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Media’s Treatment of Ivanka and Bill Clinton Show Limits of #MeToo
This past week, former President Bill Clinton gave an interview during his press tour for his new book with James Patterson that had the country talking about Monica Lewinsky for the first real way since the #MeToo movement began. NBC reports,
Former President Bill Clinton says that even in light of the #MeToo movement, he would not have approached how he dealt with Monica Lewinsky any differently and acknowledged that — 20 years after their relationship made headlines — he’s still never apologized privately to the former intern.
“I don’t think it would be an issue,” the ex-president told NBC News’ Craig Melvin in an interview that aired Monday on the “Today” show, after he was asked if he would have “approached the accusations differently” if he were president in 2018 “with everything that’s going on with the #MeToo movement.”
“Because people would be using the facts instead of the imagined facts. If the facts were the same today, I wouldn’t,” said Clinton.
I’ve been thinking for days about what alternate facts Clinton might be talking about here. He was the President of the United States, engaged in an extramarital affair with a young woman he had power and influence over, he destroyed her life, and he has never apologized. Just because we are more attuned to men abusing their power in order to gain sexual gratification from women does not mean NBC’s Craig Melvin is trafficking in alternative facts.
On Stephen Colbert’s show later in the week, the ex-President was thrown a few softball questions in an attempt to clean up his mess on the Today Show.
In the wake of the #MeToo moment, we’ve seen some really despicable men taken down; Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein will likely never be able to victimize another woman. But with Clinton, we’re also seeing how far mainstream feminists are willing to go to right past wrongs and injustices. On Colbert’s show, Clinton was given a ladder to climb out of the hole he dug for himself on the Today Show.
And still, years later, Monica Lewinsky is learning the limits of the #MeToo movement herself. Last month the magazine Town and Country uninvited Lewinsky, an anti-bullying advocate, from its event on social change after the former President accepted an invitation to introduce one of the Parkland students, Emma Gonzalez. The magazine was forced to publicly apologize after Lewinsky tweeted about the incident.
It’s not just the Clintons many feminists have decided to stay silent about, either.
Last week Samantha Bee famously decided to call the President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, a “feckless [expletive].” Genuinely surprising, however, was the silence about the rest of the joke. She went on to say “Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to [expletive] stop it.”
In this #MeToo era, jokes about incest are barely blinked at, let alone repudiated. There was a fair amount of defense of Bee, and criticism as well, over her use of the c-word, but none I saw about her decision to make light of sexual abuse.
When I made note of this on Twitter, many on the Left defended Bee, stating (correctly) that the President himself has said more disturbing things about his daughter than Bee did here. Which is, to me at least, even more reason to tread lightly.
What message does Bee’s monologue send to women who have experienced sexual abuse or trauma? Their experience is a punch line, that by putting on something sexual and revealing, they may have brought on some of the abuse they suffered. It’s a profoundly disturbing line Bee crossed, and even more disturbing was the collective shrug from those who fancy themselves defenders of women.
The #MeToo movement had a lofty premise: taking down powerful men who victimize women over whom they have power. Unfortunately, in the case of Clinton and Ivanka, we’ve seen how much the left-leaning movement is willing to overlook; and even how much it’s even willing to turn sexual abuse into a weapon if the target’s last name is Trump.
Published in Culture
Well, the abuse of women was the most important thing until Trump made modern America a Handmaid’s Tale Hellscape.
Trump said that his daughter was a beautiful woman and that he would [in a hypothetical world where he wasn’t her father] ‘date her’.
Not [CoC] her, date her.
Anyone who thinks he meant [CoC] probably needs to quit watching so much incest porn.
No matter how you choose to dress it up, it still is a pretty weird thing to say about one’s daughter. This strikes me as just another attempt to come to the defense of someone that some people approve of.
On one level, it leaves you wondering how much has really changed. Even with all the Hollywood revelations, people who clearly knew what goes on pretend they were oblivious. And it doesn’t sound like the entertainment industry is doing much soul-searching or even risk management in response. Is anything really changing?
On another, I’d like to think that #MeToo is changing things – just that it’s stopping short of presidential politics. Presidents aren’t just people, they’ve become icons we project our hopes and fears onto. Too much danger to our egos if we apply the same standards.
Excellent point. I’ve noticed something about many conservatives. They have wild imaginations when it comes to sexual innuendo.
(They might even redact innuendo thinking it’s code for sodomy)
It was not a good point. Many people started using the word “date” as code for intercourse many years ago. I never did. And I never liked that others did. But to deny it is to stick one’s head in the sand.
The ‘lofty’ premise was to impeach Trump, nothing more. The rest is political blow-back, they didn’t think it through.
Bill Clinton clearly thinks Monica was privileged to service him. For it to then cost him so much in time and embarrassment is, in his mind, the true injustice.
Keep in mind, this is the same party that ran Bob Packwood out of town because, The chairman of the Ethics Committee, Republican senator Mitch McConnell, referred to Packwood’s “habitual pattern of aggressive, blatantly sexual advances, mostly directed at members of his own staff or others whose livelihoods were connected in some way to his power and authority as a Senator”
Sexual advances. Not sex acts in his government offices with interns, not rape, but advances towards staff members.
The willful hypocrisy of the left on sexual matters is ongoing and undeniable.
Please be clear. Do you think Trump was implying he wanted to or would have sex with his daughter? Or are you just choosing to interpret his statement in the most objectionable and offensive way possible?
It took me longer than it should have trying to make sense of that sentence – then sublime sunrise over the horizon.
And coffee dribbling down my chin. So, Franco, innuendo.
Re comment 2
I think we don’t understand what someone like Trump means by “date”. His remark translates to “My daughter is a woman worth being acknowledged publicly as a man’s girlfriend.”
He wouldn’t “date” Stormy Daniels, for instance.
I didn’t notice the new way the word “date” was now being used (as a euphemistic way of saying meeting a sex partner for sex ) until the Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal.
He’s simply demonstrating the point that certain conservatives can easily project purient code words onto those they deem depraved. Let him keep digging. I find it revealing.
What code word did you use?
Maybe that’s why I was rejected so often. I thought it meant dinner and a movie, but maybe the gals had your interpretation.
Seriously ( because I went on many dates with beautiful women – interpret at will..) it’s absolutely disgusting that you choose to interpret this as some incestuous comment.
PHenry, I think I was clear. Look, I can’t stand the guy. I’ve always made that perfectly clear. I’ve also made clear that he is our president, and there is nothing I can do about it. But I think he is an awful human being, and, if something is not written for him, he is well capable of saying the most the most egregious and offensive things.
You know me by now, and you should know that I try to be fair to everyone, including this poor excuse for a leader. So, I will say that I have no idea what was in the guy’s mind when he said this. I only know that, for a father to say such a thing publicly about his daughter is very strange, and very inconsiderate of her.
Fair enough, thank you for clarifying.
I will just point out that if this is true of supporters:
Then it is just as true to say that this appears to me as just another attempt to smear someone with the worst and most offensive possible interpretation of his words by some people who disapprove of him.
I get that he often jokes or tweaks his opposition in in-artful or ambiguous ways. We can debate forever how offensive that might be, but it comes nowhere close to the offensive nature to both Trump and his daughter to imply incest.
Again, thank you for clarifying, please don’t take this as a personal attack on you. I just refuse to sit idly by and watch as people smear the president and his daughter with innuendo of incest. It is way over the line.
Re 13
I honestly think Trump thought people understood the word the way he did. I also think part of the problem is that a lot of people, especially women, did understand the word the way he meant it, and we’re offended by the view of women his intended meaning inadvertently conveyed.
Trump’s language reflects a view that, in some ways, is pre-sexual revolution. His outlook goes back to a time when it was still openly acknowledged that men often slept with women they would never introduce to friends as a girlfriend let alone marry, and sometimes dated and married women without sleeping with them.
As you are.
Let me clarify even more, while I also say that I did not think you were attacking me, and thank you for reassuring me that I was right.
I do think his supporters are way too defensive on his behalf. Some of them accuse me of wanting a father-figure or someone like that as President. I think the shoe is on the other foot. I believe that his supporters just go out of their way to try and rescue him from himself. It is like some are saying, “Look, he is a little weird, but we love the guy.” Molly Hemingway is a good example of this.
Just one more thing: If Ronald Reagan (to my mind, our third greatest President) ever said such a strange thing about his daughter, I’d call him out on it.
This I get. Apparently, Trump puts a woman’s physical appearance very high in his estimation of her. I think that because of this, he was just expressing pride that his daughter is an uncommonly attractive woman.
If you are offended by a man putting high value on a woman’s attractiveness, then it makes sense you are offended by his statement. That is a far cry from implying he wishes to commit incest.
So, don’t some women prefer attractive men to unattractive men? Is that equally as offensive?
C0ming from you, I am honored.
Re #18
That isn’t exactly what I mean, though, I’m sure attractiveness is included in it. What I mean is that Trump’s statement reflects the outlook that there are nice girls (I.e. girls respected enough that a male “dates” them) and not-so-nice-girls.
I imagine there still is that difference, as far as males are concerned. (The girl who carried her mattress around a campus was, I suspect, really furious at the male she targeted because she came to realize she was a not-so-nice girl to him.) But it’s horribly uncouth now to say anything that even inadvertently acknowledges such a reality.
May I take one more crack at this? Even though I believe that what we now call Feminism has degenerated to the point of becoming a net negative thing for our country, the one thing they got right – back when it was called “Women’s Lib” – is that women should not be judged solely on their looks. This is one reason why Trump turns so many off. It is not that he judges women only on their looks, but he does imply that this is the most positive thing about them. No one – neither men nor women – wants to be thought of in such shallow terms.
The incest thing is just another leftist taunt toward a man who speaks in such a vulgar way as to often invite these interpretations.
Resolved: Trump and Bill Clinton have repeatedly used women for their sexual gratification and both should be condemned on moral grounds.
I know the word has more than one meaning. It didn’t in Trump’s heyday.
It wasn’t weird, it was sloppy. Off the cuff.
People who take advantage of the double meaning are much like guys who leer whenever a woman mentions ‘balls’ or ‘nuts’; they are juvenile and trying to introduce the topic of sex for their own purposes while pretending that the woman alluded to it first.
It was bad faith from the start and then used as fuel for a truly vile attack.
I’m not going to indulge it.
When your soul is rented there’s not much point in searching it.
I tend to avoid condemnation, to avoid thinking myself either wise or capable enough.
Oh, I will privately tsk tsk and regulate my interactions with people based on my perceptions. Yes, a pattern of behavior tends to solidify my impression of people and my reactions to them, but who am I to condemn anyone? As we move from immoral to criminal, though, it also moves from sin to crime from personal to public. The closer we get to crime the more I would be justified, the more would be obligated to speak against it and seek justice.
Is that really offensive, or even debatable? Should a man be faulted for not wanting to have a public relationship a woman who is indiscriminate? Or is it just that he might indulge in the offerings of such a woman that is offensive?
Women do it too. I have been in the friend zone, after learning that I wasn’t ‘husband material’. And yes, it was after I had been… used?
In my experience there are ‘players’ on both sides, and a player is never relationship material. Eventually, they always revert to form. Players gonna play (play play play play -Taylor Swift).