EDITORIAL
Friends and
enemies
Even Hillary Rodham would have to admit that Kathleen
Willey is no member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,
which disarms the Clinton administration's first line of scandal
defense. How can the White House denounce Mrs. Willey as
out to destroy the president when she is a women who
campaigned for Bill Clinton, who commuted two hours a day
to volunteer for Mr. Clinton, who has never been anything but
supportive of Mr. Clinton's politics and policies? The story
Mrs. Willey's told so powerfully and believably on "60
Minutes" can't be dismissed as the rantings of a Clinton-hater.
So the White House did a 180 on Monday and attempted to
discredit Mrs. Willey on the opposite grounds --that she is
somehow not to be believed because she has been friendly
toward the president.
The White House was at the ready Monday morning with a
slew of notes and letters Mrs. Willey had written to Mr.
Clinton over the years, along with phone message slips from
when she called the president. Some of the letters praise
speeches the president had given, some asked for jobs; Some
were signed "sincerely," some with the more familiar "fondly."
(Notably, none was addressed to "Schmucko.") It was White
House Communications Director Ann Lewis who hit the
network morning shows to wonder how it could possibly be
that a woman would maintain a pleasant correspondence with a
man if he had groped her in the way Mrs. Willey describes. As
an effort to discredit Mrs. Willey, the letter-dump is as
transparent as it is clumsy. It only took a few hours for ABC
News to find its videotape of Mrs. Lewis from the Anita Hill
days, when she was convinced as convinced could be that
victims of sexual harassment typically follow their harassers
around and make nice. Back then Mrs. Lewis pointed out that
it was an indication of just how vulnerable women are to sexual
harassment that they have to soldier on as if nothing had
happened.
Even without the demonstrable hypocrisy, it is easy to
answer Mrs. Lewis. Mrs. Willey claims that she was shocked
by the president's recklessness when he grabbed her, but she
has never claimed to have been unnerved by it. She pushed
Mr. Clinton away and got out of his office, like an adult with a
good head on her shoulders would. Afterward, she learns her
husband has killed himself and she may be on the hook for the
debts he incurred through embezzlement. She needs a job
badly, and continues to try to get one where she thinks she can
--the place she had worked for a year. Like an adult very well
might, she decides it is in her interest to pretend that nothing
ever happened. And so she writes a string of notes and letters
to the president, alternately asking for jobs and praising his
execution of his official duties. She does not, it might be noted,
lavish praise on the personal character of the president.
Mrs. Willey wanted to stay friends with the president, even
after he mashed her. Because of that, suggests the White
House, she is not to be believed. But remember, women who
are allied with "enemies" of the Clintons, or who are otherwise
unfriendly to the president, are not to be believed either. This
doesn't leave much room for any woman ever to be believed.
Similarly, the Clinton apologists would have us believe that
Mrs. Willey can't be telling the truth because any woman so
accosted would have been driven to hysterics, whereas she is
calm. And yet any woman who is upset is dismissed as an
hysteric. Thus any woman is either too calm to have been
abused or too crazy to be believed, an over-determined system
in which, again, it is only Mr. Clinton who could possibly be
telling the truth.
By its actions the White House proves that Kathleen Willey
was very sensible indeed when she tried to ignore what had
happened to her. If friends can't be believed any more than
enemies, or calm people any more than hysterics, that doesn't
leave much room for a fair hearing.
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