Is it possible to hold two different ideas in hand at the same time?

[EFerrari]

1. Bill Clinton was attacked in the media since before he took office and it never stopped because the Republics were out to get him.

2. When a president of the United States engages in sex with a 21 year old intern in his office, that behavior is inappropriate and as coercive and exploitative as any Republican senator using pages for bathroom sex.

(I know some of you will hate that last statement.)

* * *

I feel very upset that some of us seem not to know that "sexism" describes discrimination and oppression of women and not sex.

I feel very upset that some of us still blame Monica for the whole destructive and characteristic incident.

I feel very upset that some of us still seem to believe that objecting to the exploitation of women equals supporting some kind of "victim" mentality when it is exactly opposite. When women started standing up together against exploitation -- even of any kind -- we as a society started getting somewhere. The peace and prosperity of a society can be largely measured by its treatment of women.

If you want to support Hillary Clinton's run as a breakthrough for American women you cannot at the same time pretend that President Clinton didn't exploit women from about the same time he took office in the first place. Nor can you elide that Senator Clinton covered for that behavior.

That behavior was none of my business until it happened in the public sphere. At that point, it was thrust into my business whether I wanted to deal with it or not.

(Some of you will also hate that statement. But, you have to deal with the dissonance. You can't have both, pristine and separate.)

The Clintons are not as important to me as the society my boys live in or the one my nieces grow up in. By the same token, there must be a way for progressives to come to terms with real, flawed politicians and with our goals.

That way is not to deny reality or the lives of real people. You'd think we'd had enough of that for the last seven years.


/grammar

[fenriswolf]

1. its called compartamentalizing your mind

its what everyone does to live with two opposing view points

case in point

christians follow the ten commandmends. one of those is thou shalt not kill

christians who support this war/president/TWOT/etc also support killing, either directly or indirectly

they must keep these two thoughts seperate or they will come into inner termoil. If you try to make people come to grips with both of these beliefs simultaniously you will see them explode (not literally but they will fly off the handle) I know I've done it before hehe.

of course in politics hypocritical statments/actions are used all day every day so sorry this suprised ya.

[EFerrari]

2. No surprise. I've known human beings my whole life.

We can do better than that.

[saltpoint]

3. One possible insight into the Lewinsky/impeachment question is to ask

whether a young adult woman has the right to fall in love with someone.

Whether that someone is an obscure person in Omaha, Nebraska, or Hayes, Kansas, or Hamilton, Ohio, or whether that someone is a more famous person in say, the White House.

There are repeated attacks on Bill Clinton for his manipulation, and absent his actually telling me what he felt about his wife, I can't say whether he was in love with Monica Lewinsky or not. No evidence to support it, no evidence to discredit it. But the hinge with him for me is that he created a crisis which has to be solved at the Bill-and-Hillary level and not by Kenneth Starr and Rush Limbaugh and every other rightwing loon there was.

I'm not defending Monica Lewinsky on legal grounds no matter what those are, but on human grounds. I'd argue that she had a right to fall in love with someone. A man, a woman, a president, a house painter.

I miss Bella Abzug because I looked her way a lot for clarity and concision. She had both in abundance and while her fans admire her still, she remains underrated as a problem-solver. I honor in her the same traits and characteristics I sense from the OP in this thread on many of the same topics.

Let us have a female president, certainly, whether Senator Clinton or another female, but let us have one just the same. I would be thrilled with Barbara Boxer or Alexis Herman or possibly Kathleen Sebelius. Much less enthusiastic about Kaye Bailey Hutchison or Susan Collins.

The points raised in your OP should be part of an ongoing discussion. It offers many gains.

Recommended.

[EFerrari]

6. There is no scenario in which Monica and Bill could reflect upon

a mutual relationship on equal grounds.

Btw, as you know I was in academia for many years. There were many unions there that were a result of unequal power balances. Relationships happen. Sometimes, they work out very well.

But, when you review the president's history of these relationships, the facts stack up.

That doesn't make me happy in any way. But it does make me cringe when posters reject out of hand the power imbalance as a factor. Or claim that an intern in any way could make a reasonably good choice when courted by the most powerful man in the world.

Monica was not Lucy Mercer. And our trying to construe her in that way is a stretch, imho.

[saltpoint]

9. Appreciate very much what you are saying about relationships which

are constructed on power imbalances.

Of the available filters in this case, we have only the heterosexual, marriage-busting variety. To no great benefit, I was also considering a female president and a male intern, or a female prez and a female intern, or a male prez and a male intern, etc. Down the grocery list of options.

They all have the potential of betrayal of another -- whether a married spouse or a significant other -- and they could breach the age-zone question or not.

I hear what you're saying and get the filter(s) involved, but I dont' have the moral authority to scold Clinton for adultery, which is what he committed. It's unwise for the health of a marriage but it's not illegal where he committed it. Starr's (and Limbaugh's) argument against the president involved Clinton's "not being above the law," which means Limbaugh's drug shenanigans, for which he held himself above the law, are not jurisdictional because he's Rush Limbaugh and Clinton is a Democrat.

If adultery is committed on far more balanced a plain, then I'm not sure how I can say it's still not adultery, or that it's less adultery, than relationship-imbalanced adultery.

It still seems as if it's still adultery and unlikely to change.

Anyway, the power of the White House notwithstanding, we are unfair to blame Monica Lewinsky (again, I'm not talking the legal angle here) because we do not really know how she felt. We know she confided in her friend Linda Tripp, and it's my guess that friendship is off. As betrayals go, that one was on level ground and that one really sucked.

[mondo joe]

4. Try this: What Bill Clinton did showed extremely poor judgment, but was not coercive

unless the intern feels she was coerced.

Here's another: Republicans used minors for sex and pressured them into it. Ms. Lewinski, an adult, makes no such claim.

[loyalsister]

5. I never thought of that

but you are absolutely correct. She is running on her husband's misogynistic coattails and she doesn't mind.

[EFerrari]

7. I don't know if it's that straight forward.

But as hard as some of us worked for women's rights in this country, I won't go under the bus quietly.

[loyalsister]

8. Sorry I was so crass

I was just struck pretty hard by what you said and gave a sort of knee jerk response.
I agree about not going under the bus.
It is important to not allow the little things to go unchallenged.

[EFerrari]

10. Not crass at all. This isn't an easy conversation to have, imho.n/t

[Elspeth]

11. K & R for a thoughtful post

:kick:

[The Straight Story]

12. I keep thinking to myself - what if it was a repub who did this?

How would we view it then?

A man in power, an intern, sex, then lying about it all under oath, and then admitting it.

If this was bush - would we see it in a different light?

[EFerrari]

13. They'd have a medal and a diplomatic assignment by now.

TG, we're not Republicans. We still have the habit of reflection.

[The Straight Story]

14. We still have values

:)

[robbedvoter]

15. Not THOSE two ideas though. 2 consenting adults - problem for Bill&Hill, not you

or anyone else.
yeah, it's sexist to blame Monica - and in fact it's silly to offer opinions on any of this. About as relevant as Brangelina talk.
I for one consider that it was never any of my business what they do in private (because, without Lucianne's wire, Starr's broadcast - these were PRIVATE goings on)
I do think a president is accountable to We the people. But not for his private life.
For his actions as president We hired him as president, not husband in chief.
It's the "family values" crowd who made a banner issue out of Clinton's sex life (or the Mighty Clenis as we call it for short)
Me, I'd rather look at his laws and economic results (mixed batch as he was working against a GOP congress - but light years above the bushes before and after)

[EFerrari]

16. It wasn't private from start to finish.

How can anyone possibly say that having sex in the Oval Office with an intern is private?

If I have sex in Grand Central Station it would be more private.

ETA: And, considering the imbalance of power, the "consensual" nature of that episode would be under scrutiny by the EEO Title VII people had it happened anywhere else. They would have opened a FILE on him. For Christ's sake.

I don't need Bill Clinton to be a saint or a sinner. But dismissing such egregious conduct so lightly is a mistake. Not considering what you're asking for to invite it back into the White House is another mistake.