Posted on 01/05/2016 4:05:09 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Turning Bill Clinton into Bill Cosby: Sorry, conservatives, there's a massive difference between their sex abuse allegations
Heaven save us all from conservatives who think they have a "gotcha."
And boy they sure think they have one with Bill Clinton and the supposed "hypocrisy" of feminists who don't agree that his wife's career should be derailed because of allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against him in the 1990s.
At stake is this alleged unfairness that while some men accused of sexual abuse get in actual trouble for it, Clinton walks around free and even gets to campaign for his wife. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton, who, in a bit of ironically sexist logic for these supposed defenders of feminist integrity, is treated as an extension of her husband and therefore guilty of anything he might have done.
"Why is Bill Cosby finished? He was the most beloved guy," complained Mark Steyn last week, drawing into question whether he's angrier that Bill Clinton isn't in trouble or that Bill Cosby is.
"You'd almost think it's some kind of like racism thing," Steyn added, to turn this into a double gotcha. "That somehow, when a bunch of women make accusations against the black guy, boom: he's vaporized. When a bunch of women make accusations against some white southern redneck, we're talking about putting him back in the White House for another eight years as first gentleman."
A number of other conservative commentators played the same card. Donald Trump, of course, is way out in front of this, calling Bill Clinton "one of the great women abusers of all time."
Rand Paul gotcha'd himself into a frenzy, saying, "Hillary Clinton has brought this on herself, by saying women should be believed," as if the only choices are between believing all women or not believing any women at all.
In New Hampshire, a Republican legislator heckled Hillary Clinton over these accusations. Faux feminist Kirsten Powers compared Clinton's "bimbo eruptions" to the "Cosby situation," which had the added bonus of collapsing the difference between rape and Clinton's admitted consensual encounters with women not his wife.
You can see the sick genius of this gotcha. Even if it doesn't actually work to derail Hillary Clinton's campaign, it can still be used to silence and discredit women who are making substantive allegations of abuse on the grounds that if Clinton's accusers aren't believed, no one should be.
This entire gotcha is based on a straw man. Contrary to what conservatives might have you believe, it simply isn't true that feminists think every allegation of sexual harassment or assault, no matter how unlikely, should be treated like God's honest truth. What feminists want is to end the double standard, where sexual abuse allegations are disbelieved out of hand, subjected to more skepticism and second-guessing than any other crime, or dismissed even in the face of strong evidence. By saying most women aren't liars, we aren't denying that some women do lie. This is an important distinction.
"I think rape and sexual assault allegations should be treated like allegations of mugging or burglary - which is to say, investigated promptly and thoroughly, on the assumption that the person reporting a crime is telling the truth," Kate Harding, the author of 2015's must-read examination of rape culture, "Asking For It," told me over email. "But that's often not how it works - so many people, including many in the justice system, presume that anyone reporting a rape is just as likely to be lying as not. When feminists affirm that we believe victims, we're saying there's absolutely no good reason to presume that when someone reports sexual violence, there's a 50/50 chance they're lying."
"We're not saying we'll ignore any evidence that someone fabricated a claim of rape," she added.
Feminists don't want every rape accusation to be mindlessly believed. As Harding points out, there have been cases, "Steven Avery and the Central Park Five come immediately to mind," where "aggressive police who settled on the wrong suspects and blinded themselves to exculpatory evidence." What feminists object to is the common problem of police and prosecutors who are so wed to the idea that women lie for the hell of it that they blow off rape accusations, even ones where a reasonable amount of investigation would show the woman is telling the truth.
This matters with the Clinton case for a couple of reasons. One, it's downright laughable to compare the Clinton case to cases where law enforcement and prosecutors blow accusers off. Was there ever a more dogged and determined prosecutor than Ken Starr? This was a man who was so hell-bent on finding something to ding Clinton with that he resorted to questioning about consensual sex to catch Clinton in a perjury trap. Unlike prosecutors who wrongly assume that accusers are lying, Starr and his comrades in the Republican Party were clearly eager to believe. They just never got the evidence together, despite having all the political will feminists wish was applied to less politically convenient accusations.
Second of all, while false rape accusations are uncommon, false accusations of criminal activity against the Clintons are common as dirt. The same right-wing noise machine that has supported Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick also churned out an endless number of often fantastical accusations against the Clintons during the same time period, including accusations that they murdered Vince Foster, Ron Brown and even Jim McDougal.
Willey herself, after claiming that Bill Clinton groped her in 1993, is the source of some laugh-out-loud ridiculous accusations against the Clinton, namely that they had her cat killed and oh yeah, she likes to imply that they killed her husband while they were at it.
"When multiple people accuse the same man of sexual assault, I am certainly more inclined to believe it's true," Harding told me, pointing out that Bill Clinton is certainly a "pig." "I think the only intellectually honest answer is, we can't know if he did what those three women claim, but we can't rule it out, either."
This is true. We can never know with 100 percent certainty if these allegations are simply part of the same right-wing lying machine that accuses the Clintons of witchcraft, murder and kitty-killing, or if the right lucked out and found the one damn thing that Clinton did do. But feminists do not and have never said that sexual assault accusers need to be held to a lower standard of proof than people who accuse of other crimes, just the same standard of proof. And while Harding is right that multiple accusers, in most cases, sets up a pattern, it's equally true that there's another pattern at work here, of multiple right-wingers making lurid and false accusations against the Clintons. Under the circumstances, there's simply no way to know which pattern these accusations fit into.
Either way, the equation of the Clinton accusations and the Cosby accusations simply doesn't pass the smell test. Cosby has been accused by more than 50 women of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, and there's no reason to think anyone would lie about it. Clinton, in contrast, has been accused of sexual harassment by Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey, and the only substantive accusation of rape, made by Juanita Broaddrick, was thoroughly investigated in the '90s. There simply is no evidence, one way or another, to tell if this was a sincere accusation or yet another incident of a wild-eyed Clinton hater with a grudge telling tall tales of murder and mayhem coming from those dastardly and satanic Clintons. Not all rape allegations are the same. And it's not feminists who are suggesting they should be treated that way.
Important to remember that Bill Clinton WAS impeached.
but no charges brought...
You appear to be right. Worked for Lena Dunham.
“allegation of sexual harassment or assault, no matter how unlikely, should be treated like God’s honest truth. “
Get real Salon! A stain on a blue dress and a check for $850000 payable to Paula Jones aint the honest truth! Face it, Bill got caught with his pants down!
The writer is delusional. She claims that Clinton was prosecuted for perjury over a ‘consensual sexual encounter.”
My memory of the Paula Jones case is that she was working in a hotel at the front desk when one of Clinton’s cronies told her that he/Bill wanted to speak to her about something or other in his room. Paula claimed that her impression of this invite was to offer her a job. When she got to the room, Bill propositioned her and exposed himself to her.
So, the liberals are still using the ‘alleged’ adjective whenever Billy-Boy’s antics are discussed.
Bill Clinton rapes and beats up women while they are awake.
Bill Cosby drugs them and rapes them after they fall unconscious.
She completely misses the point.
Ask her why she worked for the John Edwards campaign in 2007 and 2008 if she’s happy with Hillary.
Monica Lewinsky was rewarded with a six figure salary for lying to investigators.
The Clintons bribed and intimidated those who held information contrary to their lies.
It’s a pattern of behavior that rings true in their other scandals.
So much for libs caring about “a culture of corruption that rises to the top ranks of the Party”.
Tom DeLay was run out of politics for less.
According to the wiki article I linked on her, she stood with the “rape victims” in the Rolling Stone piece and the Duke case. She attacked those who’d dare question such abuse happened and likened the critics to holocaust deniers.
Now she says that not every case has merit (like those against Bill Clinton).
Stalinists lie. ALWAYS
I think they hit the predator thing pretty hard when
Bildo was prez and couldn’t get it to stick. Like I say
I believe they would love for our side to implicate him.He is not running for anything. She is the one playing
the ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ card after having trashed
Bildo’s victims back in the day. I say keep it simple and
concentrate on neutralizing her little ‘message to the
girls’.
Bill Cosby didn’t have power over the State Police to bring him frightened women either...
And if the women objected Bill Cosby couldn’t stick the IRS on them... like happened to Paula Jones...
And Cosby didn’t have a War Room or a ‘sluts and nuts’ team to destroy the women who dared to speak up..
Hey Amanda Marcotte - how would YOU Amanda feel if Trump had the New York POLICE bring YOU to Trump’s hotel room, then pulled down his pants and told YOU to ‘kiss it’.
When YOU objected Amanda Marcotte you faced an IRS audit and a team of people who started rumors about you being trailer trash and wanting your 15 minutes of fame...
Really Amanda Marcotte how would you deal with that?
*channeling Marcotte* "Well, if it had been Bubba I would have strapped on the presidential knee pads quicker than you could say partial birth abortion. Yeah, I'd be fine with it giggle giggle"
Good point... she IS a member of the liberal press.
Another strange thing about Clinton is he could have had so many of those liberal elite females - and he didn't want them. Clinton went for the powerless women who were humiliated by his treatment of them... not the ball busters who would have welcomed him...
Salon is already trying to cover for Clinton.
It’s because Hillary threatened and harassed Bill’s accusers, not because she’s an extension of him.
True... and that IS a good one Crazieman - - but Mrs. Cosby didn't hire detectives and go after the women to discredit and destroy them... right?
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