Quote of the Day: Bill Clinton may have raped Juanita Broaddrick, but that doesn’t mean he’s ‘evil’

Quote of the Day: Bill Clinton may have raped Juanita Broaddrick, but that doesn’t mean he’s ‘evil’

If you’re familiar with the tagline “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” then your familiar with the classic episode of the series “Seinfeld” titled “The Outing.” In it, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza are misidentified as a gay couple by a college reporter. What you may not be aware of is that the catchpharse was not in the original script:

According to the costars, the line “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” was added to the show’s script in response to concerns from above that the main characters’ too-impassioned denials of homosexuality might not sit well with the gay community. [Emphasis added]

It is a sad commentary that liberals are so afraid of offending protected classes. (They exhibit no such fear when it comes to non-liberals.)

Sometimes their expressions of solidarity with members of an oppressed group come back to haunt them. Take the case of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who said during a campaign speech at the University of Northern Iowa last September:

I want to send a message to all of the survivors [of rape]. Don’t let anyone silence your voice, you have the right to be heard, the right be believed, and we are with you as you go forward. [Emphasis added]

Those words were so powerful that the quote was inscribed on Clinton’s campaign website — until three days ago, when the highlighted portion was scrubbed. “The deletion,” Daniel Halper explained, “came after new attention was focused on Juanita Broaddrick, who has accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978, when he was the attorney general of Arkansas.”

This development sent the liberal chattering class scurrying back to their keyboards to attempt an explanation of why Bubba should be exempted from this rule … even though he’s a (yuck!) man.

Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette dashed out an item Monday titled “Let’s Talk About Juanita Broaddrick” that references “a long, interesting interview with Juanita Broaddrick” published at Buzzfeed.

In the piece, Schoenkopf delivers herself of a few bulleted “thinkerings” (her neologism). These include the following:

Broaddrick’s precocious 13-year-old grandson … has learned this year about his grandmother’s “complicated” past, thanks to overheard conversations and gaps filled in by Google. He says to force sex on a woman means you are an “evil” person. I don’t think this is true. I think you can do something horrible, realize later that it is horrible, be ashamed forever and try to keep it secret and never do it again. [Emphasis added]

Later, she couches the same attitude, this time naming names:

I think Bill Clinton could very well have raped Juanita Broaddrick; that it doesn’t make him an evil man, or irredeemable (I’m Catholic; we’re all forgiven, if we’re sorry, and Broaddrick says Bill Clinton personally called her up to apologize). It doesn’t even necessarily make him a bad feminist — you know, later, once he stops doing that. [Emphasis added]

Interesting that she uses the present progressive (“once he stops doing that”) to indicate that the former president is still chasing skirts.

Yesterday, Schoenkopf added a paragraph at the beginning of her thinkerings in which she observed:

Many readers have had extremely unhappy reactions to this post. Some parts, as it was written hastily, were more sloppy than not. I would like to try to clarify that muddiness, in addition to apologizing to Juanita Broaddrick specifically, here.

I invite the reader to pursue the story independently. I will take my leave and give the poor woman a chance to remove the egg already crusted over her face.

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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