Notes on Politics: Seeing Sexual Harassment Allegations Through a Partisan Lens

Here’s my bottom line when it come to allegations that someone used his office and his power to attempt to intimidate/persuade female underlings/employees to engage in sexual conduct and/or to subject them to sexually harassing language or behavior because they’re women and you’re feeling a bit randy:

If the allegations have merit and the denials don’t hold water (because the stories/explanations vacillate all over the place or because the individual has been deemed to have evaded truth on many occasions) it doesn’t matter what party affiliation comes after their name. Party is irrelevant. I don’t care if you’re U.S. Senator Robert Packwood or President Bill Clinton or GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain. If you have indeed harassed a woman (or women) sexually in the workplace, you should be held accountable for it. If you’re a public figure, you’ve made it difficult if not impossible for the female half of your constituency to believe that you can or will respect them and their rights if you treat your female underlings/employees so shabbily.

But that’s not the approach people always take when it comes to accusations of sexual harassment involving political figures. Some people’s reactions are shaped by their partisan affiliation and they just can’t see past it. If you’re a Democrat and party is more important to you than, say, taking a stand against sexual harassment and abuse of power, you’re going to stand by your man no matter what lip service the politician and the party provide to supporting women in the workplace -- a la Bill Clinton and those groups who continued to support him in the wake of his sex scandals and his administration's trashing of Monica Lewinsky's reputation to try to discredit her. Yet these folks also wanted Sen. Packwood, who’d voted “correctly” on women’s issues, booted from the Senate because he was a Republican, and conservative Clarence Thomas' nomination not to be confirmed to the Supreme Court in light of Anita Hill's testimony.

On the flip side, conservatives who vigorously went after Clinton on issues of character after the Monica Lewinsky scandal (and the Paula Jones one and the Juanita Broaddrick one came to light) are defending GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain and calling the allegations nothing more than a sleazy smear. This sure sounds familiar.

I don’t know whether the allegations against Cain are true. I do know that the organization which he used to run handed two women who claimed he’d sexually harassed them some nice walking away money (one woman got a year’s salary, according to the New York Times). There are now rumblings about a third woman who was allegedly harassed by Cain as well.

Cain has denied the charges. (As, you might note, so did Clinton when it came to Lewinsky and as did former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards when confronted with stories that he got a campaign consultant pregnant and persuaded another staffer to pretend to be the father of the child.) Cain has said he didn’t remember what happened. He said he didn’t really recall if a “settlement” had been paid to the women.

But then we learned that he had allegedly spoken about these allegations with campaign aides in 2004 when he ran for U.S. Senate. Clearly he didn’t really “forget” and was not unaware of a “settlement.” As one political pundit suggested, Cain’s sounding awfully Clintonian. I’m just waiting for him to say it all depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Notes on Politics: 'Game Change' Caricatures the Women in the 2008 Presidential Election

While the nation's political chattering classes are busy buzzing about Republican Scott Brown's "epic upset" (I've seen this phrase in many news stories) over Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race to fill the remaining term of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, it's worth taking a step back from the day's news (and the woefully inept Coakley campaign which blew a substantial lead and had once been considered a lock) and looking at how women in and around national politics are treated by the media.

I spent the bulk of last week plowing through the lengthy and riveting expose of the 2008 presidential election, the best selling Game Change, written by two journalists who declined to reveal who they interviewed for their book and who gave them what pieces of information. (That, to me, is problematic from a journalism ethics point of view, but that's grist for another rant on another day.) When I was done reading the book, I was so steamed about how the women were treated that I dedicated my Pop Culture and Politics column to it. With the exception of Michelle Obama, the female spouses of the candidates and the two female candidates -- Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin -- were described in an abysmal, sexist fashion. One had her reactions to bad news stories about her family labeled "hysterical" and another was dismissed as being a "beauty queen" who "flounced" back home after a disagreement with her husband, that's when she wasn't said to be weeping. One woman was depicted as having "hissy fits" and "conniptions," while another was maligned (guess which woman) as "Napoleon in a navy pantsuit and gumball-sized fake pearls."

Adding to my irritation were the cartoonish illustrations which accompanied a Game Change excerpt published in New York Magazine which portrayed Elizabeth Edwards as a monster (in one image, one of her hands was curled up so that her fingers looked like claws as spit came out her mouth), John Edwards' mistress was a smitten flirt and John Edwards himself was shown shouting and then sweating as news of his affair broke. Elizabeth Edwards, by far, came out looking the worst.

After taking this all in, I had to wonder: Were the authors simply relating the viewpoints of the blabber-mouth, disloyal former campaign aides who dished about these women, or were these words selected independently by the reporters and reflect their own opinions? Or, frighteningly, both?

Image credit: Nathan Fox/New York Magazine.

Notes on Politics: 'Lost' State of Union, Political Book Takes on Rage, Egos, Race and Infidelity

Lost State of the Union Address

There was quite a bit of consternation in them there internets last week about the possibility that White House officials would schedule the State of the Union address on February 2, the date of the Lost season premiere. Appalled Lost fans started tweeting and including the hashtag #NoStateofUnionFeb2.

Once it was announced by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that while they didn’t yet have a date picked for the annual address he could assure folks that it won’t be on February 2, one of the Lost co-creators, Damon Lindelof posted a tweet, “OBAMA BACKED DOWN!!! Groundhog Day is OURS!!!!!! (God Bless America).”

Lindelof’s colleague Carlton Cuse, joked about the hullaballoo by posting this tweet, “In exchange for moving his speech Damon [Lindelof] and I promise to answer ANY questions the President has about LOST.”

On a more serious note, the campaign finance think tank Center for Responsive Politics suggested that the contributions of “people and political action committees associated with Walt Disney” totaling in $430,000 helped Disney make their case to secure February 2 for Lost.

Political Book Portrays Elizabeth Edwards’ Temper, Hubby’s Ego

Political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have dug into the political mud fairly deeply to unearth some damning, behind-the-scenes portraits of the major 2008 presidential candidates and those folks with whom they surrounded themselves with. The results are in Heilemann and Halperin’s new book, Game Change.

Among the revelations that’ve garnered mucho publicity in the past few days is the derogatory depiction of the Edwardses excerpted in this week’s New York Magazine entitled, “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster.” (John Edwards’ mistress Rielle Hunter must be raising a champagne glass.) Characterized in the most extremely negative light possible, Elizabeth Edwards was portrayed as an exceptionally difficult person with whom to get along, with campaign aides referring to themselves as “battered spouses” for having to deal with her:

“With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a ‘hick’ in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. ‘Oh, he doesn’t read books,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who reads books.’”

John Edwards didn’t come off well either, as he was described as a deluded ego-maniac who thought he could just breeze through the campaign while screwing around and lying about it. The book excerpt said:

“Yet it was [John] Edwards who stepped so far across the line that his career and life were reduced to rubble . . . Edwards’s story is equally, lastingly resonant: an archetypal political tragedy in which the very same qualities that fuel any presidential bid—ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion—became all-consuming and self-destructive. And in which the gap between public façade and private reality simply grew too vast to bridge.”

Is 'The Good Wife' Turning Into Just Another Legal Procedural?

I like Julianna Margulies. And I’m fond of the premise of The Good Wife: A woman -- a wife and mother -- is trying to pick of the pieces of her shattered life after her corrupt politician/husband humiliated her by having affairs with hookers and is now in jail because he was found guilty of abusing his office.

The first few episodes of The Good Wife deftly balanced Margulies’ Alicia Florrick’s attempts to attend to the needs of her children and shield them from the tawdry nature of the allegations against her husband Peter (Chris Noth), with her own personal resurrection as she returned to the professional world as a lawyer after having been out of practice for more than a decade. Alicia was ostracized from her so-called friends and her social circle as a result of the scandal and continues to struggle with her mother-in-law, who moved in with Alicia and her two teenaged children in their new apartment, away from their leafy suburb. The mother-in-law, who frequently defends her son, took it upon herself to bring the two Florrick kids to visit their father in jail for the first time against Alicia’s wishes.

All of that was good material, I thought, as the first few episodes aired and garnered top 20 ratings.

But as more installments have aired, there’s been less and less about Alicia and her family members’ lives, about the impact of Peter’s imprisonment and more emphasis on the legal cases, for which Alicia usually comes up with the miraculous key to winning the case. Don’t get me wrong, her husband Peter’s imprisonment/sex scandal is mentioned in each episode, but it’s becoming a means to an end because Peter was a prosecutor and can assist his defense lawyer wife by providing valuable information.

This is exactly what I didn’t want to see. I was hoping this show would heavily focus on a dramatization of how political wives try to carry on – for themselves, for their children -- after their husbands behave atrociously and were publically chastised for doing so, like so many real life pols (*cough* Edwards, Spitzer, Sanford *cough*). I wasn’t looking for an updated version of The Practice, with a light sprinkling of the life-as-the-betrayed-wife-of-a-lying-cheating-pol tossed in like spice, as added seasoning.

While the latest Good Wife episode “Conjugal” featured, as you might expect from its title, a conjugal visit between Peter and Alicia, the contact between them was verbal and chiefly about a murder case. Alicia wanted information from Peter to be shared privately, away from the guards’ surveillance, and the only way to obtain privacy was via a conjugal visit. Peter did attempt to hold his wife’s hand while she slept on the bed and he on the floor, but she quickly released it.

Maybe things will change and become more focused on the personal once Peter is released from prison and tries to stage a political comeback – and I’m hopeful they will – but I’m disappointed that The Good Wife appears as though it’s in danger of turning into a garden variety legal procedural.

Image credit: CBS.

The Edwardsing of 'Brothers & Sisters'

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Brothers & Sisters.*

Are the writers of Brothers & Sisters trying to inject a bit of the real life John and Elizabeth Edwards drama into the ABC show's storyline?


Main character Kitty Walker McCallister (Calista Flockhart) -- who just adopted a baby boy with her husband Sen. Robert McCallister (Rob Lowe), who’s running for California governor -- was diagnosed with lymphoma several weeks ago. The McCallister marriage had been on the rocks following the senator’s heart attack (yeah, this is a healthy family) which occurred on the same day their son was born. As Sen. McCallister forged ahead with a gubernatorial bid without first consulting his wife, he also emotionally withdrew from her, the woman who once served as his communications director. So Kitty turned to a fellow at-home parent and had an "emotional" affair with him, but broke it off and decided to work on the marriage. Robert and Kitty just were starting to repair the breach when Kitty was diagnosed.

Here’s where the similarities to the Edwards family come into play: In the latest episode, it seemed as though Robert wanted to simply let his gubernatorial campaign wither away. He refused to field questions or respond to attacks which criticized him for continuing to run for governor while his wife was sick and they had a baby at home. Meanwhile, Kitty actively urged him to continue the campaign and decided to stage an impromptu TV interview to express her full support of his bid for governor, hoping to blunt the criticism.

All I kept thinking about during that most recent episode was John and Elizabeth Edwards – minus John’s cheating and his love child – and how much flak they received when it was revealed early on in John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign that Elizabeth’s cancer had returned and had metasticized. There were all manner of loud voices attacking the couple for continuing the campaign in the wake of her dire diagnoses, and for bringing their young children along for the ride. Elizabeth herself was called a “terrible mother” for campaigning while sick and one blogger wrote: “Elizabeth, I don’t like the choices you’ve made. Take your kids home. Get off the freaking campaign trail.”



How will the campaign and the cancer treatment play out on Brothers & Sisters? Will there be continued political backlash against the candidate who keeps forging ahead with his campaign while his wife is sick at home with cancer and trying to care for their infant son?

Image credit: Randy Holmes/ABC.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Deconstructing/Piling On the Betrayed Wives

It is with a grave amount of sadness that I've been watching the media coverage of three high-profile women whose husbands have been accused of/have admitted to being unfaithful. While the stories, blog posts and analyses about the betrayed wives generally start out as sympathetic, inevitably things take a turn and the women are blamed, mocked, or worse.

My Pop Culture & Politics column this week examined the mainstream news media's coverage of women/mothers in the week leading up to Mother's Day. While I analyzed Time Magazine's list of 100 influential people (only 29 were women, a third of the women's write-ups mentioned that they are moms, as compared to 5 percent for the dads), I pointed out how folks have been laying into well known women whose husband have (or reportedly have) cheated on them. Last week, the media was largely focused on sympathizing and vilifying Elizabeth Edwards and Kate Gosselin in particular.

Edwards, wife of two-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, is promoting her new book Resilience, in which she addresses many issues including her husband's infidelity with a woman who's rumored to have given birth to John Edwards' baby. And while folks feel badly that she's struggling with terminal cancer, that hasn't stopped people from slicing and dicing her recent decisions. To stay with him. To intentionally expose him and their three kids to further public scrutiny by writing her book.

In an interview with the Today Show this morning after listening to some harsh comments opinion writers had made about her, Edwards explained that she'd been asked to write a book about overcoming obstacles BEFORE she knew about her husband's dalliances. Not that that fact will matter to her critics.



Meanwhile Gosselin, who, with her husband Jon, stars in the TLC reality show, Jon & Kate Plus 8, has recently been subjected to humiliating reports that Jon has been stepping out on her. While she's out promoting her new book, Gosselin has faced questions about her husband's reported affair and she told Meredith Vieira on the Today Show that she's "hesitant to believe" that her husband strayed.

This deconstructing of the wives' motives and actions and whether they "made" their husbands stray, what good is it doing for anyone? The vitriol is being directed at the wrong people.