[ad_1]
One of my quarantine diversions was revisiting the first season of Mad Men, where women in the workplace were sex toys, and where a young woman’s essay in writing a publicity copy was so unorthodox that, as she marveled a publicist, it was like watching a dog play the piano.
Even 20 years after that era, when I worked in downtown Manhattan for a news magazine, there were the remnants of that sexist world. The idea of women writing about world events was still novel. And when I was interviewed for that job, my future boss asked me to go to his hotel room, spurring me to go outside and scream in frustration and fear that the job was gone.
So I couldn’t have been more excited when #MeToo tore the curtain on the dark transgressions and diminutions that women had suffered in the droit du seigneur era.
But, as with any revolution, there was some overcorrection. When the liberals announced the idea that all women should be believed, it made me shudder. Al Franken was pressured to pack without an audience, given pressure from Kirsten Gillibrand, who told Jane Mayer of New York, that although she had not spoken to any of her colleague’s accusers, “the women who came forward felt that it was sexual harassment. ” So it was.”
Most Democratic women already considered Brett Kavanaugh guilty of attempted rape as a 17-year-old virgin before taking the position to defend herself. The urge to catch Kavanaugh produced a dizzying new environment in which incredible tales, such as that of Julie Swetnick, who claimed to have witnessed Kavanaugh at parties with rape lines, were treated as credible.
As Joe Biden said of Christine Blasey Ford: “For a woman to present herself in the dazzling light, on a national level, you must start with the presumption that at least the essence of what she is talking about is real, whether or not she is forget the facts, whether or not it has gotten worse over time. ”
Tara Reade alleges that when she worked in Joe Biden’s Senate office in 1993, he assaulted her in a hallway. Photography: Max Whittaker / The New York Times
To suggest that every woman who alleges a sexual assault is as credible as the following is absurd. The idea that no woman can be wrong never hurts women. Half of the human race is female. Who has never been lied to by people of both sexes? Who has never seen the fascinating female psychopaths of film noir?
Democrats always set standards that come back and bite them. They have created a cage of their own creation. In the case of Anita Hill and Blasey, these trained women and teachers were brought into the public arena and made pawns; women were bringing charges against conservative Supreme Court candidates whom Democrats and feminists were eager to derail. Therefore, it became a preventive matter for all women to believe when it is convenient for me.
The Clintons did great damage to this score, thinning women who spoke of sexual encounters with Bill Clinton, backed by feminists who wanted to maintain their progressive policies on women. Republicans always played ruthlessly to win their predetermined result.
But this belief in convenience has infected both sides of the aisle. Republicans, along with some disgruntled Bernie supporters, want to push Tara Reade’s recent accusations against Biden because it’s in their best interest to try to get younger voters and suburban, progressive women to turn against Biden.
And Biden, Democrats, and the liberal media have been slow to address Reade’s allegations that when she worked in Biden’s Senate office in 1993, he assaulted her in a corridor, because it was inconvenient for them to do so.
Joe Biden is known for being affectionate, sometimes inappropriately practical with both men and women. What Reade accuses him of is a crime and seems completely out of character. Photograph: Reuters / Kevin Lamarque
While Reade was being turned down on television, Hillary Clinton, Nancy (“Joe Biden is Joe Biden”) Pelosi, Gillibrand, and some of the women on Biden’s veep list, Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris, were offering testimonies of her character. At the urging of women’s rights advocates, Biden finally stopped bending over and spoke to Mika Brzezinski on Friday from her basement bunker. He denied it “unequivocally,” noting five times that this was said to have happened 27 years ago.
Acid recoil
It was a weird acid flashback, seeing Biden having to defend himself three decades after he was the one who closed the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearing without allowing the three women to appear waiting to come forward as Hill’s corroborating witnesses.
There are some unanswered questions about Reade. She said there is a complaint, so let’s go see it. On Friday, Biden wrote a letter to the Senate secretary to see if there was a record of it. But you should also agree to let someone search your documents at the University of Delaware.
It is detrimental to appear that you are hiding something. As a Democratic strategist told me about Biden’s effort to remove the stone wall, these types of charges are like Covid-19: you have to jump in early and contain it, or you will be left with mitigation. The 77-year-old man did not understand that in the age of social media, people are not supposed to believe things without questioning themselves.
I have covered Biden my entire political career, and he is known for being sometimes warm, sometimes inappropriately, practical with men and women. What Reade accuses him of is a crime and seems completely out of character. But that’s how my brother, who coached Kavanaugh in basketball at Georgetown Prep and remained friends with him afterward, felt about Blasey’s allegations.
In the end, these moments highlight the hypocrisy of both parties. Each case must be sustained or supported by its own facts, patterns, corroborations, investigations, not by seeing it only through partisan glasses. You might wonder if the hypocrisy in the Trump era is outdated.
Standard of conduct
Why Democrats should maintain a higher standard of conduct when Donald Trump, a serial female assailant according to his accusers and his own “Access Hollywood” confession, wallows in amorality and refuses to throw a piece of paper on finances or personal conduct? ?
But moral relativism is not the answer. Biden is running, or for the moment, sitting, on compassion and decency, the antithesis of Trump. If you throw that away, you agree with Trump’s worldview: we live in a corrupt jungle. They are all down here in the mud. So you could go with me because I’m stronger.
From the day Trump was elected, it has always been a race between the damage he could do and the day his term ended. Hopefully the damage doesn’t include Democrats sinking to their cynical and miserable level. – New York Times
[ad_2]