Tag Archives: sexual assault

Secretary Clinton all smiles at newest Trump tape; will media mention Juanita Broaddrick?

Posted on by
Reply

For that matter, will they mention the invasion of Iraq?

The 2016 primary elections in Maryland, by the time we actually got sort of a chance to vote, were a mixed bag. Full disclosure–I myself voted (early voting) for Bernie Sanders and Sanders delegates, a Democratic senate candidate who won, a House candidate who didn’t, and some local judgeship challengers as well as incumbents. Not everybody made it. We had an overflow of good candidates in Maryland’s 4th district. Maryland’s 8th had a similar problem.

We did not have an overflow of good candidates in the presidential race. I supported Sanders heartily, but the fact remains that the Clinton team worked for years behind the scenes to shut out better candidates including Vice President Joseph Biden. Indications are that Clintonistas have spent more time playing keep-away, over almost eight years, than on producing public benefit. Thus the Clinton gravy train continues, and its big-money appeal looks to be the Clintons’ pattern of shafting labor. Note the boost for “open trade and open borders” in Secretary Clinton’s Wall Street-friendly and Wall Street-compensated speeches, as in recently hacked emails. Cheap labor is the Clinton track record.

Will they mention U.S. labor?

The behind-the-scenes domination and the lack of open participation were not small-d democratic. I was and am disappointed in Clinton ‘super-delegates’, who stacked the deck before a single vote was cast. Ditto media commentators who often referred to Clinton’s ‘delegate total’ without clarifying that it was padded by super-delegates. Predictably, an undemocratic process produced an undemocratic candidate. But given the stakes, it is frightening that a bunch of Democratic insiders, dominated by mega-donors, joined beforehand to boost any one candidate. Going forward, we need to make the nominating process more democratic. It would help if we had more clarity about what happened in the run-up to this ‘election’–but we don’t seem to have many news reporters available, to tell the public about it. (What is the good of all that access to individuals of prominence, if you burn the access any time you actually report something?) I am still curious to know whether the Clinton inner circle green-lighted Mitch McConnell’s opposition to President Obama from day one.

Senator McConnell

Senator McConnell

Envy and jealousy do a lot of harm when people are willing to act on them, especially insiders. I still think that President Obama has not gotten enough credit. I wish Mrs. Clinton had strongly supported and defended him, wish she were the Sanders or the Elizabeth Warren she sometimes channeled in the campaign, wish she would actually ‘fight for us’, wish she were solid on economic justice. But that’s not who she is. One of the recent Clinton flaps is Bill Clinton’s trashing Obamacare. We can only hope it’s not a glimpse of the future, under another President Clinton–a Wall Street agenda come to life–of undoing everything the Obama White House has accomplished.

It may be noted that the Democratic Party ‘nominated’ someone who openly speculated about assassination, when Barack Obama was her opponent in 2008. She does not handle being behind in a campaign well. She does not handle being ahead well, either. Right now, Clinton is openly jubilant about Trump’s difficulties with GOP biggies following the leak of his repugnant tape-recorded remarks. But then, Clinton’s most consistent appeal is to big-time Republicans, whom she has been working hard to attract.

Neither major party has given us much good regarding the major crime of sexual assault. The GOP does not seem to have much problem with the might-makes-right outlook. The Democratic Party should be better, and often is, but anyone focused on Election Day 2016 is not going to bring  up rape–given Hillary Clinton’s decades-long joint public career with her husband.

For the record: I listened very carefully to Juanita Broaddrick on national television in 1999, and I believe her. It would be wrong not to say so. Sexual assault is the least reported, the least prosecuted, and the least convicted of all the major crimes. (The Obama administration has begun moving on the issue of sexual assault, including Vice President Biden’s public statements; the Clintons do not mention it.) But when I raised questions on social media, immediate responses from Clinton supporters were the usual troll litany–calling me “bitch” (naturally), “scumbag,” and “psychotic”–none of which I am–ridicule, shaming over my alleged lowly status or lack thereof’, advice to quit, counterfactual claims about Bill Clinton, and dismissing the issue because ‘he was not convicted’.

Not that I am crushed. Unlike the Bush family, I actually am from Texas, and doing that stuff to me is like the old joke about Have you got the wrong vampire. For what it’s worth, I also have a doctorate in Renaissance literature, and in an invective contest, I wouldn’t necessarily lose. But I prefer that we educate the public better about sexual assault. These bullies, after all, may be summoned for jury duty some day.

Back to the present

We can probably look forward to a new release of some sort, weekly, about both Trump and Clinton, over the next few weeks.

In the most recent release about Trump, some vulgar language came out on tape–rather than behind closed doors or on the Internet, where it usually appears. If you listen to the tape recording, you will also hear the jollification supported by Billy Bush, cousin to our 43rd president, nephew to our 41st president, successful entertainment host on NBC, which for years was in the tank for the Bushes. (Lauren Bush has recently appeared evidently supporting Hillary Clinton.) No question, Trump’s language was garishly offensive. (No wonder Hillary Clinton is all smiles nowadays. It is rare for the Clintons to have even the faintest,most tenuous claim to the moral high ground on any topic, let alone that of sexualized grossness.) Billy Bush sounds pretty appreciative on the tape.

Trump’s language was rich-guy locker-room talk. It was crude machismo, partly boastful and partly not. It may even have been Clintonesque. But I am not going to pretend that I was shocked by it. I wish I were. In any case, Joe Biden is wrong to call it “sexual assault.” There are some words that should not be used as metaphors–rape or sexual assault, lynching, mob, riot. They should characterize only the deeds themselves, not be trivialized to characterize discourse, however offensive.

If commentators and candidates now shocked, shocked about Trump feel resistant to my statement, then I invite them to try a single test. Here it is:

When was the last time you, major candidates or media commentators, et al., figuratively called someone a ‘child molester’? How about you, ladies of the WaPo? When was the last time you called someone a ‘child molester’ metaphorically?

No? So that means you know that there are some terms that should not be used metaphorically.

Makes me wonder why you don’t know that about rape. Has sexual assault been trivialized so successfully that it now ranks as mere scurrility?

 

 

 

The Republican Party’s legitimate difficulties with Todd Akin, part 2

Posted on by
Reply

The Republican Party’s legitimate difficulties with Todd Akin, part 2

 

Akin with Jaco

What Todd Akin did, with his ill-timed comments, was to illuminate

1) the draconian hard-right stand against abortions. This is the no-exceptions position that would prevent terminating a pregnancy for an eleven-year-old girl sexually abused by her stepfather. (The medical case just referred to is not hypothetical. It occurred in Texas. It never became a dispute over abortion. )The no-exceptions position would compel a woman or girl to carry a fetus to term even if the fetus were anencephalic.

2) the superficiality of Republican establishment support of such positions.

 

Scott Brown, "pro-choice Republican"

Let’s put this simply: Most top GOPers do not support these positions. But while quietly opposing them, the top echelon of the Republican Party continues to entice the vote and the financial contributions of party faithful who hold them.

 

Carlson with dancing partner

I have written about the broader topic before, as in 2006 posts on Tucker Carlson of all people. Like Akin, whom he does not much otherwise resemble, Carlson came out with some inconveniently candid remarks at a particularly inopportune moment. Carlson, a Republican commentator who later appeared on Dancing with the Stars, voiced on television the key political fact that the Christian right tends to be used and abused by the power structure it keeps in office.

Things haven’t changed much, in that respect, since 2006. Look at the party establishment’s reaction to Akin.

As everyone not living under a rock knows, Rep. Todd Akin (R), challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in Missouri, gave a remarkable interview on August 19. Here is the video of the interview, on Fox.

Here is Akin, on abortion in cases of sexual assault:

“Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

There are two prongs to the difficulty Akin’s statements have caused the GOP. One is the false science, the other is the genuine belief. As I previously wrote, the genuine belief is what is giving the Republican Party so much heartburn.

But the GOP also has its vulnerabilities on the false science.

Rick Santorum

Again, I do not question Akin’s sincerity. But it is incumbent on rational people to correct errors of fact when they arise, especially when they are widely disseminated and when they support disastrous public policy. Remember Iraqi WMD?

CIA corrects previous intelligence reports on WMD

The mystery is not how Akin, or anyone, could form such a notion in the first place, that is, the notion that a raped woman’s body wards off pregnancy. As with other wishful beliefs, the wishful belief that a sexually assaulted woman has innate defenses against pregnancy is underpinned by a few grains of truth. Stress and anxiety can deter pregnancy, even in women who want to conceive and who are trying to become pregnant. (Hence the lucrative explosion in the reproduction industry of fertility clinics and the like.) Injury can interfere with becoming pregnant and can cause miscarriage. Each subsection of this unhappy topic has generated extensive medical scholarship.

On a more cheerful note, studies have shown that most rapists suffer some form of sexual dysfunction. (This is one reason why ‘castration’ does not work as a tool of public policy against sexual assault.)

The more puzzling question is not how Akin formed a wrong notion about conception in the first place but how he, or any literate person 65 years old, could have retained such a notion. Actually, that’s easy to answer: Like any fellow human being who adopts a wrong belief, Akin just never checked his in any meaningful way. He opposes terminating a pregnancy even in cases of rape. His position is obviously painful even for him. So he just adopted the version of science that gave him most comfort. And he never course-corrected, intellectually speaking, even when news reports brought evidence of thousands of Albanian women pregnant after the attacks on Kosovo.

How long did it take Congressman Akin to correct his previous mistake, once it was emphatically brought to his attention?  –About two days.

Here is Akin’s own statement on the interview from his web site, posted August 19, the day of the interview. Note that he does not clarify or retract the false science in his morning comments:

“As a member of Congress, I believe that working to protect the most vulnerable in our society is one of my most important responsibilities, and that includes protecting both the unborn and victims of sexual assault.  In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year.  Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve.

“I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue.  But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action. I also recognize that there are those who, like my opponent, support abortion and I understand I may not have their support in this election.”

 

Morgan puts up empty chair

A day later, Akin took a somewhat less firm line by failing to show up at CNN to be interviewed by host Piers Morgan. Morgan avenged himself by satirically positioning an empty chair on set, castigating Akin in absentia.

Eastwood talks to empty chair

By the way, Clint Eastwood may deserve everything he’s gotten in response to his bizarre performance at the Republican National Convention. No one seems to have noticed, however, that Eastwood’s empty-chair routine was surely Eastwood’s idea of a tit-for-tat on the Akin controversy. Now we know that Clint Eastwood, or someone in his household, watches Piers Morgan.

It’s a safe guess that Eastwood, like most top Republicans, was also chafing at hearing about Todd Akin.

Back to Akin–the following day, he issued his public apology on YouTube, including the statement, “The fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy.”

Full text:

“Rape is an evil act. I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize. As the father of two daughters, I want tough justice for predators. I have a compassionate heart for the victims of sexual assault, and I pray for them. The fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy. The truth is, rape has many victims. The mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold. I ask for your forgiveness.”

Akin has also rightly observed that “the entire [Republican] establishment” turned on him.

Certainly a number of prominent GOP politicians and commentators have condemned Akin’s version of medical science. They’re not out of the woods yet, though. For one thing, that kind of rational criticism tends to be a bit of an uphill climb for them.

The Republican Party, after all, is still the major party dug in about, opposing science on,

  • climate change
  • greenhouse gases
  • tobacco use as a cause for cancer
  • environmental factors as causes for cancer and other diseases
  • occupational safety as a factor in health, e.g. in mining
  • the relationship between highway speed and highway fatalities
  • the relationship between driver age and highway safety
  • the connection between ‘fracking’ and earthquakes

Additionally the GOP has shown itself, shall we say, reluctant to leave intact any kind of regulation that science indicates would boost the safety of the water we drink, the air we breathe and the soil in which we grow food. Congressional Republicans, always fighting from the rear on issues of public safety and public health, even tried unsuccessfully to prevent public disclosure of unsafe consumer products, a reform pushed by the Obama administration.

For related reasons, the same faction is also fighting to the political death to prevent public disclosure of  abuses in the financial sector.

On August 21, Akin told Sean Hannity that Mitt Romney was exploiting the “legitimate rape” issue. Akin had a point. Akin’s gaffe highlights the contrast between the hard-nosed, practical, get-it-done business type Romney wishes to be thought, and the views Romney panders to among non-one-percenters he induces to vote for him.

Republican Party’s legitimate difficulty over Todd Akin

Posted on by
1

Republican Party’s legitimate difficulty over Todd Akin: Re-cap and overview, part 1

 

Returning to the topic of Rep. Todd Akin’s senate race in Missouri, the real sticking point for Republican Party movers and shakers is not Akin’s mistaken science, his comforting notion that a woman’s body will ward off pregnancy in a sexual assault. The real sticking point, for top Republicans including presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is Akin’s genuine belief that abortion is wrong in all cases.

Todd Akin

(Certainly, Akin’s belief appears to be genuine, and short of proclaiming self a mind reader, it can be taken to be sincere.)

The fact that I do not agree with this view is beside the point. The point is that many voters and contributors on whom the upper levels of the GOP depend to keep office do agree with it. The official Republican Party platform adopted at the 2012 Republican National Convention–along with threatening to cut the mortgage interest deduction–holds with this view.

Those religiously conservative voters who hold this view are the people being stiffed by the national GOP, up to and including Romney.

So much for lip service. The Republican candidate for office who most strongly comes out with the anti-abortion party line in 2012–openly, candidly, unequivocally–happens, by some fluke, to be exactly the candidate that almost every well-placed Republican operative tries to exile beyond the pale. Akin’s remarks highlighted a view that many Republicans–especially those in Washington–do not hold. Worse yet, Akin’s remarks interfered with top Republicans’ ongoing strategy of keeping that view quiet.

Akin, Ryan

The adverse reaction to Akin’s remarks by wounded important people in the wounded top echelons of the GOP was swift, widespread and unequivocal.

Let no one be accused of exaggerating the reaction. Quick recap:

The day of Akin’s interview, then-presumptive nominee Mitt Romney promptly, if tersely, distanced himself from Akin’s comments.

The similarity between Akin’s no-exceptions position and that of Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, coming swiftly to light, the Romney campaign seems to have decided that just rejecting Akin’s views was not going to be enough. The next day, Romney came out to condemn Akin’s words as “inexcusable.”

The next day, he went farther yet, expressing a public hope that the Missouri congressman would leave the race.

Mitt Romney

Romney, be it noted, was not exactly going out on a limb here, separated from the rest of the party establishment. Other nominees suggesting that Akin should drop out include Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, strongly challenged by Elizabeth Warren. (Brown faces the key difficulty that Warren would make a better senator.)

Elizabeth Warren

 

Reportedly joining in against Akin was incomprehensibly well-paid radio host Rush Limbaugh, though Limbaugh back-pedaled afterward. As the deadline for Akin to drop out without penalty approached its last hours, establishment pressure on Akin mounted.

The August 21 deadline, as we know, came and went with Akin remaining in the race on the eve of the RNC. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joined the throng asking him not to. There aren’t many occasions when  Issa can chastise someone for ill-considered speech, but he stepped up to the plate this time. Must have been something of a shock to some of Issa’s supporters back home.

Coming to the convention, Romney seized air time in interviews to reiterate his opposition to Akin.

 

Matalin on air

Top GOP operative Mary Matalin went even farther. As previously written, Matalin said emphatically on air that the Republican Party will fund a write-in candidate against Akin in Missouri, if Akin stays in the race. As of last writing, Akin has not dropped out, though Matalin has not yet retracted her statement.

 

Rove at Republican National Convention 2012

Matalin’s king-of-the-hill moment didn’t last long. Funding a candidate to run against Akin was tumbled off by Karl Rove’s expressed desire to murder him. In a gathering for wealthy supporters and party strategists, Rove’s fancy turned to homicide. He later apologized to Akin. Rove was at the convention. Akin was not.

 

So much for pro-life.

It is fair to take Akin’s remarks to be sincere. It would be fair to accept Rove’s remarks as sincere.

And this, gentlemen and ladies, is what the Christian right gets from the national Republican party: It is okay for rightwing pro-lifers to show up and vote; it is okay for them to contribute money in small amounts; it is okay for them to keep Wall Streeters in power. Position to get money, money to get position, all fueled by some vague notion of status.

But when one politician gets so out of line as to state openly the party’s no-exceptions position on abortion–makes clear that yes, that’s what the party stands for–the full weight of the party comes down on him.