Rand Paul points out a sobering equivalence:
“One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office. And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and it is predatory behavior.”
He noted that “sometimes it’s hard to separate” Bill and Hillary Clinton and then added, “And then they have the gall to stand up and say Republicans are having a war on women? So yes, I think it’s a factor. It’s not Hillary’s fault, but it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton and history.”
Clearly, one instance of sexual harrassment almost twenty years ago requires, as I’m sure any serious Burkean would agree, that women pay for their own contraception for the rest of recorded time without further comment. I shudder to think what all women must do because some asshole who called himself Aqua Buddah tied up and blindfolded a woman and forced her to take bong hits.
Hunter Gathers
Return of The Clenis.
Baud
Following the links, it appears that Rand is arguing that Americans shouldn’t elect Hillary because of the Lewinsky affair. Assuming Hillary is the nominee, I’m sure making the election all about Bill will surely close the gender gap.
Bob
More on RP.
“Though he [Sen. Rand Paul R – Massachusetts Bay Colony] acknowledged communities ultimately are responsible for creating social warnings about unwanted pregnancies, he pondered a possible approach by the government,*according to the report.”
Ooops, need to learn how to use the strong thingy.
via CNN
Bold mine
*This would be, ummm, small government?
carolannie1949
Is it me or is RP unusually incoherent?
Baud
@carolannie1949:
He’s always incoherent.
askew
Rand Paul is an ass and Hillary shouldn’t get the blame for Bill’s zipper problem. But, I have zero doubt that there have been many, many Monicas in Bill’s life post-Presidency and we are going to be stuck trying to get Hillary elected while defending her skeezy husband. Because there is no way that Bill has been faithful or discreet since leaving office.
aimai
Between this crap and Ted Cruz explaining that shutting down the government and his 20 hours of reading children’s books to clog up the Senate were really Democratic ideas is there anything, anything at all that Republicans are willing to take responsibility for? These guys could literally be found with their dicks in a dead baby and still blame the clenis and Obama for making them do it.
Baud
Speaking of “sue me,” whatever happened to that class action lawsuit that Rand was going to bring against the NSA metadata program? He got the media to talk about it for 48 hours, and still…nothing.
I’m sure he raised a lot of money from it, however.
Jay C
However badly Bill Clinton may have acted towards women in his office (or women in general), at least he didn’t (AFAICR, corrections will be appreciated) try to enact his attitudes into the law or public policy. In contrast, of course, to today’s GOP…
Anyway, if dredging up stale “scandals”/non-scandals from twenty years ago is all they can come up to attack Hillary Clinton (and not even directly) in 2014, I think her election chances are looking better than ever!
Fuzzy
Since the GOP hate government I think they should all resign in protest.
aimai
@askew: Lets try to remember we are electing a president, not a first husband. That was true when we voted for clinton (twice). He wasn’t my husband, and what he did with his sex life was not my business. At least it was consensual–trust the republicans to advocate for policies which force minor children to endure pregnancies and childbirth against their will but to argue in the same breath that an 18 year old is too young to vote, and that a 20 year old woman is too young to choose her sexual partner.
aimai
@askew: Lets try to remember we are electing a president, not a first husband. That was true when we voted for clinton (twice). He wasn’t my husband, and what he did with his sex life was not my business. At least it was consensual–trust the republicans to advocate for policies which force minor children to endure pregnancies and childbirth against their will but to argue in the same breath that an 18 year old is too young to vote, and that a 20 year old woman is too young to choose her sexual partner.
BGinCHI
C’mon, MM, these broads aren’t going to oppress themselves.
J.D. Rhoades
@Fuzzy:
Instead, they follow the Homer Simpson method: “if you don’t like your job, you don’t strike: you just go in every day and do it really half assed. That’s the American way.”
Splitting Image
“Bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns” isn’t a workplace law; it’s an ethical standard. Workplace law is what enforces that standard. Wake me when the self-accredited young doctor supports using a legal framework to enforce an ethical standard. Of any kind. I’m not picky.
scav
Yea! Verily! Let us embrace the same party Strom Thurman embraced as better conforming to his impregnating 16-year-old housekeeper and paying her and child off to keep hidden ways. Yup. That sort of moral rectitude is what made the nation great and needs must be returned to. Party of the Wide-Stance AT Diaper bingo! “Ma Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House Ha HA Ha!” How far back are we going to be playing this pretend vapid moral high ground BS?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Outreach!
@carolannie1949: Ive gotten some pushback here, but I think the guy’s not that bright. A certain political canniness, and not as obviously stupid as Palin or Goehmert, but there are some loose connection underneath that hairpiece. He also has, to me, a very odd affect. It’s the reason a Paul presidency doesn’t keep me awake at night.
MattF
So, the logic is that attacking Hillary directly leaves him open to the “War on Women” charge, so… the solution is to attack her indirectly, through Bill. That’s obviously going to work, since everyone hates Bill… or what, right?
Ash Can
Rand Paul et al. sound incoherent — and/or like drooling cretins — because they have to twist their reasoning far beyond any ability to recognize it anymore in order to make their points. And that’s because they have to work so hard to try to overcome their premises, which suck ass in the first place. You know the old saying about not being able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? Their incoherent prattling is Exhibit A for what happens when you try.
J.D. Rhoades
Yeah, Rand, keep attacking Hillary using Bill’s infidelities. That’ll really get the women flocking to your cause.
askew
@aimai:
That’s a nice thought to have in a fantasy world where the media treats Democrats fairly and sex scandals don’t make the media go nuts and turn voters off. In the real world, when Bill’s latest sex scandals have been discovered in 2016, it’s going to make it difficult to elect Hillary.
And it can’t be truly consensual when one person is the other’s superior. That makes it sexual harassment. And this isn’t the first time Bill used his position to get some unfortunately.
Lastly, I’ll be damned if I am going to try to defend Bill’s behavior if Hillary is the nominee. And as 2008 showed, Hillary can’t control Bill. He’s going to be her undoing in 2016 again IMO.
Cervantes
Yeah … not really.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and for those of us who can’t watch these shows, Crazy Cousin Liberty! also said this:
I’d be surprised if he’s been chaste, but he’s been discreet enough that we haven’t heard about it. Though on a re-run of 30 Rock last week Alec Baldwin did make a reference to Bubba and Ron Burkle’s sex planes.
Baud
@J.D. Rhoades:
To be fair, they love their jobs. They just don’t like their job descriptions.
maus
Except that he still likely believes the Libertopian concept of Contract Supremacy, where a woman should be able to be forced into a “consensual” contract where sexual harassment is allowed.
askew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There have been stories about the sex planes and funny business with his charity. But, there was no need for the media or GOP to dig that far into these stories. If Hillary gets the nod, it will be all Clenis all-the-time in the media.
Baud
@askew:
You can hold that view, but it’s not the law (except, I think, in the military).
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m beginning to think they’re actually going to nominate this guy, or at the least, he’s the last guy to go down before the eventual nominee.
He keeps….saying….things, and nothing happens to him, not in the popular press, not in the mass media. Bright shiny novelty value….
Baud
@Davis X. Machina:
You’ve just described about 99% of Republicans.
askew
@Baud:
It makes it gross. But, it is also gross that Bill gets to go around to adoring crowds while Monica Lewinsky had to move to Europe because she was unemployable in the U.S. after the Clintons’ got done destroying her.
Lihtox
You would think the fact that Hillary didn’t divorce Bill shows that she’s really pro-marriage and pro-family, wouldn’t it? )
But I suppose the conservative reasoning here is “If Hillary were a real woman, not an ambitious harpy obsessed with power, then Bill wouldn’t have been tempted to stray.” i.e. the usual song of “women are to blame for male infidelity”.
anthrosciguy
Lewinsky was not an intern at the White House when she instigated her consensual affair with Clinton.
kevin
Small point maybe, but Lewinsky was 22, not 20, at the time of her first sexual encounter with Clinton.
Elizabelle
Incidentally, that Texas hospital said “uncle.”
They will not fight Friday’s judge’s ruling that Marlise Munoz is dead, legally and medically, and that her family has the right to have her removed from life support.
She takes with her a fetus at 23 weeks of development, with grave abnormalities. John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth had forced her to remain on life support these past 8 weeks, on a misreading of Texas law that ignores a woman’s advance directive, when pregnant.
Rest in peace, and may Erik Munoz and Marlise’s parents and loved ones have peace in which to grieve. They were courageous in fighting for her rights, and their own.
Baud
@Lihtox:
Ever since Eve made Adam eat that apple….
PurpleGirl
@Splitting Image: Has any media or journalist said why the young doctor had to create his own accreditation organization? Was he not able to pass the exam of any of the other standard and older opthamological organizations?
Heliopause
I have no idea how anybody can possibly believe something like this, maybe excepting a few poorly educated people under 25 years old.
dubo
Yeah, totally, if there’s ONE criticism you can make of the DC media over the past 20 years, it’s that they weren’t obsessed ENOUGH with the Clenis.
dubo
Yeah, totally, if there’s ONE criticism you can make of the DC media over the past 20 years, it’s that they weren’t obsessed ENOUGH with the Clenis.
Ernest Pikeman
@askew:
Oh FFS, why are you so titillated about Bill Clinton’s sex life? If anything, such stories will give an empathy boost to Hillary. “Look what she has do deal with and how well she’s handling herself”.
Mnemosyne
Because nothing says “free pass” like the first impeachment of a president in over 100 years.
Suzanne
@Baud: Unwelcome sexual advances in the workplace can certainly escalate to sexual harassment. If Monica’s consent was based on an implied or stated quid pro quo, then it is certainly harassing in the eyes of the law.
PurpleGirl
@Elizabelle: Thank the goddess. I hope that the family will be able to slip back into anominity now so they can grieve privately.
askew
@Ernest Pikeman:
If I wasn’t going to get stuck with Hillary as the Democratic nominee, I wouldn’t give 2 shits about Bill’s personal life. But, this is a guy who knew that his wife was going to run for president and he still couldn’t control his zipper. The guy is skeezy and it’s bad for our party to be stuck defending his gross behavior again. If they would just exit stage left and let the party move on from their dysfunctional asses, the party would be better off.
And I love how Clinton supporters lash out at anyone who dares to criticize them. Get a grip already. Bill’s a gross, philandering husband who is going to be Hillary’s biggest liability in 2016.
Davis X. Machina
@PurpleGirl: He did it for the freedom.
Voluntary associations are the life’s-blood of libertarianism.
Suzanne
SERIOUSLY. Bill’s inability to make his big head keep his little head in line is certainly gross, but the endless focus on it was even more so. For over a year, we talked about the president’s cock instead of, you know, things that matter.
Nicole
I just want to give huge props to the post title. Clever. And thanks for the ear worm.
AxelFoley
mix goin’ with that Prince and the Revolution in the title.
Tom Q
Going after Clinton’s sex life made him as popular as any president except those who were in charge when the country was attacked. So, if the GOP wants to take that approach, please proceed.
I certainly acknowledge Bill’s way-higher-rank than Lewinsky, but it’s really difficult to turn this into a story of sexual harassment when the most widely reported detail of the whole story was of her flashing her thong at him in an early meeting. Way dumb on Bill’s part to go along, but hardly predatory.
gogol's wife
@askew:
You are voicing the same fears I have.
gogol's wife
I wish Bill Clinton would just go away. I guess it’s not going to happen. He wants his third term. But I’m afraid he isn’t going to get it, and we’ll get stuck with some Republican, as we did in 2000.
aimai
@askew: She wasn’t unemployable because of what the Clintons did to her–she could have stayed on a right wing gravy train or gotten a god damned education and a job like other women. They emphatically didn’t “destroy her life”–seducing an older man because she wanted the assumed perks of that relationship was her decision. No one made her do it and no one made her join in the coverup.
Hillary Clinton would be a god damned great president and there is no candidate that the right wing isn’t going to savage. If anything she has shown that she always puts doing the job first, even over personal issues and struggles. HRC isn’t going to go crying home weeping about needing to “be with her family” because she gets a punch from the vast right wing conspiracy. She’s taken all they have to throw and she is still standing. Personally, I admire that about her. Ditto for Obama and MIchelle. The role of Democratic contender/nominee and then president is not for sissies and she for sure has shown nothing knocks her off her stride.
MikeBoyScout
I’m a tad surprised so many here would take Rand’s troll bait.
I, frankly, don’t give a shit about that mutually consented relationship, bit I do want to hear what any candidate is going to do to ensure equal pay for equal work and to ensure the unencumbered right of a woman to control her body …. ALWAYS
MikeBoyScout
I’m a tad surprised so many here would take Rand’s troll bait.
I, frankly, don’t give a sh*t about that mutually consented relationship, bit I do want to hear what any candidate is going to do to ensure equal pay for equal work and to ensure the unencumbered right of a woman to control her body …. ALWAYS
Ellen
Except that Monica was a 22 year old White House employee during the affair, not a 20 year old intern. Other than being totally wrong, he might have a point.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MikeBoyScout: I don’t think this is troll bait, I think RP thinks this is some shrewd politics, and it is if, like a lot of GOP pols (Rand, Cruz, Priebus) you can’t distinguish between Rush Limbaugh’s audience and the electorate as a whole.
There are a more than a few on our side who have the same trouble understanding that the electorate as a whole– hell, the Democratic Party as a whole– is not represented by the left blogosphere.
Another Botsplainer
@aimai: You’re right. A lot of the people who smeared the Clintons in the ’90’s need a good kick in the junk and I hope she gives it to them.
Bobbo
Also too, she wasn’t an intern and she wasn’t 20
Baud
@Suzanne:
Sure. But that’s not the statement I was responding to.
cckids
@Lihtox:
I’ve heard many conservative women say the opposite, that they’d respect & like Hillary more if she had dumped Bill, rather than sticking by him & putting up with his sh*t.
Not that I completely believe them, but there are certainly a lot of them out there.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
She has. It’s just that she’s done it in England where no one really gives a shit about the scandal, so she can fly under the radar and live some semblance of a normal life. Good for her.
ETA: Also, I’m assuming that her reaction to Aqua Buddha bringing this up again was, Oh, Gawd, I have to wade through this bullshit again?
chopper
Clinton got a what now? A ‘pass’? Were you living in a fucking cave during the late ’90’s?!
J
@Mnemosyne: yes, that’s what I’d heard!
FlipYrWhig
Rand Paul strikes me as having the mentality and intellect of a third or fourth-tier blogger in the wingnut-o-sphere. Everything he says just exudes that signature scent, that overblown smirky confidence about how much smarter and righter he is than anyone else he knows. It’s like Ben Domenech became a senator.
The Other Chuck
Wait, I thought Aqua Buddha was the bong itself?
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: maybe there’s a confusion of idioms between “got a pass” and “made a pass.”
JasonF
Is anybody dumb enough to believe this bullshit? Mr. Small Government Needs To Stop Telling Businesses How To Operate And Let The Market Decide” supports laws that govern workplace interactions? Give me a break.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@askew:
She kinda did that herself in her quest for “presidential kneepads”.
chopper
@JasonF:
I’m wondering if morning joe is gonna take on Paul’s quote.
Jay C
@askew:
Geez, dude: are you wearing safety goggles as you type? ‘Cuz the flying sparks from that axe you’re grinding could put an eye out….
No one here, AFAICT, is “defending [Bill Clinton’s] gross behavior” – it’s just that if Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2016, Bill’s two-decade-old “philandering” will simply be more irrelevant of an issue than it ever was. IIRC, even at the height of the impeachment frenzy, Bill’s approval rating were no worse than any other President’s – personally, I think dragging up “Monicagate” in ’16 could be (and probably will be) painted as the pathetic desperation move of a bankrupt Party utterly bereft of practical ideas. Though that hasn’t stopped the GOP so far.
Craig
For an older man to have an affair with a 20 year old intern is creepy, no doubt, but “predatory?” Give me a break. You really cheapen the word, using it for small-beer stuff like this. There are real predators in the world, and they don’t limit themselves to a little consensual oral sex.
Cain
Perhaps we should bring up all the gay scandals the Republicans got into?
Mike G
This is in direct contradiction of libertarian ideology — where all consensual agreements, even between parties of disproportionate power, are Teh Awesome and Anointed by Free Market Jeebus.
GregB
Rand Pud and most on the political right can’t seem to understand the difference between shitty personal conduct and the use of the US government, in his parlance…men with guns…to enforce anti-female laws.
GregB
Perhaps someone should remind Rand that around the time of the Lewinsky affairs his father was printing racist newsletters.
Cygil
For what its worth, Monica Lewinsky was 22, and had been sleeping with older men since she was 17. Many testify that Lewinsky’s courtship behaviour was distinctly predatory.
Quaker in a Basement
The media “gave Clinton a pass”?
Really? Was Rand here on the planet in 1998?