Kamala Harris’s affair with San Francisco king- (and queen-) maker Willie Brown was corrupt. President Trump’s one-night stand and ensuing financial arrangement with porn actress Stormy Daniels were arguably criminal. Yet, radio star Rush Limbaugh somehow only finds Harris worth shaming.
On his highly rated radio show, Limbaugh uncritically quoted commentators calling the Democratic running mate a “mattress” and a “ho” who “slept her way up into California political life by being a very public escort” for Brown, the powerful former speaker of the California Assembly and eventual mayor of San Francisco.
Since the post-Clinton political and media consensus decided that the public only ought to care about consensual sexual behavior if it constitutes corruption, Harris’s affair only matters as to how much she leveraged it to kick-start her political career. There is no reason to cast a moral judgment on the romantic nature of the relationship itself, and using overtly sexist language is simply rude and beyond the pale.
But, when used in an election against a thrice-married serial adulterer who may have broken the law while trying to silence one of his conquests, the pearl-clutching over Harris seems all the more hysterical.
Yes, that Brown gave the now-senator a significant leg up by gifting her prestigious political patronage positions that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for almost no work is obviously corrupt, just as much as nepotism and the deep pocket of the Gettys rigged the career of Harris’s California companion Gavin Newsom. But Trump likely broke the law in instructing Michael Cohen to issue a secret hush-money payout to Daniels and Karen McDougal with the specific intention of influencing the outcome of the 2016 election.
This was Limbaugh’s take on the Daniels affair in 2018:
Let’s face it. Our culture is not what it once was, folks. We’re not a bunch of pristine Victorians out there who need the vapors every time we hear people have had sex. It doesn’t work that way anymore. But the Drive-Bys are trying to turn back the clock and act like, “Oh, this is so outrageous. It’s so offensive.” These are the people trying to tell us that with Bill Clinton it didn’t matter.
You know, at least Stormy got paid off. The Clinton campaign destroyed their women. The Clinton campaign did everything they could to destroy their women. At least Stormy got paid off. And now Stormy’s getting all kinds of attention.
The day prior, Limbaugh called Trump “amazingly clean.”
Harris’s corruption in the Brown affair is fair game, and in a just world, perhaps we would have held Clinton to a higher standard, not just for the numerous credible accusations of sexual assault and harassment levied against him, but for even his consensual affairs. But if that’s not the standard we’re deploying, then there is absolutely no reason to consider Harris’s corruption significantly more of a scandal than Trump’s potential criminality.
