Axios has put together this nifty series of charts detailing the timeline of sexual assault charges against Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby. The charts track the dates of when the various incidents allegedly occurred relative to the years they were first reported in the media.
Looking at the charts, one conclusion is pretty clear. “One common trait shared by recent high-profile sexual assault scandals is that it took a major media event for many of the women to come forward with their stories,” notes Axios. They also add this observation: “Worth noting: Cosby, Ailes, O’Reilly, and Weinstein were all condemned — and to an extent, punished — once the allegations against them were brought to light. One month after Trump’s Access Hollywood tape leaked and more than 20 women came forward with allegations of sexual assault, he was elected president.”
I don’t disagree with the problematic nature of both of these conclusions. But do you notice a major public figure missing from this chart?
Indeed, it is remarkable we’re in the midst of a Great Sexual Assault Awakening, yet the media is remarkably unwilling to discuss the several credible accusations made against Bill Clinton. He has been accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick. Paula Jones’s story about being ushered into a hotel room where Bill Clinton propositioned her and exposed himself is remarkably similar to Harvey Weinstein’s apparent modus operandi. There’s the alleged assault of Kathleen Willey in the Oval Office, where she says he grabbed her breasts and genitals. According to Monica Lewinsky’s testimony in the Starr Report, Clinton’s denial of assaulting Willey was based upon the oh-so-enlightened rationale that Willey has small breasts, ergo it’s ridiculous to assume he would have grabbed them. And speaking of Lewinsky, it’s tough to imagine that in the current environment the way that Bill Clinton exploited his position of power to sexually degrade a White House intern with a cigar—hardly one of the comparatively decorous presidential romps with a celebrity at Peter Lawford’s beach house—would be viewed as a healthy consensual encounter. Post-presidency, I’m sure all that palling around on financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane—the FBI identified “about 40” girls whom Epstein molested—is no reason to reassess the man’s behavior.
And of course there were many more accusations than that. So many, in fact, that Hillary Clinton herself got her prestigious Little Rock law firm involved in silencing Clinton’s many conquests. According to reports, Hillary Clinton was even in the room for some of the intimidation and shaming of these women. She’s empowered women, but I guess first she had to empower her more politically talented husband’s predatory behavior so she could ride his coattails to becoming America’s first woman president. Speaking of which, how’d that work out? Does anyone think that the rank hypocrisy of Mrs. Bill Clinton campaigning on condemning Trump’s sexual assault allegations had anything to do with voters shrugging, and “one month after Trump’s Access Hollywood tape leaked and more than 20 women came forward with allegations of sexual assault, he was elected president”?
I suspect that one reason Bill Clinton wasn’t included in Axios’s series of charts—and is barely being talked about at all when sexual assault by powerful male figures is arguably the biggest story in the country—is that the point initially was to show how it often takes decades for the media to report on these sexual assaults. The charges against Bill Cosby go back to the 1960s, and the charges against Weinstein go back to 1980. Particularly with Harvey Weinstein, there have been revelations of some very troubling media complicity in keeping his predations out of the news for decades.
But with Bill Clinton, many of his alleged assaults were reported relatively contemporaneously. I would ask, what’s worse? Turning a blind eye to the women making accusations and ignoring them altogether, or waiting until they become public and spending the next few decades watching much of the media establishment gaslight sexual assault victims by indulging the Clintons’ “nuts and sluts,” drag-a-dollar-through-the-
And since I lived through the 1990s, no, I don’t think I’m being unfair to the media. Do recall how in 1998 columnist Nina Burleigh said, “I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.” Whether or not casting aside the “theocratic” injunctions of more conservative sexual ethics has made American women more or less respected, Ms. Burleigh, living through the Trump years, now sounds like a mullah when it comes to women’s choices. A Burleigh Newsweek column from August was headlined, “Melania, Ivanka, and Ivana Trump Wear High Heels, a Symbol of Everything That Is Beautiful and Horrifying About Them.”
I’d really like to believe the media is now finally taking sexual assault by the rich and powerful seriously. But the relative silence about an enormously influential public figure at this particular moment, while they are otherwise shrieking about Cosby, Weinstein, Ailes, O’Reilly, and Trump, speaks volumes. So long as they have their presidential knee pads on and their mouthpieces are otherwise engaged trying to make the Bill Clinton feel better about himself, it’s pretty hard to hear what the media is saying about sexual assault.
