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Flashback Hitchens...Clinton's failure to address Juanita Broaddrick's charge...(+ vid link)
Salon ^ | March 16, 1999 | Christopher Hitchens

Posted on 09/02/2013 2:08:13 PM PDT by beaversmom

In James Baldwin’s account of the Atlanta murders, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” he recalls a dreadful earlier moment from 1965. The swamps and creeks of Mississippi were being dragged for the bodies of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman (done to death by the political ancestors of Bob Barr), and the search parties kept turning up corpses. Examination proved that these were not the cadavers that the authorities were seeking. It took a while for the subject to change, or at least for it to change enough for someone to exclaim: Wait a minute! What are all these other bodies doing in the swamp?

It’s one thing to say, with reasonable confidence, that the Oval Office is currently occupied by a war criminal, a rapist and a pathological liar. It’s another to ponder the full implications. If half of the many allegations about Clinton’s business deals and date rapes are even half-true, then he has been going through political life for years, aware or quasi-aware that any or every telephone call might be the one he has been dreading. That’s more stress than most of us could take: Only a certain kind of personality could be expected to endure it. You can look this up under the simpering liberal media description of “Comeback Kid,” or you can check it under an entry of an entirely different kind, where the key phrase is “Threat to self and others.”

In the last taped conversation between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, the two women are heard wondering how Clinton will explain away a two-hour telephone call to “Juanita.” Investigation shows that this Juanita is not Juanita Broaddrick. But then who is it? What else is in the swamp? And is this man a stone-cold rapist or isn’t he?

It seems to me morally feeble, as well as intellectually slack, to split the difference between Clinton and Broaddrick, or to characterize her allegation as unprovable. The feeblest summary of this compromise is contained in the lazy phrase “he said, she said.” In the case of the “he,” we already know that he is a hysterical, habitual liar. We also know that almost no allegation ever made by a woman and denied by him has proven to be untrue. And we know that ex-girlfriends have been subjected to extraordinary campaigns of defamation, amounting in some cases to intimidation, merely for speaking about “consensual” sex. What allegation could be more horrific than that of rape?

And yet, “he” hasn’t said anything yet. If I was accused of rape, and the woman making the charge was a lady of obvious integrity, I would want to do better than have a lawyer make a routine disclaimer. (Especially a lawyer, in this case the pathetic figure of David Kendall, who had not even met me at the time of the supposed crime.) Asked by NBC to say where Clinton had been on the morning in question — a fact easily established in the life of a state attorney general — the White House declined cooperation. I would have wanted to do better than that, too.

So much for the “he said.” What of the “she”? If the allegation is false, then Broaddrick is not just getting her facts wrong. She is deliberately fabricating one of the most damning charges that any one person can make against another. She must be a wicked or deluded or vicious person. There seems no escaping this corollary conclusion. There also seems no reason at all for reaching it. Where is the famous Clintonian rapid-response team? Has it no pride? Can it not find or produce any shadow of a doubt to cast on Broaddrick’s character? I think that if it could, we would know by now.

A provisional but not unpardonable induction, then, is that she is speaking the truth. Questioned fairly closely by Lisa Myers, she and her contemporary corroborative witnesses were easily able to answer the questions about silence and delay. The victim felt guilty for letting an unchaperoned man into her room, even if he was the attorney general. In a banana republic like Arkansas, allegations against powerful men were believed to have potentially unpleasant consequences. The victim was also having an extramarital affair with a man she hoped to marry. She did not want to be exposed, and she did not expect to be believed.

Finally — and very importantly — she didn’t “go public.” She was made public. The feminist movement has taught us to recognize this pattern of response as a familiar and intelligible one. (How sad it was, by the way, to see Patricia Ireland changing her mind at this late stage. Doesn’t she know that she has lost something that she can’t ever hope to retrieve, and has lost it to Clinton?) Even the first lady seems to be hesitant these days: The question before us being not “Will she run?” but “Will she walk?” Surely the two can’t be connected? Can they?

Perhaps I won’t be taken as an authority on the moral credibility of the feminist leadership. But something ought to be said about the honor of the male sex in this business. It has been disgusting, all through the last year, to hear Clinton defended as homme moyen sensuel. “Everybody does it … all men lie about sex … a gentleman is expected to lie.” One reason a gentleman may be obliged to lie is to protect the reputation of the woman. Clinton has lied in order to trash them. I don’t have any male friends who hump the help and then (with the assistance of paid slanderers) call them liars, gold diggers, sluts and blackmailers. I don’t have any male friends who have been plausibly accused of rape, either, though I do know several women who have been sexually assaulted and decided not to go public. I also know of three other women who I suspect could, if they chose, lay a charge of assault against Clinton.

This puts him, in male terms, way outside the limit of what can be tolerated. I see him on the television all the time, biting that fat lip of his, and now I have an additional reason for the powerful nausea I have always felt. I imagine his teeth in Juanita Broaddrick’s lips, after he’s told her to lie still or he’ll bite her again. But hey, it’s time to move on. So forget it. Forget it if you can.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: billclinton; blackkk; broaddrick; clinton; florida; georgezimmerman; hitchens; juanitabroaddrick; trayvonmartin
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Got to watching an old Politically Incorrect the other night where Christopher Hitchens was a guest and he referenced this piece he wrote about Clinton. I'll link video here, too, but maybe I should post video as separate thread. Not sure. Hitchens is very good in it. I know he wasn't a perfect person like the rest of us (sarcasm), but I miss him a lot.

Politically Incorrect: Bill Maher Christopher Hitchens
PIC link via YT

1 posted on 09/02/2013 2:08:13 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom

He was brilliant, and liberal as heck. And brave. And here he is 10,000% correct.

Most people don’t know the story about Hillary intimidating & threatening Juanita, BTW.

Simply because she, Juanita, had fallen VICTIM to Bill.


2 posted on 09/02/2013 2:23:18 PM PDT by gaijin
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To: beaversmom

Hitchens could be maddening but he was one of the best essayists of his time. His trenchant, mordant wit was bracing in an era of mealymouths.


3 posted on 09/02/2013 2:24:30 PM PDT by pluvmantelo (Tuffy Gessling, George Zimmerman: They can crash at my pad anytime they like)
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To: gaijin

At the PIC video link he flat out calls him a reptile and rapist. No mincer of words was he. :)


4 posted on 09/02/2013 2:25:55 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom

Hitchens was honest. If he saw it a certain way, he would tell you he saw it that way. Gotta respect that, even if he wasn’t going to see it your way every time.


5 posted on 09/02/2013 2:25:59 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (This post coming to you today from behind the Camelskin Curtain. Not the Iron or Bamboo Curtain...)
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To: pluvmantelo
in an era of mealymouths.

Love it! I think we are still in that era.

6 posted on 09/02/2013 2:27:18 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom; ntnychik; PhilDragoo; Alamo-Girl; Mia T
We need to start digging through the old Alamo Girl and MiaT files........they had all the info on Hill and Bill.


7 posted on 09/02/2013 2:32:27 PM PDT by potlatch
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To: DoughtyOne

Would love to have him back for what seems to be the inevitable Hillary run.


8 posted on 09/02/2013 2:33:55 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom

Yes that would be good.


9 posted on 09/02/2013 2:34:50 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (This post coming to you today from behind the Camelskin Curtain. Not the Iron or Bamboo Curtain...)
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To: beaversmom

Sadly, I agree.


10 posted on 09/02/2013 2:51:32 PM PDT by pluvmantelo (Tuffy Gessling, George Zimmerman: They can crash at my pad anytime they like)
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To: potlatch; doug from upland

Definitely...and Doug from Upland. :)


11 posted on 09/02/2013 2:53:27 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom

True! Don’t think I’ve talked to Doug since the “Obama Bow” brouhaha.


12 posted on 09/02/2013 3:03:14 PM PDT by potlatch
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To: beaversmom

Just reading a book that mentions how the FBI solved this crime.

They outsourced the investigation to a NY wiseguy informant, Gregory Scarpa, who in return for dropped criminal charges drove to MS, kidnapped a KKK guy, drove him out into the woods, and tortured the location of the bodies out of him.

Cool, huh?


13 posted on 09/02/2013 3:07:22 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: potlatch
Thanks for remembering the DSL!
14 posted on 09/02/2013 3:42:55 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: potlatch; All

Friend forwarded this to me. Haven’t gone through the list yet, but mentions Eileen Wellstone of England in 1969:

http://albertpeia.com/oxfordassault.htm


15 posted on 09/02/2013 3:43:07 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: Sherman Logan
Cool, huh?

I guess sometimes ya gotta contract out?!

16 posted on 09/02/2013 3:49:02 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom

Is the video of the Lisa Myers interview still around?


17 posted on 09/02/2013 3:58:16 PM PDT by rottndog ('Live Free Or Die' Ain't just words on a bumber sticker...or a tagline.)
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To: rottndog

It might be on you tube. I will have to search there and see after rest.


18 posted on 09/02/2013 4:03:28 PM PDT by beaversmom
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To: beaversmom; ntnychik

Thanks for posting that link, I had never read of all of those. Wonder how many he assaulted while in High School... Too bad he wasn’t caught before he gained powerful positions. Just unreal!!!


19 posted on 09/02/2013 5:54:34 PM PDT by potlatch
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To: Alamo-Girl

How could we forget? ((HUGS))


20 posted on 09/02/2013 5:55:46 PM PDT by potlatch
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