Scarily appropriate reference courtesy of Whiskey Fire.
Jesus H. motherfucking Christ, I really do think that Ann Althouse believes that Bill Clinton screwed around on her. (Hat tip.) She puts up a hokey campaign video for Hillary Clinton that’s based around a venerable theme, which is how this campaign is a great moment in women’s history and women should be proud. I agree with all that, but Ann sadly can’t. Fuck having a female President—when are feminists going to pass a law requiring that assholes who cheat on Ann women will have their dicks cut off?
“This one’s for the girls, who love without holding back….” At what point in the song did you start thinking of the girls the Clintons don’t want you to think about, the ones Hillary wasn’t for? If you reached 1:39 without thinking of Monica Lewinsky, you might be a Hillary Clinton voter.
Or perhaps a person who’s not completely obsessed with The Threat From The Young Man-Stealers. Tbogg links this obsession of hers with her demands that young women with breasts be forbidden from leaving the house, much less being in the same room with her man former Presidents, so I don’t have to. But I doubt very seriously she’s very happy with flat-chested young women being permitted to roam free where men can see them. We won’t have our feminist utopia until everyone female in her fertile years is forbidden to leave the home without a male relative as an escort.
I wonder what her excuse for voting for John McCain will be if Obama wins the nomination? “Aw, fuck it, I’m actually a Republican,” will never do. In order to get the baffling NY Times invites that awaits the concern troll who says, “I want to be a Democrat, but they keep failing all these mysterious and arbitrary tests I put up for them,” you have to maintain the ruse of being a Democrat.
You know, I feel cheated that I can’t have a happy 4 minutes of easy feminist warmth gazing at these images. I would have liked to feel a glow of excitement over the first strong woman candidate for President. But Hillary Clinton sold out women to build and salvage her husband’s power, and I am disgusted by her efforts to use us now.
I like that she italicized “cheated”, because “cheated on” is apparently what she feels. But I love the multitude of steps that require one to feel that Hillary Clinton cheated you by sticking by an apparently* unfaithful husband. First you have to take the Clenis incident personally, which is narcissistic to a severe degree. Then you have to blame the ostensible victim of the infidelity for performing it herself, or at least being responsible in some sense. Then you have to assume that she magically cheated on herself to hold women back somehow.
Yes, yes, I realize that what Ann Althouse is suggesting Hillary Clinton should have done to save women from the gaping maw of the patriarchy was stomp out on her husband, preferably in a huff captured live on television. Because punishing male infidelity is a project of feminism far more important that securing women rights and opportunities and equality. Never mind that women cheat, too, and that infidelity is actually a strange equal opportunity beast in a lot of ways.
But how would Hillary Clinton leaving her husband have helped women? Would it have told women who do want to leave that they have the right? I think what women need more to leave philandering husbands is the right to hold jobs, to file for divorce, the right to have custody of their children (presumptive custody pre-feminism was always the father’s), and probably to control their fertility and therefore their dependence on men. Good thing real feminists work on these issues, instead of demanding that very rich women display behavior that Althouse deems proper, behavior that ordinary women couldn’t imitate without actual rights.
Honestly, the belief that infidelity is a personal matter between the people in the committed relationship, their families, and no one else has helped women more than hurt us. Women cheat just as much as men, but in the past, only men had social permission to do so. Now it’s considered a personal issue, which means that women are not up for giant social punishments for infidelity, but also that men are accountable on a personal level to their partners.
The notion that a First Lady who tolerates a philandering husband has somehow betrayed women also means that we have a long list of accidentally traitorous First Ladies: Barbara Bush, Jackie Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt. I’ll toss in Nancy Reagan, who actually was the “Monica” until she became the Mrs. Except for Barbara Bush, who really is a crazy mean asshole, I’m deeply skeptical of the idea that these women were in any way, shape, or form, tossing the rest of femalekind out in order to get theirs. They were just women dealing with the huge complexities of life and marriage, complexities that grow tenfold when you live in the public eye.
Althouse should read Erica Jong’s piece and learn a thing or two about a productive approach to over-identifying with Clinton. Maybe admire her tenacity instead of routinely villifying her for perceived assaults on your non-existent right to a perfect husband?
*I’m assuming for a moment that they don’t have an arrangement. This always gets suggested in comments when the Great Clenis comes up, and while it’s an interesting and certainly titillating idea, there’s no real evidence for it.
44 Responses to “But she let Bill Clinton cheat on me!”
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but, but the clenis cheated me too
Gah - i am so tired of this she let him cheat meme. was she supposed to bobbit him?
and how does working it out really go against feminism? if you choose to work it out, then that’s your choice. it’s not as if she couldn’t afford to leave him, like the Althouses would prefer the situation to be.
OMG. That’s it. She’s in love with Bill Clinton and jealous of any woman who gets close to him. It all makes so much sense now!
On a more serious note, I loved this post on Making Light: Those Clintons. Snippet: Of course he loves her. And she him. Beyond reason and beyond calculation. And yes, it’s really weird. What long-term marriage on Earth isn’t?
Of course, if Hillary had stomped out on Bill, AA would now be declaring Hillary unfit “because if she turned her back on her husband and family over a little thing like an affair, then how can we trust her to lead the country?”
I second Caroline’s observation. Damn, now that’s projection. Borderlining on stalking, I would say. No crazier than some guy delusionally thinking the “weather girl” is sending him secret “love messages” during her forecasts, and then getting pissed when he finds out she’s married. Hoo-hah, what the fuck is wrong with Althouse? She really needs to leave the Clintons and women’s breasts (even her own) alone for a long, long time.
And if she didn’t let him cheat, she made him!
napthia9,
with her evil lesbian-demon powers. I got an email about it.
Jesus Christ. I would be devastated if my husband cheated on me, but you know, I don’t think I’d throw away a decade of marriage to validate the likes of Ann Althouse. Relationships are complicated, and really, only the people in them know what’s going on. The Clintons’ marriage is none of my goddamned business, nor is mine theirs, and I deeply resent the creepy panty-sniffing by people who should’ve known better during the whole bullshit Monica Lewinsky scandal.
And, really, does anybody seriously believe there was any kind of win in any possible response Hillary could’ve had that would’ve satisfied the people who obsessively hate her and her husband? Those people are so crazed with hatred and opportunism that I don’t believe there is anything Hillary could’ve done that would’ve made them lay the hell off.
The only way any of this makes any sense whatsoever is that Althouse has been having severe sexual fantasies about Teh Clenis - or about “replacing” or even being Hillary for a very long time.
Bella, you’re right. If she’d left him they would have been hollering like monkeys about how the liberals don’t value marriage.
You know, whenever this comes up (and it’s been coming up a LOT, goddamn it) I have to think, what if Bill n’ Hillary’s marriage was an open one? What if they’d agreed on some terms under which an office blow job was perfectly okay? Would people still be screaming about his cheating heart or her protecting the right of penis to wander?
I mean, I’m sure they’d be screaming about something else: no presidential couple could ever announce any kind of nontraditional relationship practice like that, they have to be heterosexual par excellence. (Which Judith Butler will tell you is a nonexistent ideal; no wonder it’s really easy to pick on political marriages unless the wife keeps her mouth shut.) But that’s exactly why I get so tired of hearing about what their sex lives have to do with the White House. Every angle that the cheating can be analyzed as cheating (he’s a scoundrel, she’s a cold fish, he can’t control himself, she can’t control him) not only reinforces tired gender norms but also tired, falling-over-dead relationship norms. Those norms have nothing to do with how I live my life; I’m not interested.
. . . oh, well, I wrote all that and then I read the asterisk. I’m blaspheming anyway.
The upstreamers are onto something, but should also weave in the nat’l obsession of regarding the President’s Penis as being the exclusive property of the
populationRepublicans.In short, Althouse’s baloney has a first name.
Never has this obsession with the First Schlong been more evident than during the Clinton and Codpiece terms.
http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=21863
Maybe she saw this recent cartoon by Mike Luckovich…
Has Althouse had a recent NYT gig? I’d thought it was the case that she’d blown the tryout. Which, given the standards for the NYT lately, is kind of sad. Last I’d heard she was getting canceled at CSPAN.
Anyway, come next November Althouse will have always been on the winning side, no matter who that is. She’s clever that way…
“when are feminists going to pass a law requiring that assholes who cheat on
Annwomen will have their dicks cut off?”Carrying water for the patriarchy once again, I see. If genital removal is to be the penalty for cheating, it will have a disproportionately harsh impact one women, who will have to suffer a much more invasive surgery.
Dennis:
The stupid, it burns.
Hillary made Bill cheat by insisting on wearing “gender confused” clothing. Duh.
When are women like Althouse going to stop picking on Hillary Clinton for being incapable of representing everything they want her represent? Yet again, we’re asking a woman to be all things to all people, then pissing on her when she decides to be herself. She’s a presidential candidate, not a metaphor for the last hundred years of women’s struggle for equality wrapped in a pantsuit.
So far the most legitimate complaint I’ve heard about Clinton in her campaign is that she compromises in order to win approval, but this ridiculous criticism is the kind of nonsense we’re subjected to when Clinton dared to make her own decisions. She can’t win.
JoeBlu: It was artificial stupid. Though, if you want some of the organically-grown stuff, I understand it grows wild over at free republic.
Forgive the obvious-stating, but Althouse is going on–STILL–about an affair that happened more than a decade ago, involving people she doesn’t even know personally.
How drab does your life have to be for that to happen?
I thought Althouse was obliquely referring to the repeated media-steamrollering of women who claimed Bill Clinton forced himself on them or tried to, either by intimidation/abuse of power or in one case outright rape. Now, I haven’t followed the issue closely enough to have an opinion as to which allegations made sense and which didn’t, so I follow my usual practice of giving the accused rather than the accuser the benefit of the doubt (which I guess makes me un-feminist in that regard). Moreover, I’m not sure the wife of the accused — i.e. Hillary — ought to be held to the same standard as a disinterested third party in terms of crediting the victim, since she at least presumably knew and knows her husband’s character pretty well.
On the other hand, I think it’s reasonable to judge Senator Clinton as at least having been complicit in Bill Clinton’s defensive PR strategy — she certainly seems to be trying to take credit now for their marriage and his presidency being a joint enterprise.
Regardless, it seems to me like this is about more than just an affair — it’s about the acceptability of sexual harassment and repeated abuse of power and sexual predation by the leader of the free world. Or is there some special exception so that people with important jobs don’t have to respect women as people?
Good post except for this:
“(presumptive custody pre-feminism was always the father’s)”
I’m pretty sure that’s wrong, but would be interested to hear contrary evidence.
from paragraph one: I follow my usual practice of giving the accused rather than the accuser the benefit of the doubt
from paragraph two: it’s about the acceptability of sexual harassment and repeated abuse of power and sexual predation by the leader of the free world.
So, Benquo, which paragraph is the truthful one?
Benquo what harassment are you referring to please? A quick search only gave Paula Jones, but her case was tossed out.
Brian, it’s fact. Google. When kids were unpaid labor the dad always got them, unless he abandoned the family. Sheesh. Get acquainted with some basic history.
I thought Althouse was obliquely referring to the repeated media-steamrollering of women who claimed Bill Clinton forced himself on them or tried to, either by intimidation/abuse of power or in one case outright rape.
If so, then why drop the name of the woman who snapped her panties at him? No, doesn’t follow. She has pulled the sleazy trick in the past of conflating infidelity with rape, but this doesn’t seem to be one of those cases.
@Banisteriopsis:
Juanita Broaddrick
Also, Bill Clinton lied under oath in the Paula Jones case, and I think that might perhaps have had something to do with it’s inconclusiveness. (For the same reason, the Weekly Standard jerks are talking out of their rears about Scooter Libby — there’s a reason we have obstruction of justice laws.)
The Monica Lewinsky case was not in itself all that bad, but it’s still a bad idea to get involved with one’s subordinates. (OTOH, the President may have a harder time finding people he doesn’t have an inordinate amount of power over, so maybe we should cut him some slack.) I’d agree that it was a loony persecution if it weren’t for the other women in Clinton’s past.
@sophonisba:
I give the benefit of the doubt; other people don’t. I don’t think it’s crazy for someone who thinks the president is likely a serial sexual predator to get upset about it, even if I disagree about the likelihood of the allegation.
Banisteriopsis, Clinton was also accused of sexually harassing Gennifer Flowers and Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick accused him of rape. Wikipedia has details.
I’m pretty sure that’s wrong, but would be interested to hear contrary evidence.
I think you’re confusing a couple issues here, Brian. Yes, women usually ended up with the children in the days when fathers had presumptive custody, but that’s because most “divorces” were just abandonment cases with no actual divorce happening. Men just up and left wife and kids. But the law dictated that children belonged to the father—who are they named after, after all? Creating the concept of custody, which was a thing women could sue for (though still to this day, women still mainly have custody only because the fathers don’t push for it), helped allow women to feel free to file for divorce.
If you google around, unfortunately, the search pages are cluttered with MRA stuff about how unfair it is that women get to bring up wife-beating and child-molesting in custody battles.
The presumptive custody is always the father’s issue was important to American feminism from day one, which I consider Seneca Falls. Alongside demanding the vote and the right to own property, the first feminists demanded the right to sue for custody after a divorce. One of the interesting things about this comic from the 1950s is how the wife in it assumes straightaway that divorcing her husband means automatically losing her children. Not, I suspect, an unrealistic assumption.
“She has pulled the sleazy trick in the past of conflating infidelity with rape, but this doesn’t seem to be one of those cases.”
She did use the plural. Last time I checked, there was only one Monica Lewinsky involved. And Lewinsky is unfortunately the most famous example, because the other allegations did not have conclusive evidence.
For the record, Bill Clinton was never accused of sexually harassing Gennifer Flowers. She was a singer with whom he had an affair while he was Governor.
I hope everyone will remember and bear in mind that during Bill Clinton’s entire 8 years in office, the Republicans, their surrogates and various millionaires spent the entire time digging up whatever dirt they could find on the Clintons and and making all kinds of baseless accusations- remember “travelgate,” “Hillary killed Vince Foster,” and even the famous “Whitewater?” (after an extensive investigation, the independent investigator found insufficient evidence to bring formal charges against the Clintons).
I’m making this point, not because I want to rehash the Clinton years, but because we should bear in mind that they will do this to ANY Democrat who makes it to the White House.
(The main difference would be that there’d be no Independent Counsel, because after the Whitewater investiation, everyone was sick of indepedent counsels and let that law expire.)
“Yet again, we’re asking a woman to be all things to all people, then pissing on her when she decides to be herself.”
And if she tries to be or do what other people want of her, she gets accused of “pandering” or being “inauthentic.”
“Juanita Broaddrick
Also, Bill Clinton lied under oath in the Paula Jones case, and I think that might perhaps have had something to do with it’s inconclusiveness.”
“Banisteriopsis, Clinton was also accused of sexually harassing Gennifer Flowers and Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick accused him of rape.”
And don’t forget the murder of Vince Foster!!! And Bill Klinton was a Drug Dealer! And Bill and Shrillery KILLED OVER 197 PEOPLE TO GET THE PRESIDENCY!!!1!!11!!
And what about the cigar! Won’t somebody think of the cigar?!?!?
…and meanwhile, the Cheney/Bush patronage machine rolls on for another year, racking up trillions in debt we’ll be stuck with for the next 50-years, thousand of American deaths on their hands, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, while they drive the last nails into the coffin of America’s prestige and influence on the world stage…
But OMG! Bill Clinton had sex! With a woman! Who wasn’t his wife! Won’t somebody remove this awful stain from American history?!?!?
Idiots…
I don’t know why people like her keep taking everything the Clintons do so personally. Why is that, you think?
While my other comment ages to perfection in moderation…
“I don’t know why people like her keep taking everything the Clintons do so personally. Why is that, you think?”
For the last 16-years, the Clinton have performed an invaluable service for America: They have been the nefarious villains who are never really held accountable for their awful crimes. Think “The Joker“.
Powerful Forces For Good, like the Rethugs fashion themselves to be, must have an enemy that is a Powerful Force For Evil to fight against. If some other Democrat had been elected in 1992, s/he would have taken the Clinton’s place as that villain.
What’s been fascinating to me is how bin Laden, who in other circumstances would be the perfect catch-all villain, and was used as such for a while, has been moved aside and his position as archenemy diminished. But the hatred of all things Clinton just rolls on and on, barely diminished from the heady days of Rethug dominance in 1998.
Of course, all this would make a great basis for an engaging Masters Thesis, if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re strapped into the same rollercoaster, while the real problems America faces go unacknowledged, and unanswered…
But you see, Mike, the GOP can’t catch Bin Laden, so Clinton has to do (though Obama may take his place as Public Enemy Number One, like the staffer at MSNBC who ran Osama’s picture yet captioned it “Barak Obama”.) In another ten years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Benquos of the world are saying Obama hijacked the planes on 9/11, with (Bill Clinton’s help of course, because they’re both Democrats)
Might be useful to clarify about presumptive custody:
“Before the late 1800s, fathers had sole rights to custody, because it was closely tied to inheritance and Property Law. Mothers had no such rights. Beginning in the nineteenth century, courts began to award custody of young boys and of girls of all ages solely to mothers on the presumption that mothers are inherently better caretakers of young children.
Until 1970, most states encouraged or allowed this maternal preference, also called the Tender Years Doctrine, and mothers almost always received custody. Eventually, many state courts found this preference to be unconstitutional, and gender-neutral custody statutes had replaced maternal-preference standards in 45 states by 1990. ”
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/child+custody
“In another ten years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Benquos of the world are saying Obama hijacked the planes on 9/11, with (Bill Clinton’s help of course, because they’re both Democrats)”
The “story arc” for Jimmy Carter is illustrative of how this works. When Reagan came in, Carter represented Everything That Is Wrong With America. (never mind that he was elected to move the country away from the stain of the Nixon admin.)
No matter what he said or did, he was a walking joke, if not the living embodiment of wrong-headed Democratic thinking about everything.
As the Reagan/Bush I juggernaut rolled on and gathered its own ample share of scandals, Carter started not looking so bad. So his usefulness as archenemy was greatly diminished.
Fortunately for the Rethugs, the Clintons came along to save the day (for the Rethugs)…
It will take a new enemy to finally relieve the Clintons of the burden of being responsible for all American ills. I really hope it’s not Obama, but…
BTW, does anybody have any idea where the ridiculous meme, of how harsh/grating/unpleasant Hillary Clinton’s voice is supposed to be, came from?
I’m talking to my softening-but-still-rightwing father last night and he starts in on this, trying to quote what others have said about it (I cut him off before he could get too far - I’ve heard this rant from him many times before).
She has a voice. A woman’s voice. Neither more melodious than most, nor more irritating. A perfectly average woman’s voice.
And yet, there are wingnuts falling all over themselves in an attempt to describe how incredibly awful her voice is.
Is it because she’s a Clinton? Or because she’s a she? Or what?…
Mike, as usual Digby says it better than I ever could, though you may have to scroll down to the end of the post to find the relevent passage.
If Obama gets the nomination, he’ll automatically become Public Enemy Number One, just like Kerry became The Lying Vet Who Shot Himself and Dukakis became The Evil Polluter Who’ll Let Convicts Rape And Kill You. It comes with the territory.
From the Digby piece: “He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.”
…and yet these same idiots voted for Bush Jr., not just once but twice. That pretty much eliminates taking anything they say seriously.
They just want the white guy, and they will do any amount of mental gymnastics to justify it.
In reality, they don’t really care about the white guy, they just hate the Black man and the woman…
LOL. Sad but true. I wish Obama luck if he thinks he can “unite” with those bigots; he’ll need it.
Isabella:
“insufficient evidence to bring formal charges” != exoneration. Did Scooter Libby’s successful obstruction of justice prove that Karl Rove and everyone else in the Bush administration was innocent?
MikeEss:
“…and meanwhile, the Cheney/Bush patronage machine rolls on for another year, racking up trillions in debt we’ll be stuck with for the next 50-years, thousand of American deaths on their hands, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, while they drive the last nails into the coffin of America’s prestige and influence on the world stage…
But OMG! Bill Clinton had sex! With a woman! Who wasn’t his wife! Won’t somebody remove this awful stain from American history?!?!?”
If you think the policies advanced by Bill Clinton are =important enough to justify ignoring allegations of rape or sexual harassment, then say so.
“BTW, does anybody have any idea where the ridiculous meme, of how harsh/grating/unpleasant Hillary Clinton’s voice is supposed to be, came from?”
My guess is 75-90% sexism, some direct and some indirect. Her voice is well within the normal range. She often speaks forcefully, in a not especially feminine style. Some people are threatened by this, maybe others just aren’t used to it. When she speaks in a more traditionally feminine style, people seem to assume it’s artificial, again probably sexism in most cases. There’s plenty objectionable about Hillary, but that kind of stuff is bull droppings.
OTOH, she does have a very New York vibe nowadays, and maybe that’s off-putting to people used to softer manners. Giuliani had the same problem, though it was less of a big deal because it didn’t play into a convenient sexist trope.
“Is it because she’s a Clinton? Or because she’s a she? Or what?…”
I don’t think it’s because she’s a Clinton — people don’t seem to hate the sound of Bill’s voice.
Conservatives were able to ignore rape allegations against Reagan, and almost overlook sexual harrassment charges against Clarence Thomas, even attack the accusers. I guess we only dismiss any charges when it’s a Republican, hmmm?
But Clinton’s charges haven’t been ignored; they’ve been gone over in excruiating detail. In Broaddrick’s case, we have one woman who isn’t able to produce evidence, and when she testified under oath, she denied any rape occurred. In Wiley’s case, we have a woman who asked her best friend (Julie Hiatt Steele) to lie for her about 63 times, including telling Willey’s then boyfriend she was pregnant when in fact she wasn’t. And we have Jones, who pledged to give any money she won to charity (then refused to pay her lawyers), whose own sister says she’s a liar, and whose case was dimissed by Judge Susan Webber Wright (a Republican, BTW) who said that even if every particle of Jones’ story was true, it still wouldn’t constitute sexual harrassment.
And this after the GOP installed a 24 hour hotline for anyone to call in about Clinton supposedly harrassed her. One crazy said that Clinton was harrassing her night and day. I wonder why SHE didn’t make it to the witness stand.
In short, the charges haven’t been ignored; they’ve been investigated and dismissed, by a Republican female judge, no less. No wonder the sane folks have dismissed the charges too.