, that Blasey is a college professor.
I'm trying to think of how her allegations should be handled, and I want like cases to be treated alike. When will one allegation from long ago justify delaying the Senate confirmation process and the opening of new investigations?
The answer cannot be: when the accuser has elite status!
I'm thinking of how Paula Jones was denigrated 20 years ago. "If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find," James Carville said famously.
[Carville] with Hillary's assent — set the tone on how the Clintons would treat women who dared accuse former President Clinton of sexual harassment....
[Paula Jones] wasn't fancy or rich, just a working woman sexually harassed by Bill when he was governor of Arkansas. But she was denigrated by Clinton's top advisers as "trailer park" trash, as someone so craven she'd crawl on dirt for the cash to slander Bill.
She was telling the truth. It was a straightforward sexual harassment case. If Bill had been a private-sector CEO, he'd have been fired.
But Hillary and Bill fought back, using the "nuts and sluts strategy," denigrating Jones and others, including Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and the intern Monica Lewinsky.
So what is the standard we are creating? How will we apply it in the future? I'm seeing analogies to Anita Hill, but how is Christine Blasey Ford like Anita Hill other than that she's challenging a Supreme Court nominee? Anita Hill worked with the nominee (Clarence Thomas) in a professional context. That was not in question. With Blasey, we only have her assertion that she was once in a room with Brett Kavanaugh. How will we treat other women who assert that they were once with the nominee? What is the principled plan that we can agree on?!
"When Daniels came out of the bathroom, she claims Trump was lying on the bed in his underwear. They had sex. She then describes his genitalia in great detail. 'His penis is distinctive in a certain way,' she writes. Proof, her attorney Michael Avenatti says, she is tired of being called a liar by Trump’s people."
Oh, look! It's Roseanne. 1998. Dragging out the penile details:
Is the woman lying? To ask the question is to express a desire for corroborating evidence. If the offense is sexual, I'm afraid the evidence might trigger your ickiness reaction. Too bad! How would you like it if you stopped by to see the governor and he whipped it out, erect, and said "kiss it"? You're only hearing about it, not suffering through it.
[Paula Jones's] lawyers have... named... women believed to be former girlfriends of the President, including Gennifer Flowers. She is the woman named during the 1992 election campaign as his long-time mistress, who has steadfastly refused to speak against him.
The strategy is two-fold: to show "a pattern of behaviour" in Mr Clinton's past and to demonstrate the veracity of an affidavit Ms Jones reportedly swore when she first brought her case three years ago that could prove her case. In the affidavit, Ms Jones apparently describes "distinguishing characteristics" of Mr Clinton's "genital area".
Last month, it seemed the puzzle of the distinguishing characteristics had been solved, when newspapers quoted "sources" as saying she referred to a curvature of the President's erect penis - a phenomenon said to be caused by Peyronie's disease. The theory was backed up by more "informed sources" saying that Mr Clinton had been tested for this condition during his annual medical examination the previous week.
Did we ever find out if Bill Clinton is really bent like that? The Onion had the story in 2005: "Bill Clinton Finally Just Shows America His Penis." Funny, right? It was 2005, and #MeToo hadn't clicked in yet. But time's up now. And it's not funny anymore.
ADDED: You may have reached the end of this post with the question what is "distinctive" about Trump's genitalia. And good for you if you didn't. What a fine person you are! If you did, you don't have to by Stormy's book to get the answer. The NY Post has it. Should I just send you there, or should I quote "He knows he has an unusual penis... It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool…like the mushroom character in Mario Kart"?
“Through the lens of #MeToo now, do you think differently or feel more responsibility?... Did you ever apologize to her [Lewinsky]?” @craigmelvin to Bill Clinton pic.twitter.com/rXcixhDHER
That's the "Today" show, this morning, I believe. The interviewer is Craig Melvin, whose demeanor is rock solid. I'm not seeing the whole interview, but from this clip, I would criticize Melvin for focusing only on what Clinton did to/with Monica Lewinsky. Ask him about Paula Jones (not to mention the others)!
Bill Clinton focuses on himself and acts like the debt he owed his lawyers — $16 million — is commensurate with the harm he did to the women. That's not enough for #MeToo purposes (and it was never enough for me).
And Bill says it's already been litigated and 2/3 of Americans agreed with me. But that can only mean that 2/3 of Americans thought that he shouldn't be removed from office because of the asserted offense (basically only perjury in a deposition in a civil lawsuit). The American people haven't agreed with him that it's okay to treat women like that.
And then Bill starts chuckling, in his trademark Southern manner, over the good he's done for women. The tone, the fake casualness, and the reliance on his idea that we have the idea that he's a good guy — it's just so disgusting.
By the way, I don't give a damn about whether Bill Clinton apologized, but that's what Melvin focuses on here. Clinton's answer (at the end of the clip) is contemptible.
ADDED: Here is a longer clip:
Clinton's incomplete effort at summoning up his famous old charm is gruesome.
Did you stay up for the drama — for the exultations and lamentations?
The approval of the bill in the House and Senate came over the strenuous objections of Democrats, who have accused Republicans of giving a gift to corporations and the wealthy and driving up the federal debt in the process.
As the final vote approached in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, gave his closing argument against the bill and scolded his Republican colleagues for talking during his remarks on the floor.
“This is serious stuff,” Mr. Schumer said. “We believe you’re messing up America. You could pay attention for a couple of minutes.”
With the supermajority... the Senate moved rather quickly to pass the ACA – or ObamaCare – on Christmas Eve 2009 in a 60 – 39 vote.... Everyone assumed that the Christmas Eve 2009 Senate bill would be tweaked considerably to conform more with the House bill passed two months previously. But now that strategy wouldn’t work, because [after the Republican Scott Brown won the special election in Massachusetts] the Democrats no longer had the 60th vote in the Senate to end debate. What to do? They decided to have the House take up the identical bill that the Senate passed on Christmas Eve. It passed on March 21, 2010, by a 219 – 212 vote. This time, no Republicans came on board, and 34 Democrats voted against. President Obama signed the ACA legislation two days later on March 23.
The rancor has not abated since, as we all know. Republicans invoked Thomas Jefferson’s observation that “great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority – or enacted without broad support.” They cited broad legislative innovations like Social Security and Medicare, both of which enjoyed bipartisan support. They complained that one fewer vote in the Senate or a change of four votes in the House would have been enough to defeat ObamaCare. Democrats responded just as vociferously and passionately that this healthcare reform package was too important and overdue to delay or compromise.
And now the Republicans have their big achievement, too important and overdue to delay or compromise.
The NYT ends its story with a quote from — of all people — Bob Packwood:
Bob Packwood, the former Republican senator from Oregon who helped lead the 1986 tax effort, said that this year’s bill was at least as sweeping as the one that Ronald Reagan signed into law 31 years ago, even though the bills had different goals.
“They have achieved things that I was unable to achieve,” Mr. Packwood said.
Dredging up Bob Packwood feels like a desperate/poignant effort to make the GOP look bad. Packwood was driven from the Senate in 1995. He was the face of sexual harassment in the crucial interval between the unsuccessful effort to keep Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court and the unsuccessful effort to oust Bill Clinton from the presidency.
Hill accused Thomas of asking her out insistently, and making several lewd comments about porn movies, pubic hairs, and his own sexual prowess. Hill herself acknowledged that her allegations didn’t amount to “sexual harassment” as defined by law, just that they made her uncomfortable and she thought them inappropriate. I don’t want to relitigate the Thomas-Hill he said-she said, but even accepting Hill’s allegations at face value, they were nothing approaching what Weinstein or some of the others who have been in the spotlight lately, have been accused of–no assault, no battery, no exposing himself, no quid pro quo, no drugging victims, no shenanigans with minors. Surely we want to distinguish between those allegations and alleged rude and obnoxious behavior.
Bernstein only links to one article, "Anita Hill on Weinstein, Trump, and a Watershed Moment for Sexual-Harassment Accusations" by Jane Mayer at The New Yorker. It's a short article, but it mentions Trump 10 times. My first question was: Does it mention Bill Clinton? Because the Clarence Thomas hearings raised the national consciousness of sexual harassment, but it happened for political reasons at the time, and for equally political reasons the issue got suppressed again when it seemed more important — to the kind of people you'd think would want to forefront the issue* — to protect Bill Clinton. Even during the 2016 presidential campaign — the one Trump won — it was necessary to keep protecting the old President because his wife, who'd vigorously defended him against "bimbo eruptions," was (for some insane reason) the Democratic Party's candidate for President.
The answer to my question — does the New Yorker article mention Bill Clinton? — is no. I did my search of the page yesterday when I first noticed the article, and because of the Trump-but-not-Clinton focus, I declined to read it. I have been angry about the politicization of sexual harassment for 20 years. I'm trying to force myself to read Mayer's article now (because Bernstein linked to it), but it's almost impossible for me. Okay. You can do it....
In a phone interview, [Anita] Hill emphasized that sexual-harassment cases live and die on the basis of “believability,” and that, in order for the accusers to prevail, “they have to fit a narrative” that the public will buy....
So... essentially: politics. Hill was believed by the people who wanted to keep Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court and not by those who wanted him on. Paula Jones was disbelieved by those who wanted to keep Bill Clinton in the White House, but believed by those who wanted him out.
Hill knows this:
Her case, like those of the women who accused Trump, she says, “was cast as a political story.” In such situations, “everything gets interpreted through a political lens, and it makes it almost impossible” for people to seriously consider whether the accused harasser “is the right person to represent you. It just becomes ‘This is our guy’ and ‘people are trying to bring him down.’ ”
_____________________
* Gloria Steinem in 1998: "We would not be doing our job if we didn't take into account that this president and his policies are crucial to the lives and welfare of the majority of women in this country. That's not bending over backwards: that's being sensible. Having said that, if Clinton had raped women, beaten up Hillary - real private sins would not be forgiven, no matter what the value of the public behaviour." Real sins? Real sins? What the hell?
I've been avoiding reading it... mainly because I encountered it after other people were already talking about it. At first that stops me, because you don't need me to point to it, but sometimes I get around to it anyway. Who knows why?
Well, in this case, I'm a mother of sons, and I raised them when the President of the United States was an admitted sexual predator — in the 1990s — so maybe I can help. Is it harder to raise boys than girls when we know our country's leader preys on young females? I'll leave to the side how much we really know about Trump's sexual predation in comparison to Clinton's. Monica Lewinsky was young and an underling in the workplace Clinton ran, but she seems to have sought him out and fallen into enthusiastic love. Trump bragged about just starting kissing women who let you do it. Clinton exposed his erect penis and said "kiss it" to a woman, Paula Jones, who did not let him do that.
Enough of that comparison. I want to concentrate on the supposed special problem of raising boys. I haven't read Piazza's article yet, only the title. I'm just guessing that her idea is that if you have a girl, you can use the powerful man to teach her what she's up against and steel her for the struggle. If you have a boy instead... what's the problem? Maybe Piazza will say that he's going to identify with and emulate what is a bad example.
But how do you know the girl wouldn't look to the President as exemplifying the kind of man she should admire and seek out? And how do you know the boy wouldn't accept your teaching that the President is a bad role model from which he should strive to distinguish himself?
[INSERTED INFO: At this point, I begin reading the article.]
Piazza originally thought she'd be raising a girl — as she puts it "a small woman" — at a time when we had a female President, which seemed especially nice, but even after Trump got elected, she seemed to think she knew what she would do — teach the girl to work "harder and smarter and better than the men around her" and "to fight for equality and respect."
But then she had that moment when she had to think about the baby being the gender that was not the one she'd been fantasizing about:
Piazza — like Billy Bigelow in "Carousel" — flows with ideas of how to raise a child whose sex matches her/his own but is flummoxed at the prospect of dealing with the opposite sex. She says:
What terrifies me is the idea of raising a boy with good values when a man who represents the male stereotypes we've been fighting for generations is in the White House. A man who bullies both men and women in person and on Twitter. This man could dominate our news cycle for the next eight years. I can't hide his bad behavior from our son.
Oh, come on. The behavior the 70-year-old Trump is going to demonstrate in the White House is not the sudden kissing he talked about years ago when he was off-camera in an "Access Hollywood" van.
How can I explain to a little boy that the year he was born, the President of the United States was an admitted sexual predator who treats women (including his own daughters) as "pieces of ass"?... How do I explain that grabbing a woman by her genitals is not an acceptable salutation when the man in charge of the country normalized it?
Since President Trump will be out of office by the time your child is 8, I'd suggest not talking about any of that. Piazza frets about "explaining sensitivity and nonviolence" to the boy. I'd suggest demonstrating it, beginning by not going out of your way to express contempt for the President.
A child — boy or girl — lives with real people, and these people set the example that the child will copy. It's not really very much about explanations and characters on television. How about not putting on the television and not talking about politics and sex in front of young children? Give them a real, comprehensible, simple, gentle environment that is on their level.
Piazza worries about explaining "the president's picks for attorney general and CIA director voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act." Frankly, she shouldn't try to explain that to anyone, since she doesn't even understand it herself. Votes against the Violence Against Women Act were not votes for violence against women. If you don't know why, at least have some modesty and restraint about your potential to confuse and unnecessarily rile other people.
Let children be children. And let adults who don't want to understand law — including things like federalism — have some peace. Your hysteria is not helping.
Piazza says: "I want to make a good little man." That's a decent, worthy goal. Start there. I would quibble with the notion that a mother "makes" her baby into the adult that baby will grow to be. It's not scientifically true and, ironically, it's probably not good feminism, but I understand the poetry of "I want to make a good little man."
Piazza gives respect to her husband, the boy's father. He seems to be a good man, whoever made him good. Perhaps his mother made him good, in part, and maybe his wife too. Maybe he made himself good. But Piazza is lucky to have a good man. If the boy has a good father and a good mother and they make a good home and set a good example, that's giving the boy almost everything, and there's nothing to be terrified of from the President, however good or bad he might be in your mind or in reality or in the political movie we'll watch on television and the internet if we don't limit our screen time.
Perhaps if Piazza had a bit more respect for conservatism, she wouldn't look to the President to do so much for her. He's off there, tending to the matters that belong to government, working and bumbling and succeeding in the way human beings do. You might like some or none of what he does. But you and your husband and your home are what matter to a little child, and the fact of his being a boy and not a girl is a diversion of pregnancy.
When he is born he won't just be A Boy. He'll be a particular boy, a particular individual, not the stereotype you dwell on when you have so much time to think about him when he's there but not really there in his pre-birth form. Respect the boy. Respect the person. Respect your own home and the worthiness of your family. Love your husband and let him show his love for you.
Explanations are overrated. The power of the presidency is overblown. Find love and meaning where it really is.
It's much simpler than you're willing to say, perhaps because you have a career writing columns about feminism and politics. That's nice for you, but be careful. It's a brutal template, and you are having a baby.
And the tweet is so perfect, right down to the potential for misreading "per pool," which got me picturing Paul and Hillary dancing by a swimming pool. If only pools could talk! And there's Jimmy in a lounge chair strumming his guitar and croaking about "a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat."
It was early January of 1998, and her husband was preparing for his deposition in Paula Jones's sexual-harassment suit. During their New Year's vacation in the Virgin Islands, the presidential couple were "caught" dancing together on the beach. In Bill's arms, Hillary gazed lovingly at her affectionate husband, her 50-year-old body revealed in all its bathing-suited glory. Most middle-aged women dread leaving a dressing room in a bathing suit, yet Hillary readily posed for a photo bound to grace front pages around the world. It was a perfect façade of normal matrimony, and succeeded brilliantly in distracting attention from the Jones suit. I remember thinking, "Wow, it's true that she will do absolutely anything for the sake of political survival."...
... a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat...
ADDED: I hear the message: Talk of cheeseburger. No wiener!
"In one case, it's about exposure. In another case, it's about groping and fondling and touching against a woman's will," Hannity said.
"And rape," Trump responded.
I don't know why Hannity said one case is about exposure and another is about "groping and fondling and touching against a woman's will." The "exposure" case is clearly Paula Jones, and — as noted in the previous 2 posts — the Paula Jones testimony has Bill Clinton groping and kissing her against her will. (By Jones's report, before he exposed himself and asked "Would you kiss it for me?," Clinton "pulled" her, ran his hands up her clothing to her "middle pelvic area," kissed her on the neck, and tried to kiss her on the lips.)
The Clinton campaign response was to reflect the blame back on Trump:
... Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Trump was "doing what he does best, attacking when he feels wounded and dragging the American people through the mud for his own gain. If that’s the kind of campaign he wants to run that’s his choice."
So those who want to bring up rape and sexual assault are to be disparaged for taking us to a low place? That can't be right as a general principle.
1. Hillary Clinton "[d]efended an accused child rapist, then laughed about his lenient sentence."
The laughter in question comes from an audio recording — which you can listen to, as I did, here — so the fact-checking is easy to do. Clinton indeed laughs 4 times during her recounting of the story of defending an accused child rapist, and none of the 4 instances comes at the point when she refers to the light sentence. But the NRSC says it relied on an ABC News report that said: "Clinton is heard laughing as she describes how she succeeded at getting her client a lighter sentence, despite suggesting she knew he was guilty."
Kessler says: "The laughter on the tape is open to interpretation; certainly some might find it disturbingly lighthearted. But it’s a stretch to say she laughed about the sentence." That's a fair and sober conclusion in my view.
2. "She politically attacked sexual harassment victims."
The NRSC says it based that on the interview Hillary gave in 1998 about the Paula Jones case. By chance, I just quoted Paula Jones's deposition in the previous post, so I'm a bit taken aback to read Kesslers statement that Bill Clinton merely "propositioned her and exposed himself." (By Jones's report, Clinton "pulled" her over to him, ran his hands up her cullottes to her "middle pelvic area," kissed her on the neck, tried to kiss her on the lips as she protested, and then "pulled his pants down" and asked "Would you kiss it for me?")
In the interview, Hillary blamed a "vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband." That's not attacking the alleged victims. You have to look for other material about Hillary, and Kessler doesn't look very far before awarding 3 Pinocchios. (He only looks to Hillary's own memoir!) The NRSC should have presented better information here. They made it easy for Kessler to dismiss them, but I'm not impressed by Kessler's awarding the Pinocchios based on the NRSC's failure to hand him better information. The NRSC needs to respond immediately.
This is from her new column, which argues that Hillary Clinton should not give Bill Clinton a major role in her campaign:
The sex scandal issue isn’t really central, since Americans have a long record of voting for the candidates they think can deliver, regardless of private peccadilloes. And Donald Trump has a history of boorish public behavior that could even overshadow the marital baggage Hillary has to tote. However, she’d be in a much stronger position if she was toting on her own.
The private/public distinctionthere is pretty subtle, but you see the argument. What Trump has done to women — e.g., referring metaphorically to Megyn Kelly's blood, calling Rosie O'Donnell fat — happened in public, but Bill Clinton's woman problems arose out of incidents in which the women was sequestered in a hotel room or the Oval Office. I don't think the private/public distinction cuts in favor of the man who physically imposed himself on vulnerable women in private and against the man who used crass language against powerful female celebrities as part of the public debate.
The phrase "the personal is political" means something important in the fight for women's equality. No one who cares about that fight should call the accusations against Bill Clinton "private peccadilloes." A "peccadillo" is: "A minor fault or sin; a trivial offence." That's the OED definition. Here's one of the illustrative quotes: "What the boy does almost proudly, as a manly peccadillo, the girl will shudder at as a debasing vice." Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque.
You know what? This is the Governor we're talking about. I had just met the man. A state trooper sitting outside the door with a gun. I know that. I'm terrified. And so what I'm thinking next is what was happening here and what am I going to do next to get out of this room? Is he going to stop here?... And I was talking to him about Hillary and she was working with children's things or something, children's schools at the time, and I remember I was complimenting her on how she was really good with children. And... he came over by the wingback chair close to where I was at. Then it's like he wasn't even paying attention to what I was saying to him. Then he goes, "Oh, I love the way your hair flows down your back. And I was watching you," and stuff like that. Downstairs. And then he did it again. Then he started -- he pulled me over to him while he was leaning up against the wingback chair and he took his hands and was running them up my culottes. And they were long. They were down to my knees. They were long, dressy culottes. And he had his hand up, going up to my middle pelvic area, and he was kissing me on the neck, you know, and trying to kiss me on the lips and I wouldn't let him. And then I backed back. I said, "Stop it. You know, I'm not this kind of girl." I mean. And it still -- and then I ran right over to where the couch was. I thought what am I going to do? I was trying to collect my thoughts. I did not know what to do. I was trying to collect my thoughts. I did not know what to do. After the second time -- after the first time, I had rebuffed him. And then when I got over there and I kind of sat right there by the end of the couch on the -- seemed like on the armchair part. And the next thing you know it, I turn around because he was kind of back over here, and he come over there, pulled his pants down, sat down and asked me to perform oral sex.... He asked me would I kiss it. He goes -- you know, I can see the look on his face right now. He asked me, "Would you kiss it for me?" I mean, it was disgusting.
As Jones was leaving, Clinton said, according to Jones, "You're a smart girl. Let's keep this between ourselves." But she brought a lawsuit, a lawsuit that involved Bill Clinton in lying under oath and that Bill Clinton paid $850,000 to settle.
Private peccadillo. Really, Gail Collins, what do you think the young women of today — women who know sexual harassment and sexual assault are extremely serious — are going to think of your using that word peccadillo?
ADDED: Deja vu. Here I am last January, confronting Glenn Loury about the very same application of the word "peccadillo":
"You know, philandering is a private manner. What Bill Clinton has been accused of is not, you know, he may be innocent of it but," said Jeff Greenfield on "Meet the Press" this morning.
He ended on a "but" because Chuck Todd broke in with: "Well, and I can tell you, there are some in Clinton world who are very nervous about this, very nervous about this." And a bit later: "[T]he Clinton folks suddenly acted different this week as that became-- you could just see it."
Earlier Todd had played a clip of Sanders going "as close as you're going to hear Bernie Sanders going after the Clintons" and "more than [Todd] expected." What Bernie said was:
Look, Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton, but Bill Clinton did, I think what we all can acknowledge was totally, totally, totally disgraceful and unacceptable. But I am running against Hillary Clinton, I'm not running against Bill Clinton, though I gather he's been in Iowa recently.
Totally, totally, totally... he went with the 3 "totally"s. Now, I wish Greenfield had been allowed to say a little more, because he was getting critical of the notion that what Bill Clinton did was "a private matter." If he'd gone on — beyond "philandering is a private manner" — he would have talked about how Bill Clinton is accused of rape, which is a very serious crime and thus something in which the public authorities do involve themselves. Or he might have said that what happened with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky happened in the workplace and thus involves the problem of sexual harassment and the equality of women in the workplace. To pass that off as private is to sell out the women's movement.
But somehow Chuck Todd had to break in just to say that the Clinton people are very nervous.
Next time the question should be reframed: You have said that all those who make an accusation of sexual assault should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence, so can I assume that you originally believed Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones, and if you ever came to disbelieve any of these women, was it genuinely because you considered the evidence and found that they deserved to be disbelieved?
"She knew what was happening and just to ignore it. It was a political relationship and suited them both. The Clintons don't care what they do, who they run over to get to the top. It is all about political status."
Said Paula Jones, who was run over so long ago that many young voters have never heard of her.
"Did this have something to do with Monica Lewinsky?" a student asked last month when we read Clinton v. Jones. I wondered whether the Supreme Court's statement of the facts in that case came as a strange surprise to the young people in the class:
Those allegations principally describe events that are said to have occurred on the afternoon of May 8, 1991, during an official conference held at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Governor delivered a speech at the conference; respondent--working as a state employee--staffed the registration desk. She alleges that Ferguson persuaded her to leave her desk and to visit the Governor in a business suite at the hotel, where he made "abhorrent" sexual advances that she vehemently rejected. She further claims that her superiors at work subsequently dealt with her in a hostile and rude manner, and changed her duties to punish her for rejecting those advances. Finally, she alleges that after petitioner was elected President, Ferguson defamed her by making a statement to a reporter that implied she had accepted petitioner's alleged overtures, and that various persons authorized to speak for the President publicly branded her a liar by denying that the incident had occurred.
Or they really shouldn't be pushing their bona fides on women’s rights. Because Bill Clinton is a "guy who was using his position of authority to take advantage of young women in the workplace.” Paul cites the figure $850,000 as the amount paid to Paula Jones to settle her sexual harassment complaint.
And Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri said "I don’t want my daughter near [Bill Clinton]." But that was back in 2006.
McCaskill supported Obama in '08, but she needs to get right with the Clintons. Here she is, stepping up to defend them now, against the righteous gender politics of Rand Paul. She says: "I think most women understand that they should not be held accountable for the behaviors of their husbands. And you know, frankly, it was a long time ago, and our country did very well under the leadership of Bill Clinton."
I don't get the applicability of the general proposition that "women... should not be held accountable for the behaviors of their husbands." When a woman allies with a man and remain allied with him as she seeks vast political power, how can she disaggregate herself from him? She actively facilitated him, and she did it in a way that was also about furthering her own career:
Surely, she's accountable for that! This isn't about some little woman who stayed home and baked cookies and had teas. This is Hillary Clinton, who was there actively fighting right alongside her husband, and who went on to leverage her experience in that role in a climb to immense power.
I think Republicans mostly get into trouble trying to play the gender politics game against the Democrats, but Rand Paul seems to have some special power and will to step up and play. It's quite helpful, healthy, and refreshing. I will take a front-row seat as an avid spectator on days when Rand Paul is playing.
"Clothes provide the first hint of how we relate to one another and how seriously we should be taken. (Remember that, dear interns in your flip-flops and miniskirts.) Gentlemen may pull on a bespoke suit or rebel against that brand of traditionalism with rumpled jeans and T-shirts. Power is now a woman in a sleek sheath, not one in a frumpy suit and a pair of commuter sneakers."
Robin Givhan opines on fashion and Washington as she steps away from her fashion beat at the Washington Post (and into the more stylish Daily Beast). She thanks the Post and pleads for the importance of fashion writing — "fashion [can] provide a window on who we are... amid the frippery and parties, fashion is also business, politics, religion, sociology and ultimately, life." And she links to a few choice old items, going back as far as 1998 — I wish I were blogging then! — to a thing about Paula Jones:
She has smoothed the frizzy mane of curls that once reached to such dazzling heights. Her makeup is now subtle and based on natural, not neon, hues. Her clothing is inspired by the boardroom instead of the secretarial pool. She has embraced the markers of dignity, refinement and power.
So... the frumpy suit and not the sleek sheath? Funny how these "markers" get switched around, isn't it?
"I had been very aware of the horrible things the White House was saying about her. The main thing we looked at was what could we do to do away with all those things," says her California-based spokeswoman, Susan Carpenter-McMillan.
"She is not white trash," she says. "She is not a big-haired floozy."
Whatever the woman is, she needs to be the opposite. Do you have big hair and they're calling you a white-trash floozy? Get small hair! Wouldn't it be funny if men under attack made their big hair small or their small hair big and changed from — what would it be? — a conservative suit to a less conservative suit or a less conservative suit to a more conservative suit? Bill Clinton didn't alter his appearance when he got into trouble. (But see Al Gore.)
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