By KAREN PARKER | County Line Publisher Emeritus
Dismayed? Really, Hillary? Dismayed is what I feel when a houseplant dies or when I want to make a salad and discover the lettuce has gone bad.
I cannot imagine that if Clinton’s daughter or my daughters had told us how they had been assaulted or sexually harassed, my response would be “dismayed.”
Other words come to mind: shock, horror, anger. How about outrage?
In case you missed it, Clinton’s 2008 “faith and values” adviser was caught being way too friendly with a staffer. I am not sure what he did for the campaign; maybe he prayed for young women to join the team. His prayers were answered, and when he was caught misbehavin’, Clinton ignored the advice of her campaign manager to fire him. Instead, the woman was transferred to a different job, and Burns Strider (who is about as appealing as a mud turtle) was docked a few weeks’ pay and ordered to go to counseling, which he never did.
Excuse me, but whatever happened to good old-fashioned outrage? I am not saying every man who strays should be hung from the nearest tree, but lately, it seems the more appalling the behavior, the less likely we are to demand any retribution and then that behavior never changes. Strider went on to a high-paying position in a Clinton PAC group in the next campaign and was finally sent packing after more women had to endure his obnoxious behavior.
Okay, I confess that I never quite warmed to Hillary. How can anyone with a husband who is a serial assaulter look the other way, as she always did. Was she just a forgiving Christian, or was she driven by uncontrolled political ambition? Despite my belief that she got a raw deal in the campaign, this latest revelation moved her down in my estimation to the same level as the rest of the enablers and hypocrites.
How, I ask you, could an orthopedic doctor get by with assaulting dozens of young girls over 20 years and no one noticed? Are we really so sports-driven that getting a place on the Olympic gymnastic team is worth any price?
Is this the same philosophy that said it was better to elect an accused child molester than a Democrat?
Womenare organizing like never before and more are now running for elected office than any time in our history. I’d say it is about time! But will it really make a difference? Roy Moore got nearly half of the Alabama vote, and it did not all come from men.
More than a dozen women have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, he has paid hush money to other women, and we reward him by putting him in the White House, where he is surrounded by compliant women: Sarah Sanders, Kellyanne Conway and Nikki Haley, toname just a few.
And how have women been rewarded for this slavish devotion? In its first year, the Trump administration has:
• Reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which cuts aid funding to any international organization that so much as mentions to a pregnant woman that abortion is one of her options
• Cut funding to the UN Population Fund, which provides reproductive health in more than 150 countries
• Promoted the idea that most reports of college sexual assault are false
• Scrapped a rule that would have made pay disparities more visible by requiring many U.S. companies to report on pay rates
• Issued new guidance on how colleges should investigate sexual assault, requiring a higher burden of proof
• Curtailed the right to birth control enshrined in Obamacare
Furthermore, nearly all of his appointments have been white men, more than any other president in recent years. Meanwhile, key women’s leadership posts are vacant. Trump has neglected to fill important women’s leadership roles across the federal government, including the global women’s issues ambassador at the U.S. State Department and the Office on Violence Against Women director at the U.S. Department of Justice.
A lot of women would like to turn back this tide with a pink wave in the fall election. But are there enough? As Hillary Clinton demonstrated, sometimes women can be kind of dumb.