Dick Morris and the Feminists
EMERY, NOEMIE
Dick Morris and the Feminists By Noemie Emery Busy Dick Morris has several clients. One, President Bill Clinton, is running for reelection on a platform of being tough on crime, friendly to...
...But what Shields takes merely as tactical reflex in fact is a conscious design...
...What of the culture of the White House under Clinton and Morris...
...Arkansas typists, if anyone, deserve a little benefit of our doubt until they get their day in court...
...By contrast, the percentage of women who don't want to be raped, harassed Packwood-style, or propositioned in hotels by randy governors must be close to 100 percent...
...One, President Bill Clinton, is running for reelection on a platform of being tough on crime, friendly to curfews, and sensitive to the problems of women...
...Each told of being lured to a car, choked, then threatened with injury, or death...
...Carville may get high marks for attacking your attacker," Mark Shields wrote in his column, "but what he said was nothing less than a belittling of working women of modest means and a class put-down that went unanswered and unremarked on by the usually vocal feminists in and out of Congress...
...It was not only fear (which was justified) that silenced them, but political interests...
...He has since been charged with a third rape, in 1986 in the Bahamas, of a girl who was 13...
...Or could it be that outrage is selective, and has something to do not simply with the woman being denigrated, but with the politics and ideology of the political man...
...She is working on a book about sex, power, and political wives...
...What and where was it...
...Conversely, who will crumple faster under a barrage of sexual harassment, or an onslaught of spin...
...Feminists are selling out the real concerns of all women in favor of "rights" most don't favor...
...And what of feminist and Clinton campaign aide Ann Lewis...
...Women-schoolchildren-are tossed overboard for his sake...
...But what is stunning is the response to Morris's work for a young man who, at the very least, was a carefree fugitive from justice for eight years...
...But that was the Navy, whose culture must be "cracked," as Rep...
...This was denounced as untenable, and the admiral was fired, to feminist cheering...
...I know these people...
...Rape is dead serious-as most men, if not Morris, know...
...In the face of this, the only people who found Jones less credible were Hill's hard-core and knee-jerk supporters: the liberal caucuses, Anna Quindlen, and NOW...
...Women dislike quotas, even for women...
...But it is precisely these "bimbos," sans clout or connections, who need protection the most...
...Indeed, Hill has recently been at pains to point out that she never charged Thomas with legal sexual harassment at all...
...Two other cases suggest that this is part of a theme...
...According to this strategy, conceived by Betsey Wright before the inner circle did her in, Clinton maintains his image among professional women, by separating off the 'bimbos' as spindle-heeled opportunists with 'big hair.'" Right...
...Who is this other Dick Morris client...
...Where are Barbara Boxer and Carol Moseley-Braun, for that matter...
...he did not believe that abortion was sometimes the lesser of evils and should be discouraged, if not legally penalized...
...What common sense suggests, studies like those of the federal government's Merit Systems Protections Board confirm: The lowly are far more likely to be harassed and otherwise abused than [National Abortion Rights Action League] executives and naval officers...
...The most important differences between the cases of Hill and Jones speak well for Jones," ran a New Republic editorial...
...All feminist women-women Democrats, women in Congress, women spin doctors on the White House payroll...
...But that was how the sisters saw him...
...But their rackety approach to these serious issues has retarded the use of one serious standard and reduced them to objects of spin...
...A pro-life conservative can be taken apart for a word, or reports of one...
...In the Washington Post, Nina Burleigh explains it: "How does a man who claims to hold women in high regard explain away what seems to be chauvinistic exploitation of women...
...It's not clear if even her version fits the charges of harassment or 'intentional infliction of emotional distress.'" It is with those in, or close to, this White House that things truly get nasty...
...Rendered "inactive," unhelpful to current intentions...
...She was forced, Kirschmeier writes, to make a "soul-searching decision: should she defend her feelings, or her cause...
...If you were a randy executive, who would you drop your drawers for...
...In 1982, in the midst of an abortion filibuster, Packwood suddenly attacked a female lobbyist, who fought him off, but...
...Whores can be raped, the poor can be robbed, lowlives can be insulted-and they are, pretty much, all the time...
...They know the welfare system is broken...
...Kelly deserves a fair trial, as does everybody...
...I spent nights with them," he said to reporters...
...One Democratic lawmaker explained, 'If this were a Republican president, and Dick Morris were helping an accused rapist, you know we would be screaming...
...In a televised interview, she defended Morris's acts as justified and legitimate...
...His wife attended an American Bar Association meeting that year in Hill's honor, where she exclaimed: "We must never again shy from raising our voices...
...For Bill Clinton, Morris runs focus groups and crafts policy...
...Noemie Emery has written about Prince Charles, Bill Clinton, abortion, and George Washington for The Weekly Standard...
...Where is Pat Schroeder on this...
...Few can take seriously-if one could, ever-the things that these women now say...
...If the New Republic, Clarence Page, Richard Cohen, and others claim she deserves a fair hearing in spite of her class and her manner, Katherine Boo and Christopher Georges, writing in the Washington Post, have the wit to realize that she needs a fair hearing because of them...
...Sure enough, a year later, another woman raised hers: a lower-level employee of the state of Arkansas who claimed that late in 1991 then-Governor Clinton had propositioned her during a state conference at a Little Rock hotel...
...Jones told six people...
...Case No...
...who campaigned for the bill against violence against women...
...Of course, ordinarily, in a case like this, the Democratic women would be yelping, but there was only the occasional brave mutter," wrote Maureen Dowd on May 23...
...Clinton lawyer Bob Bennett called her charge "tabloid trash," translated easily into "trailer trash," a theme picked up by adviser James Carville to knit the two charges together...
...A pro-choice Democrat, married to a feminist icon, is forgiven anything...
...If they refuse, they should be asked why they should not then be branded as phonies, willing to throw vulnerable women-schoolgirls and low-ranking clerical workers-over the sides of their political vessel in the interests of powerful men: entrenched and ambitious male politicians, millionaire political consultants, and runaway filthy-rich jocks...
...It not only could be...
...A year later, out on bail, Kelly fled the country and for nine years toured Europe, visiting 15 countries and varied posh hangouts...
...Today, NOW pickets are not in evidence at the White House...
...But with a pro-choice president, they no longer needed a pro-choice senator as much...
...But today we bestow our tolerance most generously on women who need it least...
...According to Vanity Fair, Kelly's lawyer is planning an "aggressive" defense, based on the claim that the girls asked for it...
...It is...
...kept silent, continuing afterwards to work with him, to the point of considering a job in his office...
...Alex Kelly is a one-time high school wrestling champion who in February 1986 was accused, in two remarkably similar stories, by two girls who did not know of each other, of two brutal rapes...
...Thomas, remember, was never accused of doing anything more odious than talking dirty and very weirdly to Anita Hill...
...Most women who favor (some) legal abortion also want it confined and discouraged, subject to the sort of restraints and restrictions the Clintons and Pack-woods oppose...
...But it's not worth picking a fight.'" Some months ago, Admiral Richard C. Macke said that three sailors accused of raping an Okinawan girl should have hired a prostitute instead...
...Jones's accusation is also graver...
...We don't bestow it on the likes of Paula Jones...
...Through the Reagan-Bush years, he was crucial to feminists as a hedge against Republican executive action...
...Jones's alleged harassment is three years old-not ten...
...Many, after run-ins with Packwood, reacted with shame, self-doubt, and, most important, silence...
...Packwood often directed his advances toward young women, in entry-level slots, who were emotionally and financially vulnerable," writes Mark Kirschmeier in his study of him...
...As such, he attained cult status at the icy cold core of the movement and used that as the base for his national power...
...Wrote Jacob Weisberg in New York: "This one is far worse...
...The problem is that most women don't think so...
...Wrote the New Republic: "Privately, Washington liberals are already pronouncing her, in the words of one, 'a little kurva'" (the Yiddish word for whore...
...In private, the feminist argument in favor of the partisan use of feminist issues might go something like this: It is better for all women that some women should suffer, if it helps keep supporters of the current welfare system, quotas, and legalized abortion in office...
...and Hill never claimed that Thomas tried to punish her for resisting his advances...
...Another, Alex Kelly, originally of Darien, Conn., and lately of Europe, is trying to stay out of prison after a career as a burglar, addict, and fugitive, having fled the country in 1987 while charged with the forcible rapes of two schoolgirls, then aged 16 and 17...
...But what would she have done had he been on the other side...
...Unless, of course, she happens to accuse a conservative, in which case her class status would be used to make her appealingly vulnerable...
...My word...
...In the end, Kirschmeier says, the sisters were used: "Packwood never saw the feminist movement as anything more than a device to advance his career...
...He indicates that he will also call eyewitnesses who will testify to the effect that the Stamford girl was 'chasing' Kelly at the party prior to the assault," wrote Jennet Conant in the magazine's February 1996 issue...
...Bias is serious...
...Taking the charge seriously doesn't mean taking every accuser seriously," said columnist Ellen Goodman...
...Liberal feminists have so corrupted "sensitivity" issues that they have ceased to exist as anything more than campaign weaponry used to bludgeon political enemies, even as partisan friends are shielded from attack...
...2 concerns President Clinton, who in 1992 supplanted Bob Packwood as the premier male feminist, riding the wave of the Hill-Thomas furor as he campaigned with female candidates across the land...
...who complained about Tailhook, Clayton Williams, or insensitivity as demonstrated by conservative people-should be challenged to declare their view about Dick Morris's work for Alex Kelly and his continuing employment by Bill Clinton, in a manner commensurate with their responses on other occasions...
...She defended her cause, as did others, and exposed other women to Packwood's excesses...
...For Alex Kelly, Morris runs focus groups with an eye toward jury selection, the new form of legal psychological warfare many believe was instrumental in securing a full acquittal in the O.J...
...Rather, he seemed an abortion fanatic, driven instead to promote the procedure, to think it was not used enough...
...It's also better substantiated, with clear, simultaneous confirmations of her distress...
...This was widely taken as condoning rape, if not actively urging it, and brought with it a media onslaught, augmented by pickets from NOW...
...It is useful to recall the furor in 1990 when Clayton Williams, then the Republican candidate for governor of Texas, made a silly comment comparing rape to bad weather: "When rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it," he said, uttering a dense, time-worn clich...
...The charge does not count, the "crime" does not count, nor do the interests of victims...
...How do the Hill and the Paula Jones claims stack up against each other...
...all women who rallied to Anita Hill, as the symbol of a war against a sinister mindset...
...Simpson double-murder case...
...He was not merely pro-choice in the sense most would define it...
...Which is not yet the worst they have done...
...Let the liberals speak...
...Harassment (the real kind) is serious...
...A pro-choice Republican can be shielded, until no longer so needed...
...As Shields writes, "Would there have been such lamblike silence if a Republican politician . . . had criticized Anita Hill in such locker-room language...
...The president might be urged to share in the pain of the Darien victims...
...The party of the vulnerable, of the working classes and women, is waging war on working, lower-middle-class women in the interests of powerful men...
...In 1970, Bob Packwood emerged as a feminist leader on the strength of his pro-choice credentials...
...They feared retaliation after leaving Packwood's employ...
...Probably not a pillar of the corporation...
...But at the same time that he was dining ? deux with Gloria Steinem (and using her to write his fund-raising letters), he was physically and verbally assaulting young women and using his staff aides as pimps...
...and the accused would be twice pilloried...
...At least some feminists decided that Packwood's behavior was now more important-and more useful (to them) than his vote...
...You drag $100 bills through trailer parks . . . there's no telling what you'll find...
...And what are the feminists saying...
...What does count is the accused and his partisan leanings...
...I know if Bill were just another Joe, she would have trouble getting a lawyer...
...As for those self-declared wardens of feminine interests, from Pat Schroeder and Ann Lewis to Hillary Clinton herself, anyone dense enough to appeal to their mercies will surely deserve what she gets...
...For a time, while the families of the victims awaited resolution, he lived on an island off Sweden with a stunning blonde he met skiing...
...And while women, just like men, oppose an absolute legal ban on abortion by a nine-to-one margin, the consensus dissolves after that...
...Simple: make the accusers out to be pitiable 'bimbos,' who, for reasons of politics or money, lie...
...Pat Schroeder said recently...
...Shields added, "What was all that moving feminist rhetoric about our treating human beings as ends rather than means...
...All women who care about equal opportunity-about integrity and morality . . . are in Professor Anita Hill's debt...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 40
