Quote:The flood of recent sex-related accusations against Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore and other prominent men has forced members of the establishment media to acknowledge former President Bill Clinton’s alleged sex crimes.

Paula Jones, Kathleen Wiley and Juanita Broaddrick have long accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or worse.

Broaddrick accused Clinton of violently raping her in an Arkansas hotel room while she was volunteering on his campaign for governor.

Wiley accused Clinton of making advances on her and groping her in the Oval Office — the same place where Clinton instructed a young intern, Monica Lewinsky, to perform oral sex on him.

Paula Jones accused Clinton of sexually harassing her at an Arkansas hotel room where she worked. After making several (unsuccessful) advances towards her, Jones said, Clinton “lowered his trousers and underwear, exposed his ***** (which was erect) and told me to ‘kiss it.’”

Quote:On Friday evening the MSNBC host Chris Hayes sent out a tweet that electrified online conservatives: “As gross and cynical and hypocritical as the right’s ‘what about Bill Clinton’ stuff is, it’s also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him.” Hayes’s tweet inspired stories on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, Breitbart and The Daily Caller, all apparently eager to use the Clinton scandals to derail discussions about Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in Alabama who is accused of sexually assaulting minors.

Yet despite the right’s evident bad faith, I agree with Hayes. In this #MeToo moment, when we’re reassessing decades of male misbehavior and turning open secrets into exposes, we should look clearly at the credible evidence that Juanita Broaddrick told the truth when she accused Clinton of raping her. But revisiting the Clinton scandals in light of today’s politics is complicated as well as painful. Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have. At the same time, looking back at the smear campaign against the Clintons shows we can’t treat the feminist injunction to “believe women” as absolute.

Writing at Crooked.com, Brian Beutler warns that in future elections, right-wing propaganda will exploit the progressive commitment to always taking sexual abuse charges seriously. It’s easy to imagine an outlet like Breitbart leveraging the “believe women” rallying cry to force mainstream media coverage of dubious accusations.

The Clinton years, in which epistemological warfare emerged as a key part of the Republican political arsenal, show us why we should be wary of allegations that bubble up from the right-wing press. At the time, the reactionary billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife was bankrolling the Arkansas Project, which David Brock, the former right-wing journalist who played a major role in it, described as a “multimillion-dollar dirty tricks operation against the Clintons.” Various figures in conservative media accused Bill Clinton of murder, drug-running and using state troopers as pimps. Brock alleges that right-wing figures funneled money to some of Clinton’s accusers.

(11-14-2017 08:02 PM)usmbacker Wrote:  New York Times Opinion Piece---"I Believe Juanita"

(11-14-2017 07:51 PM)Kronke Wrote:  Pigs aren't flying, the dnc and media know that the clintons are done, so they are stabbing them in the back in an effort to make it look like they have principles.

(11-15-2017 10:15 AM)shere khan Wrote:  Lots of people believed them at the time. Democrats gave them a pass

(11-15-2017 10:25 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(11-15-2017 10:15 AM)shere khan Wrote:  Lots of people believed them at the time. Democrats gave them a pass

Correct. I can remember having discussions with co-workers who basically said that even if all the allegations were true it had no bearing on his ability to serve as president. The other thing they would say was "they all do it", so they disavowed any efforts to remove a politician for this sort of activity. Boy have times changed.

Quote:.................Chris Hayes, the liberal prime-time host on MSNBC, tweeted the other day: "As gross and cynical and hypocritical as the right’s 'what about Bill Clinton' stuff is, it’s also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him."

In a piece called "The Reckoning," Atlantic contributing editor Caitlin Flanagan wrote Monday that we should "not forget the sex crimes" of which "Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s. Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied.

At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones says, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his ***** to her and told her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect ***** on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.

"It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism."

As Exhibit A, Flanagan points to this 1998 New York Times op-ed by feminist leader Gloria Steinem.

If the allegations were true, Steinem wrote, "President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy. But feminists will still have been right to resist pressure by the right wing and the media to call for his resignation or impeachment."

On Kathleen Willey’s tale of Oval Office groping, Steinem said: "Even if the allegations are true, the president is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took 'no' for an answer."

In the case of Paula Jones, "Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection." His relationship with Lewinsky, despite the "power imbalance," was not coerced.

And he should stay in office, writes Steinem, because he was "vital" to "reproductive freedom."

This is hugely embarrassing to read now, nearly two decades later.

New York Times liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg now writes that she believes Juanita Broaddrick, that revisiting the Clinton scandals is "painful," and that "Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have."

With a lament that Hillary had to pay the price for Bill’s misdeeds, Goldberg says:

"It's fair to conclude that because of Broaddrick's allegations, Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society."

In the cauldron of impeachment politics, some liberals were as wedded to defending Clinton despite the mounting evidence as some conservatives today are to defending Roy Moore.

But there is a defend-our-guy-at-all-costs mentality in such cases that at least some liberals are belatedly attempting to confront.

(11-15-2017 11:22 AM)usmbacker Wrote:  Sex scandal boomerang: Is the left ready for a Bill Clinton 'reckoning'?

Quote:.................Chris Hayes, the liberal prime-time host on MSNBC, tweeted the other day: "As gross and cynical and hypocritical as the right’s 'what about Bill Clinton' stuff is, it’s also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him."

In a piece called "The Reckoning," Atlantic contributing editor Caitlin Flanagan wrote Monday that we should "not forget the sex crimes" of which "Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s. Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied.

At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones says, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his ***** to her and told her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect ***** on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.

"It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism."

As Exhibit A, Flanagan points to this 1998 New York Times op-ed by feminist leader Gloria Steinem.

If the allegations were true, Steinem wrote, "President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy. But feminists will still have been right to resist pressure by the right wing and the media to call for his resignation or impeachment."

On Kathleen Willey’s tale of Oval Office groping, Steinem said: "Even if the allegations are true, the president is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took 'no' for an answer."

In the case of Paula Jones, "Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection." His relationship with Lewinsky, despite the "power imbalance," was not coerced.

And he should stay in office, writes Steinem, because he was "vital" to "reproductive freedom."

This is hugely embarrassing to read now, nearly two decades later.

New York Times liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg now writes that she believes Juanita Broaddrick, that revisiting the Clinton scandals is "painful," and that "Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have."

With a lament that Hillary had to pay the price for Bill’s misdeeds, Goldberg says:

"It's fair to conclude that because of Broaddrick's allegations, Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society."

In the cauldron of impeachment politics, some liberals were as wedded to defending Clinton despite the mounting evidence as some conservatives today are to defending Roy Moore.

But there is a defend-our-guy-at-all-costs mentality in such cases that at least some liberals are belatedly attempting to confront.

Read here.....