War and Culture

Judge Susan Webber Wright pulled the plug on Paula Jones and really, was anyone surprised? Most significant is the confusion left in the wake of her ruling. A sampling of comments and related news suggests just how widespread this confusion is and how deep into our culture it reaches.

Forerunning the judgment, Gloria Steinem and Anita Hill already had exonerated the President. Steinem said that what Mr. Clinton did was not harassment because he took ‘no’ for an answer. (So did former Senator Packwood with very different results – departure from the Senate – for a far more minor offense). Professor Hill also denied that the President’s behavior was harassment, an assessment contrasting oddly with her own situation and views some years ago. As usual, feminists bend over backwards to be broad-minded about Bill.

Professor Camille Paglia offered her unique blend of civil libertarianism, feminism and common sense perspectives. Writing in Time, Paglia held that the Jones suit was tendentious and for the same reason excoriated those who took the opposite stance on Hill. “Lawsuits filed on nebulous grounds of psychological ‘distress’ are grotesquely totalitarian,” she wrote. “The ‘hostile environment’ concept is predicated on a reactionary feminist archetype. That Judge Thomas was grilled about trivial lunchtime conversations that may have occurred ten years before was an outrage worthy of Stalinist Russia.” (more…)