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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
Broaddrick charges are Dear Camille:
How are feminists going to react to the now exploding Juanita Broaddrick 1978
rape allegations against then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton? Is
there a limit to how much he can get away with, or can a pro-choice Dem
married to HRC get away with ANYTHING?
D. Murphy
Dear D. Murphy,
To my great surprise, Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, who has normally taken a partisan Democratic line, made several statements severely critical of President Clinton after Broaddrick's televised charges. But then, predictably, Ireland backed off within days as she tried, in a bizarre feat of casuistry, to twist and turn the whole ruckus against conservative Republicans.
If the stonewalling feminist establishment had responded rationally and honorably to Paula Jones' claim against Clinton in 1994 (when I stood virtually alone as a dissident feminist in my public support of Jones), the president's arrogant legal team might have been persuaded to settle the case -- and spare the nation the entire sorry saga of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and its convulsive impeachment aftermath.
While Broaddrick's disturbing charge of rape against Clinton may or may not be true, the statute of limitations on that offense ran out long ago. I feel about the Broaddrick imbroglio much as I did about the overblown 1991 furor over Anita Hill, whose flimsy tales were cynically used by feminist insiders to hound and humiliate conservative Clarence Thomas because of their obsession with abortion rights: In all fairness, 10 years (in Thomas' case) or 21 years (in Clinton's case) must not be allowed to pass before charges are brought, particularly when there is little or no corroborating evidence. This is not a police state.
I glimpsed the Jekyll-and-Hyde Clinton (as tearfully described by Broaddrick to NBC's Lisa Myers) in a fascinating moment of news footage several years ago, when Clinton was accosted and scolded on a California beach by a woman who was walking her dog. Some enterprising assistant producer should dig that tape out: A cold, purplish snarl and contemptuous, misogynous leer comes over Clinton's normally pallid and studiously bland, boyish features. It was a shocking revelation -- but of course the obtuse major media let it go without comment or follow-up.
As a husband, Bill Clinton is a louse, and as a wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton is a collaborator and churchgoing hypocrite who has again and again propped up that façade of a happy marriage for political self-interest and whose elitist indifference to less well-educated white women has helped produce what is apparently an endless series of female targets groped, propositioned, exploited or abused by her feckless spouse.
Hillary richly deserves to have Monica Lewinsky -- that solipsistic Beverly Hills brat with a father complex -- tied to her tail for history. Don't mess with Jewish-American princesses! -- one of my all-time favorite sexual personae in life and art. I guess Hillary never saw "Goodbye, Columbus" (1969), the spirited film version of Philip Roth's novel starring the deliciously all-ruling Ali MacGraw (who later learned she herself is partly Jewish).
Hillary makes great speeches: That is the totality of her political accomplishments. On the podium, she is the Protestant nun in her pulpit, full of Jonathan Edwards' thunder of hellfire. As she demonstrated during her ill-fated tenure as chief of health-care reform, she is a cliquish authoritarian who doesn't understand how democracy works. Why in Eleanor Roosevelt's name would anyone think the people of New York (my home state) want her as their senator? She'd have to have her own private cloak room built on the Mall to sit and sulk in, because a team player she ain't. Let's pack Hillary and her paper-thin feminism off on a world tour where she can do some good for the United Nations as a hectoring bottle blond with a mission for women's and children's rights.
I'm sick of the Clintons and their eternal screw-ups. Right now, I'm looking to the future with high hopes for the 2000 campaign, where I'm enthusiastically supporting U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein for at least vice president on the Democratic national ticket.
Dear Camille,
I'm interested in your response to the row being caused by Calvin Klein's
aborted ad campaign depicting adolescents in their undies. Though I find
nothing pornographic about the ads and think the stink being raised is a
typical reflex of frightened parents in denial of their children's
sexuality, I am disgusted by the narcissism of a society that feels their
children deserve designer underwear. I mean, Jesus, when I was 6, I wore
Superman briefs. Your thoughts?
James
N E X T_P A G E | Calvin ain't the guy to break down America's kiddy-sex Puritanism
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