It was October 9, 1991.
The subject was the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill showdown and then-New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen was furious. Quindlen’s fury was evident in the title of her column that day. It was as short and simple as it was blunt: Listen to Us.
It began as follows, bold print supplied.
“Listen to us.
You will notice there is no please in that sentence. It is difficult to feel polite, watching the white men of the United States Senate and realizing that their first response when confronted with a serious allegation of sexual harassment against a man nominated to the high court was to rush to judgment. It is difficult to feel polite, knowing they were more concerned about how this looked for them, for their party, their procedures and their political prospects than in discovering what really happened.
…From time to time I am told of the oppression of the white male, of how the movements to free minorities from prejudice have resulted in bias against the majority. Watching Judge Thomas's confirmation hearings, I wondered how any sane person could give this credence. The absence on the panel of anyone who could become pregnant accidentally or discover that her salary was $5,000 a year less than that of her male counterpart meant there was a hole in the consciousness of the committee that empathy, however welcome, could not entirely fill. The need for more women in elective office was vivid every time the cameras panned that line of knotted ties.
‘They just don't get it,’ we said, as we've said so many times before, about slurs, about condescension, about rape cases.”
So. Got that? All the way back there in 1991 there was “the need for more women in elective office” because men ‘just don't get it,’ we said, as we've said so many times before, about slurs, about condescension, about rape cases.”
And today? Today, the liberal wish as expressed by then-Times columnist Quindlen has come true. A woman — a liberal woman — is the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. But?
But clearly, The New York Times has changed its mind on the importance of “rape cases.”
The other day Donald Trump held a pre-debate press conference with four quite notable women. Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones and Kathy Shelton. The latter was a 12-year rape victim, and it was none other than Hillary Clinton who defended Shelton’s rapist, caught on tape laughing at her client’s lies. Broaddrick, famously, came forth years ago with a particularly vivid tale of being raped by then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton when Clinton was running for governor. Said Broaddrick:
“Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip … He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him ‘No,’ that I didn’t want this to happen but he wouldn’t listen to me.…It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to ‘Please stop.’ And that’s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip. … When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door he says ‘You better get some ice on that.’ And he turned and went out the door.”
Broaddrick added that not long after this Hillary Clinton personally tried to bully her into silence.
Long sit downs with Broaddrick on the front page of The Times? Or with any of the other women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting them? Of course not. Not a prayer.
Instead what we have are front page headlines about a lewd Donald Trump tape released by a breathless Washington Post and now a sudden parade of stories about women claiming they were groped by Trump. In other words?
What we have here is a national news media in the tank for Clinton. Off-color language is a major news story, rape and bullying the rape victim not mention laughing at the plight of a 12-year old rape victim is in the nothing-to-see-here category.
Nothing is more illustrative of the Clinton-Times tie than the rash of leaked Clinton campaign e-mails from Wikileaks. As reported here by Newsmax:
CNBC correspondent and New York Times contributor John Harwood, who served as a moderator in one of the Republican primary debates, emailed (Clinton campaign chairman John) Podesta to request an interview or offer advice. In one exchange, he said then-candidate Ben Carson could give the Clinton campaign "real trouble" in a general election.
Another New York Times reporter, Mark Leibovich, emailed Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who recommended edits such as removing a reference to Sarah Palin from a Clinton story. Palmieri ended one email: "Pleasure doing business!"
There is more there, oh so much more involving other media outlets and their ties to the Clinton campaign.
Fifty-six years ago, the late Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore H. White produced the first of his quadrennial books on presidential elections. In The Making of the President 1960, White had this to say of the press corps covering Democratic nominee Senator John F. Kennedy in his race against then-Vice President Richard Nixon, the GOP nominee:
“By the last weeks of the campaign, those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps - they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers. When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr. Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.”
In other words? In other words the liberal bias of the press was blatantly present all those decades ago when the media covering JFK felt they were all together in “marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.” The only thing that has changed today is that 21st century technology - aka hacked e-mails - can show definitive proof of the media - specifically including The New York Times - colluding behind the scenes to elect Hillary Clinton.
Which brings us back to The New York Times and its change of heart on rape charges when it comes to the Clintons, versus the allegations of groping or the release of a lewd Trump tape.
The first is virtually ignored, the second front page news.
Why? Because The New York Times is marching like a soldier of the Lord for a woman who couldn't care less about rape and rape victims if doing so interferes with her ambitions.
You can’t make it up.
