Bill Clinton Tag

11 May

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

“The Joe Biden Thing” hit full force after my last week’s blog had posted—but waiting is not necessarily bad in such circumstances. It offered an opportunity to cool down from volcanic levels, try to think calmly, read and listen to different opinions, and do some research of my own. Here goes. —Women (and some smart men) are expressing frustration that accusations against Biden are being examined in greater detail and intensity than Donald Trump's far more numerous, even self-admitted sexual assaults; I heartily agree. Trump hasn't been asked about these (at least 25) attacks in many months, possibly years. How about the press returning to those stories, in detail? —Hopefully, others were as irritated as I was by the shock of pundits who gasped that Senators Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and former Georgia State Senator Stacey Abrams all vouched for Biden as being a...

17 Sep

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Returning from a hiatus always fills me with a kind of anxious obsessiveness in writing this blog post, as if I could possibly catch up with everything missed in the interim, as if I needed to bleed words.

12 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

I have been virtually inarticulate with anger, nauseated with rage, over the revelations that Rob Porter, White House secretary and special aide to White House Chief of Staff Marine General John Kelley, had a long history of apparent violence against women. A former wife. Two ex-wives, in fact. Two ex-wives plus a former girlfriend. As I write this, news breaks that a fourth woman may have come forward. I’ve been so livid over this, and over the White House reaction, that I couldn't find my way “in” to write about it. So many, too many, elements of disgust. Some commentators focused on Porter’s lack of a security clearance despite his handling of the most sensitive classified documents—because the FBI wouldn't grant clearance to a man with a history of such violence. We now know the White House knew about Porter months ago. This man is now dating Hope Hicks, a former...

16 Oct

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

You might as well settle back. This may take me a while. Because, oh my god, this has already taken too long a while. Too many tipping points. I think it was around 1974 that Ms. magazine ran the first cover story on sexual harassment, which was already an issue in the women's movement. Almost 20 years later in 1990, Anita Hill's courageous truth-telling before Congress galvanized American women–yet Clarence Thomas, the perpetrator of criminal sexual harassment against her, still sits on the United States Supreme Court. In the mid-1990s, feminists were divided over whether Bill Clinton's semen stains on Monica Lewinsky's dress were "consensual": yes, she had told friends that she planned to go to the White House carrying kneepads in hopes of just such an encounter; and yes, many of his policies were good for women; and yes, there was a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get him...