Until very recently, The Scrapbook had not thought of any particular connection between Bill Cosby and Hillary Clinton. Of course, both are well known to the public—he as an entertainer, she as a politician—and they share a longtime interest in certain social issues and Democratic politics. You can even find photographs of them standing together exchanging smiles at public events. But that’s a fact of life for famous people and not necessarily significant in itself.
Now, however, Cosby and Clinton share an unlikely connection: sex. Bill Cosby, after decades as a beloved comedian and television actor, stands accused of serially drugging and assaulting women and, as of last week, faces criminal charges in Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton, by declaring recently that “every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported,” immediately revived memories of Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct as governor of Arkansas and as president—and of her own hostile attitude toward her husband’s accusers.
To be sure, Cosby is presumed innocent until proven otherwise, and the sins of Clinton’s spouse do not necessarily reflect on her own fitness for high office. But life can be unfair—and in fact, both Clinton and Cosby now suffer from evolving public attitudes about sex. Over the decades, rumors of Bill Cosby’s misconduct seldom amounted to public accusation, much less legal jeopardy. And public comments about the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment—”If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park you never know what you’ll find” (James Carville)—seem especially brutal in retrospect. It seems reasonable to conclude that Cosby benefited, for a very long time, from standards of conduct now deemed archaic. The same might be said of Hillary Clinton’s blithe dismissals, in the 1990s, of complaints about her husband’s predatory behavior as the product of “a vast right-wing conspiracy.”
As we say, the charges against Bill Cosby are only charges at this stage; and revisiting the history of Bill Clinton’s impeachment may be a brief stumble in Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House. But The Scrapbook is struck by one salient factor common to Clinton and Cosby: a sense of entitlement. In Cosby’s case, it protected a man with a sterling public reputation from the consequences of his private behavior. In Clinton’s case, it allowed a woman in public life to advance her career at the expense of other women. Nobody believes in ghosts anymore, but the past can return to haunt you.
