It's odd the things that catch the eye of the Internet. My comparison of Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton was a throwaway aside on yesterday's Rush Limbaugh Show. I spent less time on it than on the question of whether President Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick (NBC's Lisa Myers to Mrs Broaddrick: "The good news is you're credible. The bad news is you're very credible") or on the fact that more recently Clinton was a frequent guest of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who flew the former President on "Lolita One" at least 11 times to the island resort where he kept "slaves", and that a procurer of underage girls was among the guests Bill invited to Chelsea's wedding.
Nevertheless, it's the Cosby/Clinton comparison that tickled the fancy of Breitbart News, and now of Brian Lilley at Truth Revolt, Don Surber, and Elizabeth Preza for Mediaite and Fox News:
Mark Steyn: Why Is Bill Cosby Finished While Bill Clinton Is Beloved?
Nobody needed criminal convictions to drop Cosby - just multiple accusations of sexual assault and some out-of-court payouts. But multiple accusations of sexual assault, out-of-court payouts and the loss of his law license are apparently not enough to bar Bill Clinton from another eight years in the White House.
Abigail Abrams turns up this interesting tidbit from the dawn of Hillary's post-White House political career:
When Hillary Clinton was running for the United States Senate in 2000, Cosby endorsed the former first lady, using his power as America's most beloved TV dad to drive support for her...
When Hillary Clinton appeared with Cosby on election day in 2000, he was one of several celebrities giving her their support. Sen. Chuck Schumer was also in attendance, along with Doug Flutie, the Buffalo Bills quarterback who had a line of cereal at the time.
With the best will in the world, I don't think one can call Chuck Schumer a "celebrity", but be that as it may...
"This is another joke we are going to play on Hillary," Cosby told the crowd, the New York Times reported at the time. "We are going to vote her into office. She wants it, she is going to get it."
Cosby has endorsed several political candidates over the years. He filmed a campaign ad for Jesse Jackson in 1984 that asked voters to support the candidate even if they didn't think he could win. The former TV star also backed Al Gore in the 2000 Democratic primary, the Washington Post reported, and endorsed the Democratic challenger to then-New York Gov. George Pataki in 2001.
But now it's assumed Hillary Clinton would want to be as far away from Cosby as possible. Even before he was charged with aggravated indecent assault Wednesday, many prominent celebrities and institutions have ended relationships with the comedian as more and more women have come forward to accuse him of drugging and assaulting them.
Unlike Cosby, Bill Clinton's most well-known extramarital activities were consensual.
Yeah, right. Tell that to Juanita Broaddrick, and Paula Jones, and Kathleen Willey...
Miss Abrams concludes:
Bill Clinton is scheduled to headline his first solo campaign events next week as he hits the stump to get voters excited for the former secretary of state's candidacy. While the Clintons are ignoring attacks by Trump and others, they are also likely hoping that Cosby does not stay in the news for too long so that voters can focus on the 42nd president's charm and not his affairs.
I don't think dropping your pants and instructing a state employee to "kiss it", or groping the breasts of a grieving widow, or telling a woman after you've raped her twice that "you might want to put some ice on that" meets the minimum definition of an "affair". But evidently "the 42nd president's charm" still works on Abigail Abrams.
The retreat to euphemism is most telling. The President and Mrs Clinton's marriage is an arrangement, the protection of which necessitated Hillary's enthusiastic participation in the trashing of his victims. No doubt she'd do the same if the Epstein story were ever to receive the coverage in the US papers that it's received in Britain. Which is why there are no half-measures for Donald Trump here: he has to go "the full Lewinsky" (as Laura Rosen Cohen advises) or not at all. They're going to need a lot more euphemisms.
Reader Scott Wyler writes:
Mark:
I could not agree more with your analysis of the "two Bills". I wonder: have you read Hitchens's hit piece "No One Left to Lie to"? It was shocking. Even if you assume that a healthy chunk of it is speculative or even false (which seems possible, given the extraordinary level of hatred Hitch felt for WJC -- ironically, because he felt Clinton tacked too far right once elected), Bill is at best a serial harasser and occasional date rapist; at worst, the man is something of a sociopathic gangster.
How do you account for the fact that almost no one seems to have read the book and that so few people care to know the truth about the things asserted therein? If WJC is indeed one of the most popular and well regarded American public figures, wouldn't you think the public would be interested in exploring a book that totally eviscerates him and that was written by one of the most interesting and independent writers and thinkers of the last 50 years?
I found it interesting that, among "liberals" in the US, the only two journalists who were prepared to speak out against the "sociopathic gangster" were both old Fleet Street hands - Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn. By contrast, on the eve of the impeachment trial in Washington, David Frum and I had a cup of tea with a prominent American media leftie and, after a bit of chit-chat about the latest damning revelations, David asked him why he and the rest of the press were sticking with Clinton. "Well," he said, "in the end he's our guy." Hitchens quite rightly despised that.
