‘She Will Rise’ - and Standards Continue to Fall

This is a perfect representation of the sickness and revolting double standards that have infected Hollywood and the Democratic Party. Had Hill been a Republican man, we’d have heard shrill screams of "Exploitation!" “Power differential!” and "Patriarchy!" Any hopes of a career in the public eye would be over (not to mention the inevitable jokes and sexual double-entendres that would accompany the title of Hill’s magnum opus if she were male.)

But because Hill is a Democrat and female, all is forgiven -- nay, celebrated.

This announcement was accompanied by the news that Hill will be played in the film by none other than Elisabeth Moss, star of the hit TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the left’s new Joan of Arc.

Based upon Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, “The Handmaid’s Tale” takes place in a dystopian future when fertile young women are conscripted into sexual slavery by the ruling elite whose wives cannot bear children.

And -- in case you've been living in an underground bunker with spotty Wi-Fi -- that series has become the go-to metaphor for the left's worst fever dreams: "Donald Trump is turning the United States into ‘The Handmaid's Tale’!” “Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett belongs to a church that calls women ‘handmaids’!”

It’s impossible to overstate the irony here. Katie Hill was accused of sexually exploiting a young female employee, but her behavior is being spun as the triumphant story of a victimized underdog. Meanwhile, Amy Coney Barrett -- a devoted wife, a loving mother of seven children, and a beloved and respected colleague whose Catholic faith and traditional views have somehow not kept her from becoming a law professor, a federal appellate judge and now a nominee to the country's highest court -- is the threat.

I'm not sure what is worst: the hypocrisy, the appalling degradation of moral standards, or the astonishing ignorance Hollywood and the rest of the left display of their pivotal role in the ongoing decline of the republic.

Twenty-two years ago, when then-President Bill Clinton was receiving and performing sexual favors in the Oval Office again with a 20-something female intern. What is it with you people?), Democrats -- including feminists -- rallied to his defense. "It's just sex" became the exculpatory mantra. The public was also expected to ignore Clinton's serial infidelities and the accusations of sexual assault and rape that were alleged to have taken place when Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

Fast-forward to 2016: Just a month before the election, The Washington Post released an “Access Hollywood” audiotape from 2005 in which Donald Trump used vulgar language to describe his own sexually boorish behavior.

The horror! The outrage! The (dare I say it) trumped-up indignation! The left was apoplectic, certain that the rest of the country would be equally infuriated and that these revelations would doom Trump’s presidential hopes.

They’re still baffled that that didn’t happen. They shouldn’t be.

Voters are on to this game now, which Democrats have played expertly for years. When Democratic politicians -- a la Bill Clinton -- are caught in flagrante delicto, we're told that their political expediency matters more than their personal morality. But when Republicans behave similarly, their supporters are expected to demand their heads on platters.

For quite some time, this worked -- largely because conservative voters are legitimately repulsed by things like infidelity, sexual predation and closeted kink.

But at some point, even Republicans figured out that you can't play football if the refs only enforce the rules against one side. So the new rule has become "There are no rules."

Voters supporting Donald Trump could no longer be expected to be outraged by Trump's use of a bad word -- as a private citizen, no less -- when a Democratic president did far worse two decades earlier. That's not just “fake news”; it's old news -- ho-hum -- and we've moved on. "It's just sex" is now a bipartisan part of the political canon (and “it's just dirty words" has been subsumed into it.)

It’s a meaningful question to ask whether -- or why -- Americans don’t care about statesmanship or personal integrity anymore. But if Hollywood, the media and the Democratic Party are asking the question, they might start by looking at their own standards -- or lack thereof.