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Making Sense of Eric Schneiderman
The former attorney general of the state of New York had a pattern of slapping and choking women with whom he was intimate. He also spat at them, demanded threesomes, insulted them, threatened them, and called one (who had dark skin) his “brown slave.” Without warning, he slammed a girlfriend so hard that he broke her eardrum. In another case, his palm left a red welt on a woman’s face that remained visible the following day.
These and other details about Eric Schneiderman were disclosed by Ronan Farrow and Jane Meyer in The New Yorker. Keep that in mind the next time someone suggests that the liberal media are untethered to reality and serve only partisan purposes. Schneiderman is not only a Democrat, he was a key Trump antagonist, and a champion of the MeToo movement.
This has left a number of feminists both furious and bewildered. It’s disorienting to see people you admired and assumed to be moral betray everything they supposedly believed in – something conservative women (and men) have experienced too. Samantha Bee, who had often lionized Schneiderman on her show, fumed “This is especially infuriating given his supposed woke bae-ness,” she said. “Schneiderman positioned himself as a feminist crusader, he championed the #MeToo Movement … he helped craft an anti-choking law even though he’s now accused of choking his girlfriends.”
The Huffington Post consulted a psychologist to help explain how it was possible that “male allies” can become “abusers.” Katha Pollitt, who once flippantly warned “never trust a male feminist,” is almost to the point of condemning all men now. “How simple life would be if only conservatives, or liberals . . . were abusers,” she wrote. “In fact, though, the only thing one can say with assurance is that they’re men. Yes, I know women can be abusers, and I know some men are great, but at the moment #NotAllMen is looking more like a wish than a declarative statement.”
Samantha Bee’s defiant conclusion is “You know who’s a better advocate for women? Women. The future is female, or at least it better be, because I am done with this.” Katha Pollitt’s resolve is similar: “I have no answers. But here’s what I’m going to do: Vote for women. Support women. Protect women. Believe women.”
In my forthcoming book, (June 26) Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense, I push back against this feminist tendency to deride men as a class and to disparage masculinity itself as somehow pathological. In the 1970s, some second wave feminists like Ti-Grace Atkinson, president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, were so possessed by hatred for men in general that they lost sight of basic morality. Atkinson urged NOW to take up the cause of Valerie Solanas, founder of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men). Solanas shot and attempted to kill Andy Warhol.
The counterculture of the 1960s and 70s broke down social norms, and then regretted what was unleashed. Today, feminists are grappling with the long roster of supposedly “enlightened” i.e. feminist men who’ve turned out to be serial abusers or worse. Samantha Bee mentioned “powerful weasels” Harvey Weinstein, Garrison Keillor, and Charlie Rose. The roster also includes Louis C.K., Al Franken, John Conyers, Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin, Leon Wieseltier, Bill Clinton, and many more.
Why are feminists more despairing about these revelations concerning liberal men than conservative women are about equally ugly stories concerning conservative men?
The answer, I’d suggest, is that liberals tend to believe that one’s politics and one’s morality are the same thing. If you hold the correct views about abortion, the minimum wage, women’s equality, gay marriage, and guns, it means not just that you agree with me, but that you are a good person. A man who champions the MeToo movement would never hurt a woman, right?
There is some mirror imaging on the right. Some conservative women are stunned to discover that men they thought were adherents of traditional morality turn out to be louts and even rapists.
A key conservative insight is that character is a matter of behavior, not professed beliefs. Judge people by their conduct, not their branding. How do you mold decent conduct? Conscientious parents who teach right from wrong and a culture that reinforces those lessons. The feminists helped to weaken some of the mores and institutions that tended to control male lust and abuse. At the time, they thought they were fighting an unjust “double standard,” but the sexual revolution damaged all standards, and we continue to sift through the fallout.
Published in Politics
Ha! Right. Support women. Protect women. Believe women … that include Juanita Broaddrick? Paula Jones? Mary Jo Kopechne? Kathleen Wily? Monica Lewinsky? The hypocrites! Town and Country magazine just sponsored some Social Justice Lefty Philanthropy thing. They invited Monica Lewinsky and she accepted. Then Bill Clinton agreed to show up. So they un-invited Lewinsky. That was just yesterday!!! They can’t fawn over the old serial abuser enough.
Support women. Horse hockey. It’s politics first last and always with them.
A prosecutor gets to hurt or even ruin people for real. If a prosecutor is a sadist but can keep it under control and behave ethically, it doesn’t necessarily corrupt the administration of justice.
The problems arise when “I like to hurt criminals” becomes “I get to hurt people under color of law.” Schneiderman couldn’t rein in his sadism in his work life where many of the people he hurt were guilty – and where he repeatedly crossed the line into hurting people because he felt like it, so they must have been guilty. Of something (see Three Felonies a Day; see also Beria, Lavrentiy.) Why on earth should Schneiderman have constrained his sex life by some “ethical BDSM playground” rulebook? The real fun starts when you have the power to do what you want when they don’t consent, and then get away with it.
One of your best columns, Mona! I’ve ordered the book, and can’t wait to read it!!
He’s a felon.
He should be in jail.
Why has there been no arrest?
Is Trump more of a perv than the average Democrat Ruling Class? lol
Aside from Trump, I’m not really sure whom you mean when you write that both sides have had to deal with moral-claiming men being revealed to be horribly immoral. I mean, aside from Trump (whom I don’t really include because he’s never been a conservative in any meaningful way), who on the conservative side are you referring to? Not saying they’re not there, just that there don’t seem to be remotely as many. Recently there was that congressman (I forget his name) who wanted his mistress to have an abortion. (What a guy.) And Mel Gibson got in trouble for roughing up his baby momma. And there was that fellow from Florida who liked male pages who came to be the poster boy for the Democratic landslide of 2006. (I’m genuinely searching for more names, but none are coming to me.) Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, have been experiencing a rushing cascade of terrible men. Ronan Farrow, apparently driven by his own experience of men behaving badly, should be viewed not as a mainstream media celebrity, but as a crusader on behalf of sexually victimized women. (And of course, it’s worth recalling that he had to go to the New Yorker after NBC declined to run his story on Harvey Weinstein and that he’s said his agent and bosses and friends have all discouraged him from pursuing his two big stories, which is why he says he’s not confident, event after winning the Pulitzer.) It’s the Democrats who have made sex so socially perilous, which is why I’m not surprised that their celebrity talking heads are feeling so disappointed in men these days.
I think that Ms. Charon may be right that things are changing. I don’t think that it’s inaccurate to believe that, for many years, Democrats and other Leftists got a free pass from the media regarding most allegations of this type. There is mounting evidence of a change here.
I do have a question. Is rough sex no longer permissible? Even before Fifty Shades, there were some people who liked — or supposedly liked — rough sex. One of Andrew Klavan’s best books has rough sex as an important theme and plot element (Empire of Lies).
I thought that the Leftist line was that people can do whatever they want. Bondage, S&M, fetishes, stiletto heels, male, female, more categories of “none of the above” than I can follow, blow-up dolls, farm animals, whatever. (OK, maybe not farm animals, at least not yet, but I’m pretty sure that they think it is OK to have sex with a person who identifies as a farm animal, and who are we to say otherwise?) Whatever floats your boat.
I disagree, of course, but this is what I thought the other side thought.
And here I was expecting them to be consistent. It is nice to see the Left starting to eat its own. Schaudenfreudelicious.
“Judge people by their conduct, not their branding.
YUH!! That’s what I’ve been saying about Trump since March 2016.
He hired a lot of women back when not many were hired, paid them as much if not more than their male peers, and promoted them,
the NYT tried it’s smarmy best, but could not find a single disgruntled female employee.
So uh, judged by conduct, Trump is a feminist.
Oh, he’s a heterosexual. Did he spend a night with a lady who advertised for bedfellows?
So effing what?
I never answer you, because… Well…. It just isn’t worth it. But I am curious: Does the fact that his wife just had a baby, and that he cheated on all his wives ever cross that brilliant mind of yours?
I understand that I am just a poor, benighted, old fashioned man. Probably not worth your time. Just thought I’d dare to question one of Ricochet’s greatest thinkers.
Feminists don’t brag about grabbing ’em by the p*ssy.
Schneiderman’s mindset falls into the same, but more benign category, as the surveys that show conservatives give more to charities than liberals do. In those cases, people believe since they are at the forefront at the fight for greater government aid and services, they’ve fulfilled their requirement for helping others, and therefore don’t have to make charitable donations out of their own pockets.
Here, the Attorney General took the view that because he had been such a champion of women’s causes, including as of late bringing suit against The Weinstein Corp. for the sexual misconduct actions of it’s leader, he had done his part, and there was no need to restrain his own desires when it came to what he did with his women and what he wanted his women to do for him. And judging by some of the comments in the New Yorker’s story, some of the women involved at least at times felt that way, as did some of their confidants (though feeling that way in a state where a fallen Democratic Attorney General is about 80-90 percent assured of being replaced by another Democrat as Attorney General is partisanship taken to extreme levels).
David French writes fairly regularly about the inadequacy of a consent based morality. It’s a good discussion topic we should endeavor to have when conditions are favorable for it.
Re : comment 9
About that movie, A Face In the Crowd, I read somewhere on the Internet that “Many commentators drew parallels between the figure of Lonesome Rhodes and Donald Trump….”
But what is the Lonesome Rhodes type ? Isn’t that type the person who gets his greatest thrill from the fact that he can get away, through coercion and manipulation, with being, in private, exactly the kind of person he rails against in public ? The Lonesome Rhodes type is something more than just a hypocrite, because his ability to successfully live out, in private, the very wickedness he publicly condemns is proof to him of his superiority—superiority over both the people who believe he lives, or tries to live, by his public stance, and the people who know better, but pretend they don’t, and endorse him as the person he pretends to be.
Even if you believe the very worst you’ve ever heard about Donald Trump, he still doesn’t fit the Lonesome Rhodes type. Roy Moore might fit. That morning newsman, the one who was allowed to have a button installed under his desk which enabled him to secretly lock unsuspecting women in the room with him, seems like a Lonesome-Rhodes. I think Eric Schneiderman is definately one.
I think you misunderstood what Hypatia was saying. “Judge people by their conduct, not their branding.” Saying “grab ’em by the p*ssy” is not conduct. It is just talk.
The Liberal women that Mona pointed out who brand all men as evil just illustrates a basic difference between Liberals and Conservatives – the fact that Conservatives have a better understanding of human nature and are not as prone as Liberals are to having ridiculous beliefs about “all” men, when only “some” men actually are evil.
Re 14
The Conservative, more often than the Liberal, thinks he, and everyone else, is weak and easily tempted.
“The answer, I’d suggest, is that liberals tend to believe that one’s politics and one’s morality are the same thing.”
Um, quite a few conservatives have that belief as well. Mona must not be reading her own columns.
I don’t know about Jane Meyer, but Ronan Farrow famously got into trouble at MSNBC over his attempts to expose Weinstein, so your name-drop does not exactly give the liberal media a pass. And yes, a 95% negative coverage of Trump is both untethered to reality and obviously meant to promote a partisan agenda.
From the OP: “There is some mirror imaging on the right. Some conservative women are stunned to discover that men they thought were adherents of traditional morality turn out to be louts and even rapists.”
You just couldn’t resist, could you, Mona?
That there are jerks on both sides of the aisle does not stun any woman – nor any daughter raised correctly.
I didn’t parse every word, but was there mention that the victims of Schneiderman were advised by their friends to not come forward? Apparently Schneiderman’s efforts #antiTrump and #metoo were deemed so valuable that his behavior was deemed excusable.
#pathetic
You are certainly right: Disgusting talk is not conduct. But it might may presage conduct. Also: His many violations of his vows, conveniently overlooked by Hypatia, is conduct. His conduct, regarding his business, is just a smart way of insuring his bottom line. It in no way justifies his lack or character, or his selfish behavior. He bragged about his infidelities in his book.
What about it? What I said is, his conduct in business shows he’s someone who recognizes, relies upon, and promotes talent and ability in women. And still does: Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Sanders, Gina Haspell. I guess I’m the old fashioned one: to me, that’s feminism in practice.
Additionally, I don’t think having a lot of affairs means a man doesn’t love women; I think it means he does love ’em. I don’t think having sex with any one woman is an act of hate directed toward one’s present partner. It’s an act of desire directed toward the new woman. You seem to think it’s immoral, but that isn’t my point: in no way does it indicate a hatred or contempt for women in general.
Awww, there, there! You’re makin’ me cry, both with your pseudo-self deprecation AND with your obvious contempt toward me! Of course it’s always worth my time to respond to being “questioned”. If it weren’t, I’d let my membership lapse, just as I’m sure you would! S’why we’re here.
I think the difference between Trump and Schneiderman is hypocrisy. Trump’s depredations are, and were, widely known. Neither he nor his supporters tried to, or even could, cover it up. He is and was excused for his behavior by enough people to be elected president. Does Stormy Daniels surprise anyone? Trump is a “what you see is what you get” guy. Schneiderman is a total fraud. Those who worshipped him are as well.
That’s not what he said.
He said certain women, who chase rich famous men want to be grabbed by the p*ssy.
That is demonstrably true.
I’m sorry, do we elect a President, or a Pope?
So Mona writes a column that doesn’t really mention Trump but all the conversation is still all about….
You just can’t win with some people.
Good column. I think Trump is a perfect example of how the Left deals with morality compared to Right. It’s a matter of hypocrisy. Schneiderman’s proclivities were hidden and excused by his supporters until the s..t hit the fan. No one in their right mind could pretend Trump was a model of male decorum. Trump may have been used by the Right, but he was also forgiven in hopes he, as president, would improve. We are all sinners; so forth and so on. LOL with that one.
On the left hypocrisy and fraud are more day to day fare. Democrats are far better at lies than Republicans. This is derived from Marxist strategy, still a dominant influence especially today. Republicans are often, stupidly, truth tellers. Going back to the formation of the Constitution, the founders recognized how positively awful human nature could be. Conservatives get this. Liberals(especially the followers which is most of them) don’t, and live in some dreamier world of goodness.
I have to wonder why Stormy Daniels was even paid off. If she surfaced just before the election would Trump have looked any worse vis a vis women than he already did? Some of the arguments herein about whether or not Trump loved or hated women are absurd. He’s a sleazy guy and it’s a waste of time to make him better or worse than Schneiderman.
The difference is, as I’ve said, hypocrisy. Trump is a “what you see is what you get” guy. Schneiderman isn’t and can’t be honest about who he is. But more important is the perception of each by their followers.
Boy, is this ever true. Ignore it at your own peril.
I for one am glad she avoided Trump for once.
I agree that no woman, or girl in her late teens fortunate enough to have been raised correctly, would be stunned by evidence of jerks on both sides. But people being advised not to come forward, because of how valuable to the cause this clown supposedly was, really does leave me stunned and shouldn’t be a suprise either.
Mona Charen, I’m looking forward to starting your book on June 26th.
Schneiderman was on Xanax. Why is a guy that has so much power on such a notorious drug? Did he get that by prescription? Did very many other people with any power know this? This all seems very messed up to me.
Re: 29
That’s interesting. I was going to ask if he had a drinking problem.