He followed up the next day on “Fox and Friends Weekend,” accusing Clinton of playing the “woman’s card” and declaring her husband “fair game because his presidency was really considered to be very troubled, to put it mildly, because of all the things that she’s talking to me about.” Trump, typically delighted with himself, pointed out, “I turned her exact words against her.”
30 Feminist anti Feminism: Ruth Marcus’ Long History of Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome
During the 2016 election one truly unfortunate phrase I heard more than once was that the 2016 election was our first “post gender” election. What made this patently absurd claim even worse was that it came from female journalists. Of course, having women make indefensible anti feminist arguments against HRC is nothing new for Hillary’s Republican and mainstream media haters.
FN: At this point-eight years later!-I can’t remember the links though I vividly recall the phrase.
A major “loss leader” among these concern trolling cum feminist making these anti feminist attacks against the first major party female Presidential nominee in our history was Ruth “Phyllis Schaifly” Marcus.
Among all the obsession over Hillary’s private emails, phony allegations against the Clinton Foundation cum Clinton Cash-which the NY Times co-published-there were the more blatantly sexist attacks of Trump and his GOP co-conspirators.
Ruth Marcus was here to give these sexist and virulently misogynistic attacks the sheen of Jay Rosen’s Savvy Mainstream. Trump is right, Marcus declared. The American Hitler has a point.
Donald Trump is crude and vulgar. He’s every “-ist” in the book: racist, sexist, narcissist, for starters. His dis about Hillary Clinton getting “schlonged” in the 2008 campaign and the accompanying tirade about her “disgusting” bathroom break were weird and juvenile. But he has a point about Clinton playing the “woman’s card,” and about the male behavior that’s more concerning: her husband’s.”
Juvenile but not disqualifying according to Ruth Marcus. Marcus then switches to her favorite-if not only-narrative when the subject is Hillary Clinton-her husband’s affair back in the late 1990s with Monica Lewinsky. In Marcus’ bizarro moral universe talking about the first female major party Presidential nominee getting “schlonged” in the course of the campaign is less “concerning” than the fact her husband had an affair 20 years ago.
Actually it turns out Marcus found it far less concerning. She pronounces Trump’s comment maybe mild sexism. Or-maybe not?
True, but Clinton’s attempt at outsourced outrage has the air of a basketball player flopping on the floor for the benefit of the ref. Nothing would make the Clinton campaign happier than some good old-fashioned male chauvinist piggery directed her way — all the better to rile up female voters who seem surprisingly nonchalant about the prospect of electing the first female president.”
So basically, IF any is directed at Clinton-Marcus considers such behavior good-Hillary was asking for it anyway.
Opinion | Trump is right: Bill Clinton’s sordid sexual history is fair game – The Washington Post
Marcus took objection to Hillary’s calling Trump a sexist. The fact that he is a virulent sexist for Marcus was beside the point. What mattered in her mind was Hillary still owed the public answers on her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky 20 years ago.
We’ve seen this playbook before. During her first Senate race in 2000, when Clinton’s Republican opponent, Rick Lazio, invaded her personal space in a debate. During the 2008 presidential campaign, when Clinton surrogates complained that male opponents were “piling on” the then-front-runner, and the campaign posted a video on its website called “The Politics of Pile On.”
Again, the fact that Lazio physically invaded her space was her fault according to Ruth Marcus -guess HRC was asking for it? It was part of her fiendish evil plan to make Lazio invade her space so she could ‘play the woman card.’
Sure, that campaign featured ugly incidents, protesters yelling “iron my shirt” at the female candidate and that notorious Hillary nutcracker. There were moments in which Clinton’s male opponents demonstrated their cluelessness about how to run against a woman; recall then-Sen. Barack Obama’s “likable enough” moment and John Edwards’s ham-handed comment on Clinton’s pink jacket. But it wasn’t misogyny that doomed Clinton back then.”
Ok. So it’s ok to engage in sexism and misogyny against Clinton because it’s “good old”,-when Marcus talks about “good old fashioned male chauvinist piggery” she sounds almost wistful- she actually wants this misogyny directed at her so she can ‘play the woman card’, and anyway it’s not why she lost anyway. Marcus like most Beltway pundits believes she knows exactly why Clinton lost. Marcus believes that Clinton lost because she’s ‘not likable or relatable’ to ‘real or normal Americans.’ That was and always has been the mainstream narrative against Clinton.
But again, as noted in previous chapters the trouble with the idea that ‘I’d vote for a woman just not THAT WOMAN’ is that every woman in American politics that strives to get to the highest levels of power always ends up being THAT WOMAN. In 2020 we saw both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris get the Hillary Treatment. For many years Warren was well liked by the “True Progressives” but when she refused to get out of the race that year and endorse Bernie suddenly she became THAT WOMAN too. Since 2020 we’ve seen AOC get the same Hillary Treatment by the Far Left a la Jimmy Dore cum Max Blumenthal-see Chapter Max Blumenthal.
Every woman who runs on that level is accused of not being “likable enough”
FN: Remember this one…
Video Barack Obama Tells Hillary Clinton She’s ‘Likeable Enough’ – ABC News (go.com)
Obama did at least bring her into the WH as his Secretary of State and came to like and respect her-remember his 2016 endorsement-‘she did everything I did backwards and in heels’
But he did in that moment in the 2008 campaign kind of lean into the “unlikable’ canard.
End FN
and is dismissed as a “bad candidate.”
In 2016 the anti Clinton mainstream media insisted both that there was no sexism and if there was it was Clinton’s own fault she was playing the woman card and, you know, what about Monica Lewinsky? Like much of the emails obsessed Savvy, Marcus seemed pretty impressed by Trump’s clumsy attempt at false equivalence.
No sexist-you’re the sexist.
“Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE’S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate! ” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
And again, Monday morning. “If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong!”
Marcus found this to be a fairly devastating argument despite the trivial fact that there’s no evidence that Bill Clinton is a sexist. Marcus herself admits this but she still finds Trump’s “logic” pretty impressive:
Well, Bill Clinton has a penchant for something. He had a successful presidency — with an ugly blot. “Sexism” isn’t the precise word for his predatory behavior toward women or his inexcusable relationship with a 22-year-old intern. Yet in the larger scheme of things, Bill Clinton’s conduct toward women is far worse than any of the offensive things that Trump has said.”
This has the inconvenience of being not just a bad argument but a truly awful one. Marcus seems to be arguing there that Trump’s just a little ‘politically incorrect’ while Bill Clinton was a ‘predator’ of women. There are a few problems with it.
A. There’s no evidence that Clinton is a “predator’ despite the Ken Starr’s five year with hunt this claim was never proved. The only thing that has been proved is Clinton had a consensual affair. Ok, so Marcus and other Savvy Clinton hating pundits has used the fact that Lewinsky worked for Clinton to claim that by definition this means he’s a “predator.” If so this is probably true of a lot of people including many of the mainstream newsrooms intoning so piously and sanctimoniously about how outraged they are over Clinton’s affair with an intern.
This would suggest an absurdly high standard on what counts someone as a “predator” that few would actually apply to themselves-as usual it’s Hillary as the first major party nominee who has to meet such a superhuman standard. It’s certainly not all clear that having an affair with an underling makes you a worse human being that someone who publicly insults women’s looks and mocks them for getting “scholnged” in the course of a Presidential election.
Of course, it has in the getting on eight years since Marcus declared Trump had a point clearly emerged that Trump’s public misogyny and personal attacks on women were just the tip of the iceberg on his despicable conduct that has proven to be far worse than has been proven against Bill Clinton-certainly having an affair with an intern is the least of what Trump has been found guilty of. What Marcus should have understood is that anyone who speaks with as much visceral disdain as Trump showed publicly quite possibly has done far worse in private, and, of course, there were multiple allegations of Trump’s misconduct that emerged during the 2016 election then came The Tape on October 7, 2016 of how he spoke of women behind closed doors. Now he’s just been found guilty of raping Jean Carroll, a USA Today reporter in 2012 and has been ordered to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million dollars.
Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll, jury says (cnn.com)
to say Marcus’ 2016 claim that it was Clinton’s husband rather than Donald Trump who was the real predator “hasn’t aged well” to say the least.
Ironically it’s now being alleged that Georgia DA Fanni Willis in yet another case against may have had a lead prosecutor on her team with whom she had a romantic relationship with. I haven’t read a Marcus article in years but it turns out she wrote an article about this too-she seems to take great interest sex scandals that the GOP weaponizes for political reasons.
FN: It appears that whatever the truth of Ms. Willis’ relationship, it’s not likely to harm the case against Trump thank God. Marcus acknowledges this though she does pronounce “I have not been a fan of the Georgia case, with its charge of a sprawling, multi-defendant racketeering conspiracy. But Willis and her team have racked up some notable successes, securing guilty pleas — albeit no jail time — from Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, who agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.”
I mean she “was not a fan” of when Hillary called Trump a sexist either. She tends not to be a fan of people who say mean things about this great enemy of American democracy. In yet another recent post she pronounces “Yes, Trump is an insurrectionist — but he should be on the ballot anyway.”
So basically so far she she’s concerned Trump is above the law.
Opinion | Keep Trump on the ballot. Then beat him fair and square. – The Washington Post
She seems to totally miss the point that as he’s an insurrectionist he’s disqualified himself. In 2020 we did beat him fair and square. And he refused to leave and attempted to lead a coup against the government which came dangerously close-if not for Mike Pence and a few other high Republican officeholders national and state he could have succeeded in ending US democracy. Yet Marcus thinks it’s those who argue he should be barred from the ballot as the 14th Amendment directs are somehow against a “fair and square” election. So disregard his crimes, disregard the Constitution and just hope he and his party won’t try this again despite there being no consequences for this time at least if Marcus gets her way.
But those who are looking to this once-obscure, rarely invoked provision of the Constitution for salvation are apt to find themselves disappointed. It would be extraordinary for any Supreme Court to declare that the front-runner for his party’s nomination can be barred from the ballot; doing so would unleash widespread confusion, and worse, on the nation. This Supreme Court, with six justices nominated by Republican presidents, isn’t going to take that step — and, as I’ve written before, I expect they’ll be joined by some or all of the Democratic appointees.”
First of all, if it’s “obscure” it’s because Trump was the first President in US history to refuse to leave after he lost. It’s never been invoked previously as there’s never been a case. As for widespread confusion, J6 lead to widespread confusion. But evidently Ms. Marcus finds this a trivial point. This 14th Amendment provision of the Constitution was written because it was rightly felt that Civil War seditionists should be barred from any public office. Since then no one engaged in sedition-until Trump and his GOP co-conspirators-many who did support him in the House and Senate; again Trump came up short but just barely.
She doesn’t even bother to look at the history or rationale of this Constitutional Amendment she blithely disregards, and then pretty much admits that it’s likely to be thrown out not because that’s what the law says but because the Supreme Court is dominated by Republicans. It’s a good bet, certainly my best guess, that the Roberts-Thomas-Kavanaugh Court will throw it out-after all, members of the Republican party have always done whatever they feel like doing regardless of the facts or the law, certainly this has always been the pattern on the Supreme Court.
Who can forget-not me-Bush v. Gore. On election night 2000, Republican SJC Sandra Day O’Conner was overheard exclaiming “This is terrible!” after Florida was initially called for Al Gore. Justice O’Conner was planning to step down but wanted to be sure the Court remained in Republican hands first-which, of course, completely undermines the institutionalist narrative that partisan ideology is not what the SJC is about but respect for the law, precedent, etc.
Nope it’s all about partisan ideology especially for conservative Republicans.
Ms. O’Conner need not have worried. To be sure, ,Gore rightly won the election-had the Florida recount been allowed to be completed, he would have won Florida and the 2000 election. But, Republican candidate George W. Bush had powerful friends-and especially family-in Florida-Jeb Bush was then the Governor,,,
The recount was paused and the GOP team asked for the recount to be abruptly ended and the state simply wared to W. Sandra Day O’Connor who found the specter of President Al Gore so terrible got the chance to be the 5th vote to install George W. Bush in the WH by judicial fiat.
It’s notable though cold comfort at best that O’Connor would come to regret this decision-maybe, she wrote years later, they should have declined to hear the case.
So O’Connor might have changed her mind but Ms. Marcus for her part is very sanguine about a Republican Supreme Court for the second time in 24 years to make such a seismic decision on behalf of a Republican Presidential campaign.
To add even further insult to injury-as if there isn’t enough!-thanks to Bush v. Gore, Bush was able to add two more conservative Justices-a President Gore, the rightful winner of the election, would have changed the judicial balance. Instead this led to what is now 56 years of unbroken GOP dominance of the Supreme Court going back to Nixon’s blackmailing Abe Fortas off the SJC 1969.
So the Republican Supreme Court by putting aside the law in favor of their own partisan biases in 2000 was able to perpetuate itself in the Administration of the man they elevated. Even more insult to injury-there is like an ll dimensional chess level of injuries-Bush had lost the popular vote by 500,000. In 2016 Trump lost it by almost 3 million votes-by nearly 6 times as many votes as W lost the popular vote by. In this case it wasn’t the Supreme Court but FBI that kicked the game winning FG for Team Republican a la the Comey Letter. Of course, thanks to this, and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to even allow Merrick Garland a vote in 2016, was able to appoint three Trump Justices-one only a few days before the 2020 election increasing the partisan advantage now to 6-3.
FN: As we will discuss much more in the FBI section of this book, the FBI has never had a single Democratic FBI Director in its history.
Yet, Ms. Marcus is completely sanguine about yet another partisan Republican Supreme Court decision. Certainly it’s impossible for me to disagree with Ruth Marcus’ take-very hard to imagine a GOP dominated Court where three of the nine Justices actually being appointed by him, ruling Trump can’t be on the ballot. But this hardly suggests a decision in any sense fair or just but completely the opposite.
Her prediction is very likely to prove accurate-they’ll come up with some pretext where as she argued in the article the only suspense is which one they choose. Interestingly this isn’t the first time she’s proven a very good prognosticator either. Above, I’d mentioned the Comey Letter. As we will see in Chapter Comey’s Very Careless Presser, it turns out that Marcus may have actually been a factor in Comey’s indefensible choice to do a press conference where he while acquitting Clinton also dirtied her up politically pronouncing she was “very careless.” This was completely against DOJ rules and process but rather shockingly, according to the IG report, some in the DOJ actually referenced a Marcus article where she had argued the rules should be broken in the case of Hillary Clinton-she she not receive the normal civil rights and protections but her name should be dragged through the mud because otherwise all those folks like herself who hated Clinton would find it unsatisfying.
So clearly there is a pattern and coherence to Ruth Marcus’ punditry over the years-the rules can be set aside whenever the Republican party wants them to be-as it was in 2000 and 2016 and as she plausibly predicts they will do again here in 2024. You can’t help but notice every single time the breach of protocol benefits the Republicans.
Another clear pattern is she has a passion for politically weaponized sex scandals at least when they benefit the Republican party. Whenever the subject of Hillary Clinton comes up, Marcus’ go to position is What about Monica Lewinsky?
Indeed, in October 2018, for a day or two Hillary was back in the news, right away Marcus was there to demand more penance from her for the sins of her husband. Marcus feigned once again to be an outraged #MeToo advocate.
“Between the man who is president and the woman who ran against him, there is, for me, no contest; Hillary Clinton would have been a far better president than Donald Trump. But both Trump and Clinton, in their own trademark ways, stepped in it again this week when it comes to women.”
Opinion | Why Hillary Clinton’s comments were even more painful than Trump’s – The Washington Post
Here we go again. My reaction to her concern trolling about how HRC would have been a far better President than Trump is that these comments and $2.50 won’t buy you a cup of coffee. I mean her reporting and those of her Savvy colleagues elected Trump so spare me that you actually liked Clinton better. I take this about as seriously as when Alan Dershowitz claims he voted for Clinton in 2016-Jonathan Turley makes much the same hard to believe claim. Turley has never seen a GOP impeachment case he didn’t support and never seen a Democratic impeachment case he did. He can claim anything he wants but like Malcolm Nance has said: coincidences take a lot of planning and it seems like a pretty big coincidence that an allegedly Democratic voter always agrees with GOP impeachments and always disagrees with Democratic impeachments.
My answer to Marcus’ claim that she voted for Clinton-she doesn’t say this exactly but certainly infers it-is the same as to the claims of Dershowitz-Turley to having done so: prove it. Or drop the tactic.
Basically the mainstream media Hillary Rules seem to be that every time she even claims the right to speak publicly the media has to have another scandal for her to explain or a ltimus test for her to pass. In the 1990s it was Whitewater-which begun with how did Vince Foster really die?-then when she ran in 2016 it was first Benghazi then Her Emails, all through out the general question ‘Gee Hillary-why doesn’t anyone like you? No really we haven’t hear a real answer from you on this yet…’
If you can have a female reporter enforce this Hillary toll-a toll she has to pay ton engage in a public debate at all-all the better, and Marcus for her part is always game. Marcus’ “new” 2018 argument was basically the same as it was in 2016 but she invoked #MeToo in 2018-the hashtag was new-to give it a new sheen-ie, what Marcus served up was old win, new bottles. What else?
If you remember as we do in this chapter Marcus’ early 2016 argument above, it has the same structure as the October 2018 piece. In 2016 she argued that Trump may be a little naughty with his words-but lets face it they’re only words. Hillary’s husband through his actions was a predator. Because he had an affair with an intern. Again, if this makes you a predator there are a lot of predators out there including Savvy mainstream newsrooms. But no one out there need worry as Marcus’ standard here is not sincere-like the freakout over private emails, this is a mainstream media standard intended for no one but Clinton.
So, in 2016 it was Clinton’s husband not Trump was the real predator. In 2018 it was Clinton was a worse disappointment than Trump. Marcus is always far more indignant with Clinton while Trump gets a pass for literally anything-even leading an insurrection. Beat him fair or square she lectures Trump’s opponents rather than Trump who literally tried to steal the 2020 election.
Which is a good analogy of the Clinton Rules more generally-she’s always in the wrong as her standards are always far higher. Even if Trump’s conduct is worse the media gives him a-huge-curve.
Trump’s comments — describing Stormy Daniels as “Horseface” — are the more offensive if for no other reason than that he is the president, and presidential words carry extra weight. Yet Clinton’s comments — insisting that her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky did not constitute an abuse of power because Lewinsky, then 22, “was an adult” — are the more painful because she could have, should have, done better.
Trump played to piggish type with his comment about Daniels, the adult-film actress who was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump. This was not a spur-of-the-moment utterance, it was a tweet about a judge’s ruling in Trump’s favor in a defamation suit filed by Daniels: “Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer,” Trump wrote.
“Horseface” now joins the panoply of Trump’s greatest sexist hits: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?” (Carly Fiorina). “Face of a pig” (Gail Collins). “Fat, ugly face” (Rosie O’Donnell). “Blood coming out of her wherever” (Megyn Kelly). That this is not anywhere near the complete list tells you everything you need to know about Trump’s unrelenting offensiveness.
But Trump need not worry, Ruth Marcus will adjust the curve until he fails upwards. By now it’s clear there is NOTHING Trump can ever say or do that she would consider disqualifying. “She got schlonged?” Come on Hillary quit working the refs.
Horseface? Ok that’s a little naughty but the voters-with the help of our obsession over Her Emails-elected him.
He refused to vacate his Office and fomented an insurrection? Beat him fair and square, Democrats.
Hillary on the other hand is disqualified unless she can tell us why she really used private email or why she really didn’t divorce Bill in 1998.
With Trump the test is curved upwards, HRC downwards. So it is that her answer is-necessarily, always-worse than Trump’s-which was Horseface.
Once we scoffed at Bill Clinton for being the feel-your-pain president. Now we have a president who is only capable of feeling the pain of those who are similarly aggrieved.
Speaking of Bill Clinton, there was his wife on CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” being asked about workplace conduct in the clarifying light of the #MeToo movement. “In retrospect, do you think Bill should’ve resigned in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal?” asked correspondent Tony Dokoupil.
Clinton, without hesitation: “Absolutely not.”
Dokoupil: “It wasn’t an abuse of power?”
Clinton: “No, no.”
Dokoupil: “There are people who look at the incidents of the ’90s and they say, ‘A president of the United States cannot have a consensual relationship with an intern, the power imbalance is too great.’ ”
Clinton, interjecting mid-sentence: “Who was an adult. But let me ask you this: Where’s the investigation of the current incumbent against whom numerous allegations have been made and which he dismisses, denies and ridicules?”
Who was an adult . How can she say that, as if that is relevant in any way? Lewinsky’s technical adulthood is no defense for Bill Clinton’s behavior — in the workplace, as her superior (not to mention president), as a man old enough to be her father. And whatever the reasons for Hillary Clinton’s instinctive defense of her husband’s behavior then, her summary dismissal of it now diminishes her claim to feminism.
Would it not be possible for her to choke out something like: “We’ve all had some time to think about this and, yes, this was unacceptable workplace behavior. I don’t think a president who was elected by the country should have resigned over it, but I also think this conduct was seriously wrong.”
But this is not, it never has been, in Hillary Clinton’s emotional repertoire. She does not cede a millimeter; like Trump, she is allergic to apology. Like Trump, she is prone to whataboutism. If what Bill Clinton did was wrong, why does it matter if what Trump has done is wronger, if indeed it was? Whataboutism is an argument for losers, whichever side deploys it.”
If it was. Marcus moving the goalposts even further in Trump’s direction. “Horseface”-that Marcus seems to feel the need to keep repeating just in case we didn’t catch it the first time may NOT be so bad after all. Having an affair with an intern may indeed be worse. Note Marcus’ new standard for passing the mainstream standard for being a ‘real feminist’ a woman has to publicly 20 years later castigate her husband in public thereby damaging her own political brand to gain the right of participation in a system that men like Trump-Kavanaugh-Roy Moore get as a matter of course. Indeed, this litmus test wasn’t even used against Clinton’s husband, just her.
While she criticizes Clinton for it here as we saw in Marcus’ 2016 article she rewarded Trump when he played whataboutism. And why does even now she still owe the mainstream media which has been so manifestly unfair to her all those years who basically defeated her with their Emailgate obsession yet another pound of flesh? In 2015 they kept demanding she just apologize. So she did and as Matt Yglesias documented-as we covered in previous chapter-it only whetted the media for more Emailgate hysteria. If you give your milk money to the bully one day he’s going to expect it every day from now on.
The conceit of Marcus’ whole narrative seems to be that somehow the whole Lewinsky fiasco makes Clinton a bad feminist. That is to say if you’re a woman running for the highest office in the land the largely anti feminist press gets to demand you prove you’re a real feminist. I’d argue it makes Clinton human but in our largely toxic misogynistic politics that’s not allowed.
Indeed, the day of Marcus’ anti Clinton column seemed much eerily like 2016. The media was in their element bashing Clinton all day in print and on cable news. As usual Marcus was only piggybacking on a lot of other anti Clinton diatribes-that’s how the mainstream media works: the pack mentality, so long as you keep to the mainstream narrative, you’re fine. Mainstream pundits are mostly the opposite of courageous. The whole day was like back in 2015 where on cable news all day every day every show was the same show with the same subject: But Her Emails!
This morning there were two different anti Clinton articles MSNBC was following. You had Annie Karni’s snarky Politico piece.
Clinton occupies a strange place in the political landscape. But the landscape is weird. EG, Avenatti: “If I was running, I could see certain circumstances in which she could be helpful, from a rally perspective, in certain locations, on a limited basis.” https://t.co/IUNZ0WgNhm
— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) October 19, 2018
FN: Avenatti, of course, went on to sink any real chance he had in a Democratic Presidential primary when he declared that to beat Trump in 2020 you need a white male-suggesting maybe he was in the wrong party-then the accusations of domestic violence fatally sunk his campaign along with any public standing he may have had.
End of FN
Once again the Beltway press was back to its favorite narrative, the same one they’d been selling for the 25 years she was involved in national politics. Yes Hillary is a problem-this is the allegedly universal view-it’s the MSM narrative treated like reality itself. Her continued existence that she breathes at all, Karini and her media friends saw as this terrible ‘problem.’
As usual this totally ignored her many supporters who are #StillWithHer to this day as I documented in (Chapter B).
Karini’s question on how to handle the problem that Hilary Clinton won’t ‘shut the F up’ is more tactful, of course, than the way it was phrased in this DailyBeast piece.
Hillary is a "a brain-devouring, egocentric"
Clinton Derangement Syndrome is real, folks. https://t.co/wT3pJbkN2r
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) October 19, 2018
But the message was the same two years after they’d sunk her campaign with the Emailgate hysteria-she needs to shut up. The hostile message from the media to Clinton has morphed and expanded. Before the message as we saw in -chapter ( X)-was she has every right to speak her opinion-certainly big of them-but it’s just too close to the election.
9 days (!) after the fact NYT still attacking her for “incivlity” interview she gave….she’s private citizen, she’s not running for office. but the Times hatred knows no bounds https://t.co/xEnMBg4Rup
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) October 18, 2018
So while the Times in this hit piece parsed their words a little ‘she has every right to speak, God damnit, but just not now’-now they ARE just telling her to shut up. Some a little more politely than others.
But then MSNBC came in with the one two punch-not only is her continued existence-or at least given any sign of her existence-itself a major provocation-a terrible problem to be solved-but now they again played the faux outrage card, the media is outraged that she refused to say that Clinton should have left the WH in 1998.
Of course, we knew the media was sincere by also demanding that Trump and Kavanugh-who Mitch McConnell and Friends had just “rammed through”-his words-despite being credibly accused of sexual assault- also resign-oh wait. And, naturally, this was where Ruth Marcus came in with her new Monica Lewinsky litmus test. As if she gives a damn about what was done to Monica Lewinsky or feminism generally. One of the biggest jokes is the way pundits like her turn everything into horserace analysis. Like with Kavanaugh despite his fairly appalling conduct during his confirmation the media take was that it was going to be incredibly beneficial to Republicans-as the base was fired up over how allegedly badly Kavanaugh was treated-despite being confirmed on a party line vote.
This media take-what else is new?-turned out to be dead wrong as the Democrats actually had a record breaking victory Circa November 2018.
Ezra Klein-see Chapter A-had a great Vox article in October, 2016 and how the media sees its job as not informing the public as trying to guess the public’s political reaction to various events. Which is a joke-who has less in common with “regular people” than Savvy pundits like Ruth Marcus, Dean Baquet-‘We will neither be goaded or applauded into being too tough on President Trump’-or Erik ‘But the Steele Dossier!’ Wemple?
If Marcus cared about Monica Lewinsky she’d realize the real victimizer of Lewinsky wasn’t Bill Clinton but Ken Starr who locked her up in a hotel room for 24 hours entrapping her into committing “perjury”-by preventing her from calling her lawyer while threatening to lock Lewinsky and her mother in prison for 27 years. Going back to Marcus’ 2018 concern trolling again about Clinton refusing to say her husband abused his power:
Dokoupil: “There are people who look at the incidents of the ’90s and they say, ‘A president of the United States cannot have a consensual relationship with an intern, the power imbalance is too great.’ ”
Clinton, interjecting mid-sentence: “Who was an adult. But let me ask you this: Where’s the investigation of the current incumbent against whom numerous allegations have been made and which he dismisses, denies and ridicules?”
Who was an adult . How can she say that, as if that is relevant in any way? Lewinsky’s technical adulthood is no defense for Bill Clinton’s behavior — in the workplace, as her superior (not to mention president), as a man old enough to be her father. And whatever the reasons for Hillary Clinton’s instinctive defense of her husband’s behavior then, her summary dismissal of it now diminishes her claim to feminism.”
it’s simply not true to say it isn’t relevant in any way-certainly wether something is legal or not in the eyes of the law makes a huge difference. She was the age of consent and is clear in her own book that Clinton did not coerce her into the affair. I think that the question of wether or not an affair with a subordinate in principle is sexual misconduct is a moral question with at least some murkiness in it. You can certainly make a good case that it’s ill advised for any number of reasons. But if simply having an affair with an underling is something that requires resignation then there is a lot of people who need to resign-probably many of them in the same newsrooms pretending to be outraged over Monica Lewinsky.
The reality is in Lewinsky’s own words she had been the aggressor. Certainly you can argue that Clinton should not have responded to her advances. But the story is clearly more complex than the very simplistic story Marcus is at pains to tell. For whatever reason she only grants nuance and shades of gray for Trump-even after engaging in a violent insurrection to steal the 2020 election, Marcus still gives him the benefit of the doubt she never gave to the Clintons.
But let’s be real. What happened to Lewinsky was a tragedy though the main perpetrator was Ken Starr-with Linda Tripp getting a major assist. Because of this Republican holy war-with the enthusiastic assistance of Ruth Marcus and friends, Lewinsky-an intelligent woman of substance-has spent much of her adulthood as a punchline. Marcus can offer Lewinsky nothing but faux outrage and crocodile tears while weaponizing her tragic story to take yet another shot at the Clintons but she does not in any real way cares about what happened to Lewinsky any more than she loses one moment of sleep at night thinking about the 60% supermajority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck
FN: The full story of what Starr did to Lewinsky is truly appalling-entrapping her into “perjury” by holding Lewinsky in a hotel room for 24 hours, threatening to send her and her mother to prison for 27 years if she didn’t agree to incriminate Clinton while refusing to let her call her lawyer-and telling him not to send the letter. Indeed, Robert Hur is just the latest in a long history of Republican leaning DOJ prosecutors weaponizing phony criminal investigations for the political benefit of the Republican party.
UPDATE:
It’s an interesting point, it’s been noted that there’s always been a real racial divide regarding the Clintons. Relatively speaking the Clintons have had their ups and downs with White voters-in the 1990s Bill Clinton’s numbers were often upside down with White voters but had very high support among Black voters.
FN: To be sure this is generally true for the Democratic party as a whole. Despite the conspiracy theories among Bernie Bros that the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie in 2016 in reality it was the Black vote that sunk his campaign-as it was in 2020.
In 2016 it was fitting that one of the best responses to the sort of faux feminist anti feminist criticism of Ruth Marcus and friends was from that song from Beyonce.
CNN Panelist Uses Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ To Defend Hillary | The Daily Caller
D. Beyonce seemed to get HRC’s position better. Was HRC”s disaparagment of Moncia Lewinsky sexist or human?
CNN Panelist Uses Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ To Defend Hillary | The Daily Caller
On CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night, the panel was discussing whether or not Donald Trump’s latest tactic to label Clinton an “enabler” of her husband’s affair will work to win over voters.
Rye, a Democratic strategist, asked the panel how they would expect a woman to act toward the women “who’s been having an affair with her husband.”
I find it out outrageous that human beings, regardless — I know this is a political panel, but let’s just be human for a second,” she said. “How would you expect for a women whose husband cheated on her to behave?”
“You know what, you don’t even have to go the Monica Lewinsky incident. You can go to Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade,’” she added. “Because she, I’m serious, she’s talking about infidelity for women all over the world who have experienced it, and they are the victims.”
“I don’t for life of me understand how we got to a place where this women who is running for president and did not cheat on her husband, is all of the sudden the predator,” she went on. “You are calling her an enabler. You are saying that she should be ashamed of herself for criticizing this women who is the source of the affair with her husband.”
Exactly Hillary’s response was human. But in 2016 and, indeed, here in 2024 that’s still not allowed for women running for the top positions of power “even today.” She’s supposed to subject herself to further public humiliation for the benefit for people who spent her entire 24 years in DC trying to destroy her while destroying her own brand. And again, it’s arguable that thanks to the entire Lewinsky fiasco her hope of becoming President would never happen. In other words, it failed to take down her husband who had the affair-in itself HRC was the victim of this affair-yet she was who would pay the price.
Indeed, in Beyonce’s November 6, 2016 endorsement of Clinton would be particularly powerful:
Beyoncé Gave A Powerful Speech In Support Of Hillary (buzzfeednews.com)
She also referenced HRC’s notorious ‘I guess I could have stayed home and made teas…’
Beyoncé and Jay Z performed at Hillary Clinton’s big get-out-the-vote rally in Cleveland Friday night. But it was a few words that flashed on the screen during Beyoncé’s performance that made the most interesting statement of the night.
The words were a quote from Clinton ― in 1992, when she was still first lady of Arkansas and her husband, then-Gov. Bill Clinton, was first running for president. The quote came from a press gaggle, when a journalist asked about Clinton’s professional career
Beyoncé Used A Famous Hillary Clinton Quote To Make A Big Feminist Statement | HuffPost Latest News
But unfortunately, despite the fact that Beyonce, the gentleman who wants his daughter to get to see a woman be President, myself, and the millions for whom it’s long been past time, many in the country both on the Far Right and the mainstream media, many are still far from ready. For this sorry state of affairs, the mainstream media deserves a good amount of the blame starting with faux feminists a la Ruth Marcus.