A few weeks later. I heard on of all places. JT the Brick's overnight sports show the allegation reported to a national audience. I Googled Hillary's alleged paramour. Friends than Bill does.
That's if you believe the rumors. I've been around politics long enough not to automatically believe the graffiti on the bathroom wall. Evidence not gossip persuades. But I'm just not sure this is the type of story that hearing the evidence will be all that healthy--for Hillary Clinton for her close friend or for the country.
The English press reported the rumours over the weekend which. The cycle has begun. The genesis of this story appearing on blogs in foreign news outlets on Drudge--all before a mainstream U. S press outlets took a crack--reminds me of another sex scandal involving a famous politician (also named Clinton) and a female underling.
And like that other sex scandal. Republicans would be unwise to carp on this. The prinicpal effect of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was to place on the national stage obscene sexual material. In other words the publicity surrounding the scandal spotlighted on stage what should operate in the shadows off stage. It's not that Bill Clinton did something defendable. It's not that the scandal merely involved sex. And it's not the Republicans can be blamed for the litigious culture and maze of sexual harrassment laws which ironically ensnared a politician of Bill Clinton's outlook. It's that a debate over such a coarse topic only serves to make the nation more coarse. It served as a massive advertisement for oral sex. "What's the big deal?," one middle-school student caught up in the. "President Clinton did it." The cultural change in sexual mores that undoubtedly took place during the 1990s stemmed in large part from the Clinton sex scandal dominating newspapers television radio and internet for more than a year.
People who might otherwise have found such behavior between the fiftysomething boss and his college-age intern vicious because of their passion for Clinton or the Democratic Party put themselves in the position of defending or downplaying Clinton's bad behavior. They rationalized and in effect gave license to the tens of millions of spectators watching the prolonged national debate. Like Senator Pat Moynihan they in the words of Pat Moynihan participated in "defining deviancy down." Clinton's behavior and the publicity it received more than any piece of legislation he signed or executive action he took altered America. And it did so for the worse.
Like the Monicagate scandal the primary effect of the Lesbian Bomb should crude operators choose to detonate it would be to generate sympathy for Hillary Clinton. People who find lesbianism abhorrent are likely to find Hillary Clinton's political positions abhorrent and people who find lesbianism cool are likely to find Hillary Clinton's political positions cool. With no blue dress forthcoming what's the point of highlighting a story that its main characters--a political candidate and a campaign worker dedicated to the success of that political candidate--will deny?
Unlike the Monicagate scandal where Clinton's enemies had their facts right the Hillesbian story may turn out to be like a lot of stories peddled about the Clintons. Remember Clinton running drugs out of the Mena. Arkansas airport? Clinton's hit on Commerce Secretary Ron Brown? The illegitimate black child he spawned with a Little Rock prostitute? All this and more happened in the imaginations of Bill Clinton's enemies. Clinton haters allowed their hatred to cloud their judgment just as Friends of Bill allowed their love for the man to cloud theirs. Passion which the Clintons evoke in friends and enemies has that effect on people.
Taking the bait on the Hillary "lesbian bomb" story will likely have similar negative consequences. First by focusing on one candidate's sex life as they did during the late 1990s. Republicans will distract the party faithful from their lack of a conservative direction and toward some external devil figure in this case that that that lesbian! In doing so it will mainstream a subject that outside of MTV shock-jock schlock and magazines like Club and High Society is still outside of the mainstream. In delegitimizing Hillary Clinton through the "lesbian" issue. Republicans may desensitize the nation to homosexuality ushering in even more special "rights," "hate" laws and other such nonsense. Is that what they really want?
Of course there is as little evidence to substantiate this rumor as there is evidence to suggest that national Republicans seek to make this an issue. I don't think they are that stupid but some lone officeholder certainly is. Less than a decade after Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston made Bill Clinton's infidelities (and lying and obstruction of justice) the issue and within a year or so of Mark Foley and becoming the issue making a big deal of Hillary Clinton's alleged affair with a woman would be a colossal mistake. As with most matters involving politics. Republicans would be wise to follow the course they should have followed with Iraq and the economy: laissez faire leave it alone.
Related article:
http://www.flynnfiles.com/archives/politics2007/the_lesbian_bomb.html
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