SOMETHING HAS BEEN BOTHERING ME ABOUT THE HARVEY WEINSTEIN THING. Something in addition to the disgust I feel hearing the flood of stories from women abused in the Hollywood system. As a woman in a predominantly male dominated field, I've had my share of sexual harassment, as have most women in every other field. It's been the long running not-so-secret secret that women simply had to put up with. Well no more. We are finally shedding light on how pervasive this kind of mistreatment is. And not just for the Rose McGowan's of the world. Out of all your mothers and daughters and sisters and friends who are female, I would bet you would hard pressed to find one who hasn't had some form of unwelcome advance or sexual commentary. You probably know someone who has been blatantly propositioned by a boss or superior. Or someone who has stood in front of a meeting she called to have someone in the meeting say, "Your tits look great in that sweater." It happens. A lot. For me, not as much as it used to which might be because I'm 48 or because my workplace just isn't like that anymore. It has evolved and I work with great men and women with a culture of respect for each other's talents and abilities. I'm glad the conversation is starting, I'm glad the #metoo is bringing light to just how many women are affected by this and I'm hopeful that everyone gets to work in a place where their talents, abilities, and personal spaces are respected.
Now to my nagging question. Why does Hillary Clinton get a pass on all this? Why are so many Hollywood women also bringing up the piggish and disgusting comments made long ago by our sitting President (comments I hardily condemned when they came to light, even as a Republican voter) while not recognizing that Hillary Clinton enabled a predator like Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton has a list of accusers, including one who accused him of rape. Juanita Broaddrick, who has multiple people who corroborate her version of events after the fact, had an encounter with then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton. She says he invited himself up to her hotel room under the guise of avoiding a gaggle of reporters in the lobby while they spoke about how she could volunteer on his campaign. Instead, this is what she told NBC News happened,
Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip … He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him ‘No,’ that I didn’t want this to happen but he wouldn’t listen to me. … It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to ‘Please stop.’ And that’s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip. … When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door he says ‘You better get some ice on that.’ And he turned and went out the door.”
She didn't come forward because like many women attacked by Harvey Weinstein, she was afraid. And who can blame her? And unlike now, where so many are clamoring to show their support for victims of Harvey Weinstein, she knew no one would believe her.
Paula Jones was not quite as afraid and decided to sue the then Governor of Arkansas for sexual harassment after he allegedly dropped his pants and propositioned her. Well she eventually sued him after her name was dropped in a David Brock story about Arkansas State troopers procuring women for the then Governor. Jones sued for sexual harassment but the judge said she couldn't show damages from the Governor's piggish behavior. Eventually the case settled for $850,000 with no admission of guilt by Clinton.
Kathleen Willey wanted to know if she could transition from her non paying job at the White House to something with a salary. As she met with President Bill Clinton in the Oval office, a man she had known for years since she and her husband worked on his 1992 campaign, she got something much different. She says the POTUS kissed her, grabbed her breasts and genitals and put her hand on his aroused penis. She says she thought about slapping is but didn't because you didn't slap the President of the United States. She did not come forward until being subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case. It came to light that Bill Clinton denied the charges and this is what his reasoning is, according the Starr Report:
The President responded that the harassment allegation was ludicrous, because he would never approach a small-breasted woman like Ms. Willey.
Got that? He likes big boobs, not small ones like she had.
Then there's Leslie Millwee a television reporter in Little Rock in the 1980's. She says the future POTUS took a shine to her, so much so that he followed her into the editing room at the station. She told her story to Breitbart.com.
She described the first alleged assault:
“…he followed me into an editing room. The first time I remember. That it was very small. There was a chair. I was sitting in a chair. He came up behind me and started rubbing my shoulders and running his hands down toward my breasts. And I was just stunned. I froze. I asked him to stop. He laughed.
“That happened on three occasions. And each time it escalated where the aggressive nature of his touch and what he was doing behind me escalated.”
She says that after the first alleged assault, Millwee told Clinton to not repeat the alleged inappropriate acts. She says Clinton laughed in response.
The second and third alleged assaults involved Clinton rubbing his genitalia against Millwee, she says.
The second time took place about a week later, according to Millwee. “He made a beeline immediately for me. I excused myself; went to the editing room.”
She continued:
“And he came in behind me. Started hunching me to the point that he had an orgasm. He’s trying to touch my breasts. And I’m just sitting there very stiffly, just waiting for him to leave me alone. And I’m asking him the whole time, ‘Please do not do this. Do not touch me. Do not hunch me. I do not want this.’
“And he finished doing what he was doing and he walked out.”
“He took out his private parts?” I asked.
“I do not know,” Millwee replied. “I did not see that. I could feel what he was doing from behind me. I do not know if he had taken, you know, private parts out. Or if he was doing it. I assumed he was doing it through material but I could be wrong.”
But that's not all. From the DC gossip site Capitol Hill Blue:
But Capitol Hill Blue has confirmed that Broaddrick's story is only one account of many attempted and actual sexual assaults by Clinton that go back 30 years. Among the other incidents:
- Eileen Wellstone, 19-year-old English woman who said Clinton sexually assaulted her after she met him at a pub near the Oxford where the future President was a student in 1969. A retired State Department employee, who asked not to be identified, confirmed that he spoke with the family of the girl and filed a report with his superiors. Clinton admitted having sex with the girl, but claimed it was consensual. The victim's family declined to pursue the case;
- In 1972, a 22-year-old woman told campus police at Yale University that she was sexually assaulted by Clinton, a law student at the college. No charges were filed, but retired campus policemen contacted by Capitol Hill Blue confirmed the incident. The woman, tracked down by Capitol Hill Bluelast week, confirmed the incident, but declined to discuss it further and would not give permission to use her name;
- In 1974, a female student at the University of Arkansas complained that then-law school instructor Bill Clinton tried to prevent her from leaving his office during a conference. She said he groped her and forced his hand inside her blouse. She complained to her faculty advisor who confronted Clinton, but Clinton claimed the student ''came on'' to him. The student left the school shortly after the incident. Reached at her home in Texas, the former student confirmed the incident, but declined to go on the record with her account. Several former students at the University have confirmed the incident in confidential interviews and said there were other reports of Clinton attempting to force himself on female students;
- Broaddrick, a volunteer in Clinton's gubernatorial campaign, said he raped her in 1978. Mrs. Broaddrick suffered a bruised and torn lip, which she said she suffered when Clinton bit her during the rape;
- From 1978-1980, during Clinton's first term as governor of Arkansas, state troopers assigned to protect the governor were aware of at least seven complaints from women who said Clinton forced, or attempted to force, himself on them sexually. One retired state trooper said in an interview that the common joke among those assigned to protect Clinton was "who's next?". One former state trooper said other troopers would often escort women to the governor's hotel room after political events, often more than one an evening;
- Carolyn Moffet, a legal secretary in Little Rock in 1979, said she met then-governor Clinton at a political fundraiser and shortly thereafter received an invitation to meet the governor in his hotel room. "I was escorted there by a state trooper. When I went in, he was sitting on a couch, wearing only an undershirt. He pointed at his penis and told me to suck it. I told him I didn't even do that for my boyfriend and he got mad, grabbed my head and shoved it into his lap. I pulled away from him and ran out of the room."
- Elizabeth Ward, the Miss Arkansas who won the Miss America crown in 1982, told friends she was forced by Clinton to have sex with him shortly after she won her state crown. Last year, Ward, who is now married with the last name of Gracen (from her first marriage), told an interviewer she did have sex with Clinton but said it was consensual. Close friends of Ward, however, say she still maintains privately that Clinton forced himself on her.
- Paula Corbin, an Arkansas state worker, filed a sexual harassment case against Clinton after an encounter in a Little Rock hotel room where the then-governor exposed himself and demanded oral sex. Clinton settled the case with Jones recently with an $850,000 cash payment.
- Sandra Allen James, a former Washington, DC, political fundraiser says Presidential candidate-to-be Clinton invited her to his hotel room during a political trip to the nation's capital in 1991, pinned her against the wall and stuck his hand up her dress. She says she screamed loud enough for the Arkansas State Trooper stationed outside the hotel suite to bang on the door and ask if everything was all right, at which point Clinton released her and she fled the room. When she reported the incident to her boss, he advised her to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to keep working. Miss James has since married and left Washington. Reached at her home last week, the former Miss James said she later learned that other women suffered the same fate at Clinton's hands when he was in Washington during his Presidential run.
- Christy Zercher, a flight attendant on Clinton's leased campaign plane in 1992, says Presidential candidate Clinton exposed himself to her, grabbed her breasts and made explicit remarks about oral sex. A video shot on board the plane by ABC News shows an obviously inebriated Clinton with his hand between another young flight attendant's legs. Zercher said later in an interview that White House attorney Bruce Lindsey tried to pressure her into not going public about the assault.
- Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, reported that Clinton grabbed her, fondled her breast and pressed her hand against his genitals during an Oval Office meeting in November, 1993. Willey, who told her story in a 60 Minutes interview, became a target of a White House-directed smear campaign after she went public.
Did you know about all this? If not, why not? Perhaps because you believed Hillary Clinton when she accused all these women of being part of a "vast right wing conspiracy". Because even though Hillary Clinton tweeted in September of 2015:
To every survivor of sexual assault ... You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We're with you.
She certainly didn't do that with any of Bill's victims. George Stephanapolous recounted Hillary's reaction to an accusation against Bill printed in Penthouse magazine. She said,
“We have to destroy her story.”
Hillary Clinton didn't believe they had the right to be heard. She stood by her man and is widely known to have been the lead for the committee created to handle Bill's "bimbo eruptions". She knew that all these women accusing her rising political star of a husband could derail his rise to power, and thus her own. So she chose to throw woman after woman under the bus to protect her own political fortunes. And I hear nothing from the Hollywood actresses about this. If we are going to talk about and destroy the culture that exists in Hollywood that allows powerful men to "grab women by the" whatevers because they can, I find it hard to believe that Hillary Clinton can continue to be deified. Because SHE KNEW. And not only did she KNOW, she didn't believe the victims, she attacked them. Repeatedly, in many ways. She set out to destroy their reputations and did so with apparently no guilt. So when Hillary says this about Harvey Weinstein:
"I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein...The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior."
Pardon me for the extreme eye roll. Talk is cheap, Hillary and when you had the chance to face this disgusting behavior head on in your own life, you decided power and political fame were far more important. What I don't understand is why none of the women who say they have been on the receiving end of this treatment in Hollywood don't roll their eyes at her too.