Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (9539)	3/3/1998 5:25:00 PM
From: Janice Shell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

Forgetting your personal bias toward the Jones case, please recognize the President is charged with sexual harassment and this charge makes it necessary for the attorneys' for Jones' to prove the case by showing a pattern of rewarding those who were willing participants and passing over those who were not. Not "necessary". "Expedient." Can it be that Paula was not "rewarded" because she was incompetent? Have you read the Post's excerpts from her deposition? "And then I like didn't do nothing." Most civil service jobs DO require that one have a rudimentary grip on the language. She was fortunate to get as far as she did. If this is the way she speaks, I hate to think how she might attempt to write. And what did you think of her "amended" deposition? In which she suddenly remembered New Things: Yes! He put his hand on the door to stop me from leaving!" Her attorney actually had the balls to say that memories of distant events IMPROVE with the passage of time. Sorry. Paula makes me sick.

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (9539)	3/3/1998 5:38:00 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 20981

This European feminist thinks Bill's affairs are our business. (Expecially see bold section) Review & Outlook Feminist Split An 80-member chapter of the National Organization for Women in Fairfax County, Va., has voted unanimously to call for the group's national leadership to resign for its "hypocrisy" in not speaking out on President Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky. For some time now people have been asking, Where are the feminists on the Lewinsky affair? The experience of this NOW chapter suggests a lot both about who speaks for women and how "feminist opinion" is shaped in the national media. The Virginia group says it has received support from many NOW members, and there is word that chapters in Texas, Kansas, California and Florida are joining the agitation. The leader of the NOW revolt is Marie-Jose Ragab, a French immigrant, who served as the international director of NOW from 1990 to 1995, working under President Patricia Ireland. She said she was driven into action by the comments of her old boss on ABC's "This Week" on Feb. 1. After days of silence, Ms. Ireland offered a distinction between NOW's stance in the Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood cases and that of President Clinton. She said that if the allegations are true with Mr. Clinton, "it appears to be a pattern of consensual sex" and "that is a distinction that I think people opposed to women's rights are trying to hide." That set Ms. Ragab off. Monica Lewinsky was the only one of 250 interns in her class to land a paying White House job. She was then transferred to a high-security Pentagon job, granted access to the White House 37 times after that and received extraordinary help securing a private-sector job. "This is exactly the message we don't want to send," Ms. Ragab says. "It can create a hostile working environment for women who want to succeed on the basis of their skills and competence." She notes that NOW makes this very point in its "Workplace Friendly" program, and that it's "a double standard" for it to ignore President Clinton's situation. She says she hasn't spoken to a single NOW member who believes the affair didn't take place--"You would have to be blind." Ms. Ragab says NOW's national office has departed from its goal of standing up for women on a nonpartisan basis and become too close to the Democratic Party. "They have exposed us to ridicule and created credibility problems for us," she says. "It's not just Monica Lewinsky. It's Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey." By way of contrast, a full two months before Anita Hill surfaced to attack Clarence Thomas, NOW official Flo Kennedy was quoted as saying: "We don't need to ask a lot of questions before we Bork this guy." As a professional woman from France, Ms. Ragab thinks it absurd to suggest that U.S. politics would be improved by importing the attitudes of her native country. She says privacy laws in France act as a shield to prevent any scrutiny of the truly scandalous behavior of French officials. "They helped the late President Mitterrand cover up his fatal illness and they sanction incredible abuse and manipulation," she notes. "If we want to become France and 'protect' our leaders we will have to place them above the law and alter the First Amendment." At the least what this episode suggests is that the opinions of organized feminists aren't as monolithic as commonly assumed. But of course that's exactly the impression left when TV producers or reporters reflexively speed-dial to let a Patricia Ireland's views stand in for 50% of the U.S. population. It isn't so much that women's organizations have been silent on the Lewinsky story. It's merely that the ones eager to speak out live outside the inner Beltway area code.