John ([info]lowapproach) wrote,
@ 2008-09-01 17:45:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend  Next Entry
Current location:5812 Fifth Avenue
Current music:"Oh Yeah," Johnny A.
Entry tags:politics, sex, the beam in my own, the mote in my neighbor's eye

Oh, this is rich
Bristol Palin's pregnancy is of equal importance to stories such as 'Gustav: Live Updates,' 'U.S. Returns Control of Anbar,' and 'Fossils Shed Light on Genes,', if font size on the Post's website is indicative of a headline's relative value.

I love seeing articles like this, wherein the author rightly points out that this is a struggle for many middle-class (read: 'white') families in America, and hopefully everyone (read: 'Democrat operatives who will burn the midnight oil trying to sow discord between McCain and the fundies who still don't embrace him') will have the grace to let this go.

Honestly, I don't care, except that the noise of this overwhelms whatever signal strength the McCain campaign has in, you know, actually sharing its plans to deal with American problems. Problems massively more significant than a previously unknown 17-year-old conceiving out of wedlock.

But it's curious to see a party, which collectively made such a big deal ten years ago out of a sitting President's sexual contact with a willing adult female, go to such lengths to explain this little boo-boo as being something to forgive, and much more importantly, forget soon.

Pardon me for laughing as I watch the election machinery of this same party try desperately to make this a non-issue for a large segment of its own base.


(30 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]geah
2008-09-01 10:20 pm UTC (link)
"But it's curious to see a party, which collectively made such a big deal ten years ago out of a sitting President's sexual contact with a willing adult female, go to such lengths to explain this little boo-boo as being something to forgive, and much more importantly, forget soon."

Kids make mistakes.

Pres. Clinton lied under oath in an effort to deny a woman a fair day in court. You want to be a lawyer? When you get to the part in your law books that says it's okay to lie under oath if it's about sex, let me know.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-01 11:20 pm UTC (link)
My first apologist.

Nothing has ever been uncovered to suggest that Bill Clinton perjured himself in the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones, to include unrelated consensual sexual activity with Monica Lewinsky. Jones apparently couldn't prove her accusation without Clinton volunteering that he had sexually harassed her, something with which the trial court agreed, because she was appealing the demurrer that the trial court granted when the Clintons decided to make a settlement offer that was less than half of their total legal fees to that point.

Jones had her day in court and failed to prove her case. To make up for it, Starr and the Republican National Committee spent five years and $70M turning a false statement in a deposition concerning none of the allegations Starr's office was meant to investigate into an impeachment. Clinton got head from an intern not coerced into giving it. A Speaker who handed his wife divorce papers while she recovered from tumor removals told a House Judiciary Committee chairman who had last cheated on his wife at the tender age of 45 to initiate impeachment proceedings, based on that.

Incidentally, Starr could have indicted Clinton in federal district court, if he really thought he could definitively show perjury and obstruction of justice. Why didn't he, I wonder?

Now that a vice-presidential candidate's child is unmarried and knocked up, and that child's mother happens to be Republican, a little sex outside of Biblical norms is okay and we should let the family work out these issues for themselves.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-01 11:54 pm UTC (link)
Man, that's some revisionist history ya got there:

From Wiki...

Clinton was ordered to pay $25,000 in fines to Arkansas state's bar officials and his Arkansas law license was suspended for five years. The agreement came on the condition that Whitewater prosecutors would not pursue federal perjury charges against him. Clinton was suspended by the Supreme Court in October 2001, and, facing disbarment from that court, Clinton resigned from the Supreme Court bar in November. On November 18, 1998, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, and agreed to pay Jones and her attorneys a sum of $850,000.00

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 12:56 am UTC (link)
My complaint is less about the civil penalties (and honestly, Clinton was deserving of criminal penalties for his perjury, although he came up with a gem of a defense in terms of what he considered sexual activity) than it is about the hue and cry over consensual sex between two parties that shouldn't involve anyone else, and yet does.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 01:19 am UTC (link)
But while we're on the topic of this suit, let's remember that Monica Lewinsky didn't meet or have sex with Clinton until 1995. Why was she being deposed about sexual harassment that allegedly occurred four years earlier in Arkansas, before she even met Clinton, and why was Clinton answering questions about Lewinsky during a deposition about the sexual harassment suit filed by someone else?

Apparently neither Ken Starr nor Robert Ray had a problem using this as a shakedown tactic, after Whitewater, Vince Foster's death, the White House travel records search and Paula Jones had in turn failed to provide what was needed to embarrass a President.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-02 01:29 am UTC (link)
"Why was she being deposed about sexual harassment that allegedly occurred four years earlier in Arkansas, before she even met Clinton, and why was Clinton answering questions about Lewinsky during a deposition about the sexual harassment suit filed by someone else?"

Are you kidding me? Seriously???

Jones, a government underling, said Clinton, her ultimate boss, had waved his dick in front of her face. A good lawyer would point out that Clinton later, waved his dick in front of the face of Lewinsky, another government underling. I think it's called "establishing a pattern of behavior" or something along those lines.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 01:36 am UTC (link)
How does consensual sex with one woman, by itself, lead conclusively to the sexual harassment of another?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-02 01:44 am UTC (link)
Conclusively, no?

Does it point in a similar direction? Yes.

As I said, they established a pattern of behavior--Clinton liked to wave his dick in the face of underlings.

I've never done that. Have you? Do you know anyone who has?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 01:50 am UTC (link)
I've had consensual sexual relationships with a few of my co-workers over ten years. Granted, I've not been married and cheating on a spouse, but it's about the act and not the circumstance.

Should those women be called to testify at a sexual harassment proceeding for someone else? Unless you prosecute me for common-law adultery, how do my past lawful relationships establish a pattern of any unlawful behavior?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-02 02:05 am UTC (link)
Did you have any on-site sex with underlings? That's more than making girlfriends at work.

And, again, this is about a specific sort of act--waving Little Elvis around the office.

It shows that Clinton had an expectation of nookie on the side while at work.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 02:22 am UTC (link)
No, but let's assume I did.

If there's a broad policy about professional conduct or even a really specific one about not having sex even on an unpaid lunch break, I may get fired. If I'm seen in flagrante delicto by a third party, it's public indecency, and someone might go so far as to press a misdemeanor charge against me. Until I have coerced someone into sex, or made that someone or someone else uncomfortable with my treatment or demeanor towards that someone, I have not committed sexual harassment.

If I'm being tried for sexual harassment, and you produce Ms. B to substantiate Ms. A's charge, breaking down on the stand as she recounts how I held up her promotion until she had sex with me, well, congratulations. That's establishing a pattern of behavior specifically relevant to the case. That I had consensual sex with Ms. B, even at the office, doesn't have any bearing on whether I sexually harassed Ms. A - even if I'm ultimately fired for violating company policy.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]jilicious
2008-09-01 11:32 pm UTC (link)
Comparing the President cheating on his wife with an intern in the Oval Office with a high school girl getting pregnant aren't really the same though.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-01 11:56 pm UTC (link)
I think the point he was making is that Pres. Clinton had the judgment and impulse control of a kid in high school.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 12:49 am UTC (link)
From the perspective of both being none of anyone's business but the parties involved, they surely are.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-02 01:20 am UTC (link)
When bosses are doing underlings on work premises, it is the business of the employers.

I'll bet they will teach to that in law school, too.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 01:37 am UTC (link)
If the employers want to try firing that employee for his conduct in the matter in question, that's one thing.

If they want to establish his culpability in something that has no relation to what they caught him doing, that's something else.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]geah
2008-09-02 07:28 am UTC (link)
The threat of firing is implicit when you have a huge gap in position and power.

Don't you know any feminists?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]jilicious
2008-09-02 03:24 pm UTC (link)
Well now THAT I agree with. I never got the freakout over Clinton's scandal.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]seattleforge
2008-09-02 04:26 am UTC (link)
I wish I was watching this election from a subjective and comical angle rather than directly impacted.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]non_fiction
2008-09-02 04:51 pm UTC (link)
impacted? take a laxative. I'm sure.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seattleforge
2008-09-02 04:52 pm UTC (link)
The 2nd definition of spooning.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]non_fiction
2008-09-02 05:02 pm UTC (link)
What? You want to hug me from behind?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seattleforge
2008-09-02 05:03 pm UTC (link)
I have no idea how to answer this question for the win.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]non_fiction
2008-09-02 05:04 pm UTC (link)
Aw, it's like that other question women always ask (I was just talking to Steve about this): "Do these pants make me look fat?"

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seattleforge
2008-09-02 05:16 pm UTC (link)
I'm afraid that any comment I make in writing that has you, me and "from behind" might keep me from running for office. ;-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]non_fiction
2008-09-02 05:17 pm UTC (link)
but I'm a virgin

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]seattleforge
2008-09-02 05:18 pm UTC (link)
Oh, me too!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]non_fiction
2008-09-02 05:19 pm UTC (link)
Then it's all innocent. Like leapfrog!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]lowapproach
2008-09-02 05:31 pm UTC (link)
What? You want to hug me from behind?

Any verb you put there is probably a winner.

And yes, I realize this is sexual harassment.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]non_fiction
2008-09-02 06:21 pm UTC (link)
No, it isn't. You're not my boss, plus I don't subscribe to any philosophy that automatically assumes me to be a weak victim.

SO THERE.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(30 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…