Posted on 10/12/2003 3:24:41 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
What a world. Voters have elected a serial groper to be governor of California.
And women helped put him there.
According to exit polls, 44 percent of Arnold Schwarzenegger's voters were women.
Whatever were they thinking?
That the devil made him do it? That all men are dogs and can't help themselves?
Or that the women who pointed the finger at Schwarzenegger were lying or acting as pawns of the Democrats?
It wasn't just a few women. It began with two women putting their names out there in public and ended up, in less than a week, with about a dozen charging that, between 1975 and 2000, Schwarzenegger grabbed, groped and humiliated them.
I talked to three of the women last week.
Jan Prinzmetal, a fitness expert, said Schwarzenegger grabbed her under her skirt and shoved his hand inside her pantyhose as she was leaving a gym.
Joy Browne, a psychologist and syndicated radio talk show host, remembered him running his hands along her legs while she conducted an hourlong, live interview with him early in her career. He later tried to lure her to his hotel room, she said.
Colette Brooks, who runs an advertising agency, has never forgotten the moment when, as a young CNN intern, she led Schwarzenegger up a stairwell to a network interview. Going up the steps behind her, he remarked, "Nice a--," and grabbed her backside.
The women all said these incidents happened in the 1980s.
Now it looks as though the women came forward for nothing.
Not even the Los Angeles Times, the supposedly liberal paper that published their allegations, took note in its postelection, get-down-to-business editorial that Schwarzenegger takes office with these clouds still over his head. It was as though the breadth of his victory nullified the claims of his accusers.
"I just wanted voters to know for whom they've voted, but sadly, I don't think they care," Prinzmetal said.
Women, too?
"If he looked like Yasser Arafat, no one would have voted for him," Prinzmetal said.
So what? Schwarzenegger did well among women because he's a hottie?
That's no goofier than seeing him as a miracle man, a radical agent of change in a state desperate for it.
"Many people confuse the power of his celebrity on the big screen . . . with what he could potentially do in real life," Brooks said.
Of course. Whatever he doesn't like in state government, Schwarzenegger will just blow up.
Surely women were as prone as men to believe that those who stepped forward to speak up about Schwarzenegger's conduct were put up to it by the Democrats. Surely that contributed to the vote results last week. But the women I talked to said they came forward on their own, angered by Schwarzenegger's denials.
As the campaign ended, we heard Schwarzenegger compared to the illustrious and sexually industrious Bill Clinton. You know what followed. If Clinton could be forgiven, why not Schwarzenegger?
There was a difference, if not in their conduct than in their choices. Clinton's women wanted him. The women I talked to about Schwarzenegger did not. But that didn't stop him. This was harassment.
This was abuse, and it wasn't just about sex, Browne said: "He was trying to show me who was boss."
I will wonder for a long time why more women didn't believe Schwarzenegger's accusers and side with them. Maybe, when you are desperate for work - and in California, people are desperate for work - you tolerate the boss' bad manners because at least you have a job.
Schwarzenegger is a lucky man. The campaign was short. There was hardly time for the allegations against him to sink in. Women did what women so often do with their men.
They forgave him.
FRESH allegations of sexual assaults by the young Bill Clinton have emerged in the wake of last week's televised claim by Juanita Broaddrick that he raped her in her hotel bedroom in 1978.
At least two more women, one of them English, may have been his victims on earlier occasions, according to an Internet website that claims to have spoken to both in the past few days. The new charges, which have not been independently confirmed, are signals that the controversy over President Clinton's sexual conduct is far from over.
Ms Broaddrick's sometimes tearful account of Mr Clinton's alleged assault was watched in 23 million American homes and had a profound effect on many who saw it. According to an opinion poll, published by Fox News yesterday, 54 per cent of Americans believe Ms Broaddrick's version of events - which is denied by the President's lawyers - and half say her claim represents a "pattern of behaviour" by Mr Clinton. Some believe that Ms Broaddrick's interview may encourage other women to come forward.
Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent who encouraged Linda Tripp to record her telephone conversations with Miss Lewinsky, has been hinting to friends that she has someone lined up to go public within a month.
Capitol Hill Blue, a conservative-leaning website, claims that a 19-year-old Englishwoman complained of being sexually assaulted by Mr Clinton at a pub near Oxford in 1969, when he was a Rhodes Scholar. It claims to have confirmation from a former State Department official. The alleged victim's family is said to have decided against pursuing the case.
According to Capitol Hill Blue, the woman - who it says is now married and lives near London - confirmed that there had been an incident when contacted last week but refused to go public. It said she had since changed her telephone number.
The same website also claims to have spoken to an unnamed woman who was sexually assaulted by Mr Clinton, then a Yale law student, in 1972. She was 22 at the time. According to the report, the woman confirmed the incident but declined to discuss it further. The Internet magazine said the incident was also confirmed by a retired campus policeman.
The website, run from suburban Virginia, is regarded by Washington insiders as significantly less reliable than rivals such as the Drudge Report, which was the first to reveal that the President had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky but which itself has not always proved correct.
Capitol Hill Blue's slogan, "Because nobody's life, liberty or property is safe while Congress is in session", suggests that its political leanings are well to the Right, qualifying it as part of what Clinton defenders regard as a "vast Right-wing conspiracy". Its report admits that a request for any records of the Oxford incident, filed under freedom of information legislation, failed to turn up anything.
The allegations are being made amid signs that women's organisations, whose support for Mr Clinton has been vital to his survival, are beginning to desert him. Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organisation for Women, said: "The story was devastating because she doesn't have an apparent political motivation and she doesn't seem to be in it for the money."
She urged people to treat Ms Broaddrick "fairly and respectfully" and, in a devastating sideswipe at the White House, called on Mr Clinton "to denounce this 'nuts or sluts' defence, the argument that she either made it up or asked for it".
Miss Ireland's intervention marks a significant shift in the position of one of America's most influential feminist groups, which earlier staunchly opposed impeachment. Republicans are calling on so-called "ethical Democrats" - senators such as Joseph Lieberman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan who took a moral stance on the President's behaviour after he admitted his affair with Miss Lewinsky - to confront Mr Clinton on Ms Broaddrick's allegations.
How likely they are to do so is another matter. Senator Lieberman did not even watch the NBC broadcast - "it was his birthday", said a spokesman. Another Democrat said: "People are disturbed by the possibility that the President behaved like that. But will anyone who matters press him on it? They didn't do so before and I would be very surprised if they do so now."
She doesn't like the answers.
It's that they didn't follow like sheep, that's sticking in her craw.
The Left is just flat out shocked that their last minute dirty tricks didn't peal off enough voters to keep Davis in office.
Isn't this the woman who was connected to "Code Pink" here on FR?
Or maybe they saw the smear campaign for what it was?
Jeez, no on on earth should be surprised Arnold flirted as a young man. All men tried it, just not as sucessfully as Arnold. He's now clearly a devoted family man.
The libs really are fun to watch as their power base continues to crumble.
Arnold is a hunk while Gray Davis looks like a caring, feeling wimp.
Hasn't Ms. Melone heard of Juanita Brodderick? "Go put some ice on it, Mary Jo!"
Bolshevik. Clinton's wife don't even want him.
She want's his wimmin...
They certainly came forward too late ---- like a week before the election when the democrats saw from their real polling data (not what they were reporting of course) that Schwatzenegger was going to win.
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