When Hillary recently accused Trump of being sexist for some of his comments, including his offhand remark that she had gotten "schlonged" in the 2008 Presidential primary, the issue then came up of whether she should be held accountable for any of her husband's misbehavior.
The answer is pretty obviously, of course not -- which is why the media phrased it that way. You could say she shouldn't have stayed married to a known abuser and probable rapist. But marriages endure and dissolve for all sorts of mysterious reasons that sometimes even the spouses themselves don't fully understand. And, really, it's unfair to criticize anyone for staying married.
But one thing Hillary is definitely responsible for is her own actions when it came to those women. Especially in light of her statement in September: "Today I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault. Don't let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed and we're with you.
Clinton also stated the need for "increased prevention effort" to discourage sexual predators.
Those were not exactly her reactions to her hubby's various "bimbo eruptions," as they were called by Bill Clinton's handlers.
When Gennifer Flowers claimed to have had an affair with Bill Clinton in 1992, Hillary disparaged her as "trailer trash."
When Juanita Broaddrick said that Bill Clinton had raped her, Hillary implicitly threatened her and told her to keep quiet.
And Hillary famously dismissed Monica Lewinsky as a "narcissistic loony tune."
(Not a bad description of herself.)
So, no, Hillary shouldn't be held responsible for her husband's actions. Only her own.
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9 comments:
She should take responsibility for her own actions? That is SUCH a patriarchal thing to say :)
Baloo --
My heartfelt apologies to you; I know how offended you are by such things :)
@John Craig:
Donald Trump is a genius. He basically took an issue everyone thought was 1) so overdone and retreaded in the past everyone thought it was a nonstarter; and 2) could not be pinned on Hilary---and both 1) made it fresh and relevant and painful today and 2) pinned it on Hilary.
Anyone who thinks this guy is dumb now is clearly signalling their own stupidity.
I've hypothesized that there was a money man or two behind the Bill Cosby scandals. These issues were so old and baseless, and Cosby was so beloved, and his age and race made him more bullet proof---how could they stick and become relevant?
And don't give me that "Hannibal Buress made it happen." Buress was a B-level comedian when he made those comments. Someone powerful had to promote them to get the scandal in the news, as well as line up attorneys and spokespeople to find the former "victims" and start disseminating their stories all at once. And Buress was just the desperate-for-fame B-level comedian to be bought off to be the false-instigator----and, lo and behold, right after his comments went "viral" he got his very own TV show with Comedy Central. Coincidence? I think not.
I thought it was Barry Diller or some other Hollywood mogul that Cosby had pissed off when Cosby's latest sitcom/TV show went south (Cosby had been working on another TV deal that fell through right before this story broke. Coincidence? I think not).
But... (puts on tinfoil hat)....could it have been Trump? By seeing if he could make such long-ago charges stick on Cosby---a black and beloved old man---Trump could have been testing the waters about seeing if he could stick these issues on Clinton. It wouldn't have take that much coin to set it up, but it would have taken a lot of political foresight and planning.
If it was Trump...dang, Hilary should be freakin' petrified.
Wait a second. She was an enabler because of rumors(can't remember where) that he was fooling around when they were engaged and shortly after they got married. She was naive to think a guy who couldn't stay on the straight and narrow while he was engaged would ever make good marriage material. Now I don't agree with their politics and I should try to be more charitable but the idea that Bill occasionally fell off the wagon implies he was ever in the wagon. That is why Hilary, the victim, doesn't get much sympathy from me.
Whorefinder --
I agree that Donald Trump (or his advisors) are much smarter tacticians than are generally given credit for. I'd actually liken his situation to the emergence of Fox News. For a long time TV news was dominated by the three networks plus CNN. Nobody seemed to realize what a HUGE thirst there was for an actual conservative news channel, and when Fox came along, they immediately shot up in the ratings because they were the only non-liberal outlet. Likewise with Trump. Politics has been dominated for a long time by political correct candidates, even on the right. So a HUGE thirst had built up for a politician who didn't bother to be pc, and once one came along, his rating/polls shot up because of that.
I would say, though, that half of the credit goes to Trump's tactics, but you have to give a full half of the credit to Hillary's stupidity in trying to play the "sexist" card when she's married to the biggest one of all. And what was she thinking when she made that incredibly moronic statement about how all women who claim rape deserve to be believed, when she herself had done so much to try to discredit her hubby's victims?
As far as Cosby, I disagree. I doubt there was big money behind trying to discredit him. I think it was just a case of the floodgates opening and then all those women gaining courage in numbers, so they all piled on. I'd liken it more to what happened with Tiger Woods. He had a lot of girlfriends/mistresses/flings for quite a while, and once the first one exposed him, the rest piled on because they got the courage in numbers.
You and I usually think alike, but I see no Trump connection there. What would his motive have been?
Mark --
If Hillary found the situation so intolerable she could always have left. But she never did, by choice. Not only that, it's not as if she was being faithful to him, either. He's a particularly sloppy womanizer, and evidently occasional rapist, but Gennifer Flowers has said that Bill told her that Hillary liked women, and I tend to believe Flowers' version of things. (She certainly has more credibility than Bill Clinton, given that he's lied about practically everything, including her.) I also tend to believe the rumors about Hillary and Huma Abedin, that relationship doesn't make much sense otherwise, and Abedin's marriage to Anthony Weiner doesn't make much sense otherwise either.
Bill probably did tell Gennifer that but I think he was rationalizing his own actions and possibly exaggerating a few incidents in Hillary's past to make Gennifer feel better. She makes claims about Chelsea which is a very low thing to repeat if Bill was crude enough to say it. My impression from diving into the rumor bin was that Hillary was fairly unpopular and unhappy in Arkansas and Bill's actions probably explain most of it. Also, she probably figured that she was a Yalie and was a bit above all the backward folks in Arkansas. Eventually, she would set up her own server(my own theory follows) to protect her privacy from some right wing national security type or possibly Obama himself and the scandal follows. I prefer Bill's scandals. The vast right conspiracy succeeds.
@John Craig:
Eh, the Trump thing's far out, I agree. Basically, it would require Trump going like this:
"I want to run for president. Hilary is going to be the candidate for the Dems. I'd love to trash her with Bill Clinton's sex scandals, she'd never expect it, and if done right, would hurt her. But is there an appetite for old sex stories about current beloved figures? Let me do a test run on someone...didn't Bill Cosby used to hangout at the PLayboy Mansion in the 1970s? He seems like a good proxy. Trial run!"
But more seriously. the Cosby thing has all the fingerprints of a major money man trying to hurt Cosby. Much like how the Donald Sterling scandal before that was really about Michael Millikan and his friends trying to buy the Clippers from Sterling, getting rebuffed, then drumming up the scandal as revenge.
Rich people are usually the pettiest; it's what drove them to be so rich.
Whorefinder --
I'm going to stick with my theory about the floodgates opening. There's no way that any money man could possibly have known of all of the women Cosby violated in the past and gotten them together to agree to go after Cosby.
Agree about Trump going after Hillary, though.
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