Sunday, August 2, 2015

Camille Paglia: The Two Bills (Cosby and Clinton) Have a Lot In Common--'Cept, of Course, That Clinton's a Leftist (So His Bad Bad Behaviour Is No Biggie to Feminists and the Media)

Never one to genuflect to P.C. pieties, Paglia blasts the appropriate people for glossing over the facts about Hillary's hubby:
Right from the start, when the Bill Cosby scandal surfaced, I knew it was not going to bode well for Hillary’s campaign, because young women today have a much lower threshold for tolerance of these matters. The horrible truth is that the feminist establishment in the U.S., led by Gloria Steinem, did in fact apply a double standard to Bill Clinton’s behavior because he was a Democrat. The Democratic president and administration supported abortion rights, and therefore it didn’t matter what his personal behavior was. 
But we’re living in a different time right now, and young women have absolutely no memory of Bill Clinton. It’s like ancient history for them; there’s no reservoir of accumulated good will. And the actual facts of the matter are that Bill Clinton was a serial abuser of working-class women–he had exploited that power differential even in Arkansas.  And then in the case of Monica Lewinsky–I mean, the failure on the part of Gloria Steinem and company to protect her was an absolute disgrace in feminist history! What bigger power differential could there be than between the president of the United States and this poor innocent girl? Not only an intern but clearly a girl who had a kind of pleading, open look to her–somebody who was looking for a father figure. 
I was enraged!  My publicly stated opinion at the time was that I don’t care what public figures do in their private life. It’s a very sophisticated style among the French, and generally in Europe, where the heads of state tend to have mistresses on the side. So what? That doesn’t bother me at all!  But the point is, they are sophisticated affairs that the European politicians have, while the Clinton episode was a disgrace.
Indeed. But to the media, only one of the Bills is a horrible rapey horndog.

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