Feminist Steinem and the Lewinskied Clinton---Circa 1998 (lefty looney tune)

EXCERPT President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy. But feminists have been right to resist pressure by the right wing and the media to call for his resignation or impeachment. The pressure came from another case of the double standard..... the common-sense guideline to sexual behavior that came out of the women's movement 30 years ago: no means no; yes means yes.

It's the basis of sexual harassment law. It also explains why the media's obsession with sex qua sex is offensive to some, titillating to many and beside the point to almost everybody. Like most feminists, most Americans become concerned about sexual behavior when someone's will has been violated; that is, when ''no'' hasn't been accepted as an answer. I noticed that CNN polls taken right after Ms. Willey's interview on ''60 Minutes'' showed that more Americans believed her than President Clinton....... the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life.

Monica Lewinsky's case illustrates the rest of the equation: ''Yes means yes''......her relationship with President Clinton has never been called unwelcome, coerced or other than something she sought. The power imbalance between them increased the index of suspicion, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ms. Lewinsky's will was violated. In fact, her subpoena in the Paula Jones case should have been quashed. Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.

The real violators of Ms. Lewinsky's will were Linda Tripp, who taped their talks, the F.B.I. agents who questioned her without a lawyer and Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor who seems intent on tailoring the former intern's testimony.

SOURCE https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/sunday/bills-belated-metoo-moment.html

During President Bill Clinton’s cascading scandals with women, some political analysts on the left suggested that Americans should look at a commander in chief in terms of private character and public character, disregarding personal peccadilloes and giving weight only to policy decisions.

But with the Clintons, the public and private were always intertwined in an inextricable and unappetizing way.
The desire among his supporters for a liberal agenda was held hostage to Bill Clinton’s libertine appetites. You want enlightened policies for women and a record number of women in exalted posts? Then you must endure — and cover up for — “Saturday Night Bill,” as the dark side of the president was dubbed.

On his recent book tour when Craig Melvin asked Bill on the “Today” show whether his actions in the ’90s would fly in the 2018 #MeToo era. Bill went to his usual go-to: “his excellent record on appointing women.” But that Faustian deal of doing good for all women while being bad with a few was no longer on the table.“How would you have approached the accusations differently, or would you have?” Melvin asked. “Well,” Bill replied, “I don’t think it would be an issue because people would be using the facts, instead of the imagined facts.”

So then, here are the facts, as clear 20 years ago as they are now. When Monica Lewinsky came into the Oval Office and flashed her thong, Bill Clinton should have said: “Young lady, go back to your office. I am the president of the United States.” Like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” Bill should have been doing the thinking for both of them.

Gloria Steinem tried to bolster BJ’ed Clinton in a Times op-ed as the scandal unspooled, writing that “welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.”

And it was his narcissism and selfishness on Bill Clinton’s part to force his appointees-—high-ranking women in his inner circle — Hillary, Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala — to vouch for him when he knew the truth and could simply have admitted it, rather than lying, parsing and besmirching.

Feminists also lost their way as Bill’s human shields, demonizing the women in Bill’s life, treating them as collateral damage, human sacrifices to the sisterhood’ s dream of a feminist president and first lady.

Hillary and other prominent feminists backed BJ’ed Bill; his and Hillary’s henchmen were willing to smear Bill’s girlfriends and victims, calling the women trailer trash, cash-for-trash, nutty and slutty.
So then, here are the facts, as clear 20 years ago as they are now. When Monica Lewinsky came into the Oval Office and flashed her thong, Bill Clinton should have said: “Young lady, go back to your office. I am the president of the United States.” Like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” Bill should have been doing the thinking for both of them.

The power differential between a 22-year-old intern and a 49-year-old boss makes any sexual interaction wrong. And if you throw in the fact that he was president — it’s an inexcusable abuse of power. Gloria Steinem tried to bolster BJ’ed Clinton in a Times op-ed as the scandal unspooled, writing that “welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.”
And it was his narcissism and selfishness on Bill Clinton’s part to force his appointees-—high-ranking women in his inner circle — Hillary, Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala — to vouch for him when he knew the truth and could simply have admitted it, rather than lying, parsing and besmirching.

Feminists looked the other way when Hillary’s Bimbo Eruption Squad went on the attack-—to paint Lewinsky as a malicious stalker or a friendly fantasist — they looked the other way in 1992 when Betsey Wright called Bill’s women “bimbos” and “gold diggers” in Arkansas with the help of intimidating private investigators poking around in the lives of Bill’s women. (Ironic, given the righteous anger of the Clintons about Anita Hill during the H. W. Bush era, when Republicans slimed Anita Hill as “a little nutty and a little slutty.”)

Bill Clinton tried his usual trick of scapegoating, evoking J.F.K. and L.B.J. to newsman Melvin——an unpleasant echo of Clinton aides calling around to reporters during the 1998 spiral to say that J.F.K. had fooled around with young women at the White House. But by 1998, feminism had been flowering for 30 years. And J.F.K. was no role model in that regard.

......after the capricious behavior of Bill Clinton and the smearing of Clintonworld…...Bill Clinton has learned that his threadbare routine of maudlin self-pity and casting blame on everyone but himself doesn’t work anymore. The definition of “is” doesn’t depend on anything. It just is.

WHAT THEY REALLY BELIEVE (hat tip Michael Kelly)

Democrats firmly believe Monica Lewinsky was “just fantasizing” in her 20 hours of taped conversation in which she reportedly detailed her sexual relationship with the president and begged Linda Tripp to join her in lying about the relationship.

Democrats believe that any gifts, correspondence, telephone calls and the 37 post-employment White House visits that may have passed between Lewinsky and the president are evidence only of a platonic relationship.

Democrats believe that such innocent intimate friendships are quite common between middle-aged married men and young single women, and also between presidents of the United States and White House interns.

Democrats saw nothing suspicious in the report that the president’s intimate pal, Vernon Jordan, arranged a $40,000-per-year job for Lewinsky shortly after she signed but before she filed an affidavit saying she had not had sex with the president.

Nor did trusting Democrats read anything untoward into the fact that the ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Lewinsky at the Watergate to offer her a job.

Democrats believe the instructions Lewinsky gave Linda Tripp informing her on how to properly perjure herself in the Willey matter "simply wrote themselves."

Democrats believe, as does Hillary, that The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR are all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to malign the saintly Clintons.

SOURCE: www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/30/gloria-steinem-on-her-bill-clinton-essay-i-wouldnt-write-the-same-thing-now

Gloria Steinem on her Bill Clinton essay: 'I wouldn’t write the same thing now'

The feminist icon spoke to the Guardian about her 1998 op-ed, which drew criticism: ‘what you write in one decade you don’t necessarily write in the next’

Gloria Steinem would not mount the same vigorous defence of Bill Clinton today that she offered in a controversial 1998 article that downplayed accusations of harassment against the then president, the feminist icon has told the Guardian. But Steinem said she did not regret writing the New York Times article in the first place.

LINKED ARTICLE Bill Clinton's past re-examined in light of Weinstein and Trump

“We have to believe women. I wouldn’t write the same thing now because there’s probably more known about other women now. I’m not sure,” she said on the red carpet of an annual comedy benefit for the Ms Foundation for Women, of which she is a founder. “What you write in one decade you don’t necessarily write in the next. But I’m glad I wrote it in that decade.” It was her first extended comment on the op-ed since it became fodder for a revitalized debate about the string of sexual misconduct claims against Clinton, and the political forces that helped him survive them. “If all the sexual allegations now swirling around the White House turn out to be true, President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy,” read Steinem’s 1998 essay, titled Feminists and the Clinton Question. But, “even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass,” she continued. “President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.”

Her words have come under scrutiny amid a national reckoning over sexual harassment and renewed questions about whether the multiple accusations should have doomed Clinton’s presidency. At the time of her letter, former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones was suing Clinton for sexual harassment, and Kathleen Willey had just given an interview to 60 Minutes about Clinton making an unwanted sexual advance. Clinton, Willey claimed, kissed her on the mouth during a private meeting to discuss job opportunities. She pushed back away from him, she claimed, and he touched her breasts and placed her hand on his erect penis. The gravest allegation came one year later, when former campaign volunteer Juanita Broaddrick accused Clinton of rape. Clinton has always denied non-consensual sexual contact. But if those regrets exist, they are not Steinem’s. “I’m glad I wrote it at the time,” she said. “Because the danger then was we were about to lose sexual harassment law because it was being applied to extramarital sex, free will, extramarital sex, as with Monica Lewinsky.” Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky but both agree it was consensual.

Steinem appears to have been referring to the bruising legal battle that began when Jones, a former Arkansas state clerk, sued Clinton, then the sitting president, for sexual harassment. Jones claimed Clinton in his role as Arkansas’s governor summoned her to his hotel room, where he touched her, tried to kiss her, dropped his pants and asked for oral sex. A judge later dismissed Jones’s case, saying Clinton’s alleged behavior, while “boorish and offensive”, did not meet the legal definition of sexual harassment.

In her op-ed, Steinem was even more generous toward Clinton. “Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection,” Steinem wrote, adding “there appears to be little evidence” of Jones suffering psychological damage. Steinem’s thinking on Jones and her accusations seems unchanged today. Asked if Jones’s accusation amounted to something other than a “free will” encounter, Steinem replied, “Paula Jones, in spite of all the pressures on her, said very clearly, ‘He said to me, I wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.’ That was part of her testimony.

“The problem at the time was, the sexual harassment law was in danger,” she said. “If Clinton had resigned, that would have endangered the law.”

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