It must be ’90s week in American politics. Bill Clinton was on the New Hampshire campaign trail Wednesday. On Tuesday, MoveOn.org endorsed Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., who has long led Hillary Clinton in the Granite State in his quixotic bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It feels like just yesterday, not the 18 years that it actually is, since MoveOn was founded for the sole purpose of shouting down and shutting up the many women who were at that time accusing Mr. Clinton of sexual improprieties including rape and sexual assault.
President Clinton is fondly remembered by many Democrats for leading his party back to the White House after a long drought. But this does not excuse their hypocritically positive attitude toward him today.
There are, after all, also good reasons for fondly remembering another Bill, Bill Cosby. Millions of people grew up watching “The Cosby Show,” “Fat Albert,” following “Picture Pages,” or even being lured by his Jello Pudding Pop commercials. But the comedic actor’s name became mud recently after accusations of sexual assaults finally stuck. And now he has been indicted. Whatever the facts turn out to be, his image is unlikely ever to be restored.
But back to Clinton, whose return to the public eye comes when left-leaning feminists and lawmakers have succeeded in pulling the public into a debate about sexual violence. They say women are sexually victimized far more often than is commonly supposed, and live in a pervasive “rape culture.”
Our purpose right now is not to debate the merit of lack of merit in this postmodern politics of sexual violence. Rather, in the context of Clinton, it is focus on how both the Clintons, the former president and the would-be future president, fit into the category currently referred to on the left as “rape apologists” — people who seek to destroy the credibility of rape accusers. This is what Clinton and his team, including Hillary Clinton, did in the 1990s. They attacked Bill’s accusers as trailer trash, as “nuts and sluts,” etc., and raked through their sexual histories to exonerate their candidate. They made excuses about boys just being boys and suggested that Bill was just enough of a scoundrel for people to like.
Juanita Broaddrick, who came forward in 1999 with a credible accusation that Clinton had raped her in the late 1970s, recently took to Twitter to share her feelings about rape culture. “I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me,” she tweeted. “I am now 73….it never goes away.” She was referring not only to the alleged sexual attack, but also to Hillary Clinton allegedly taking her aside weeks later to thank her for keeping her mouth shut.
It is a black mark on this society that Monica Lewinsky, who as an intern had sexual encounters with the president at the White House, spent a decade living down her shame, while the former president saw his stature and wealth grow, despite the fact that his minions trashed Lewinsky as a crazed stalker.
When Democrats suggest Republicans are waging a war on women, it is worth remembering that President Clinton is still lionized by his political party and is still striding around the first primary state in the nation as a surrogate for a woman who wants to be the next American president.
