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

To: Janice Shell who wrote (11358)	3/18/1998 9:51:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 20981

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. washtimes.com

To: Janice Shell who wrote (11358)	3/18/1998 10:03:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 20981

March 18, 1998 LIBERTIES / By MAUREEN DOWD Libido Games WASHINGTON -- When The Washington Star folded in 1981, it was hard for me to find another job. I got a little desperate. Finally I was offered a fine job at a magazine. One of its editors made the offer over dinner at a Washington hotel where he was staying. At the end of dinner, as I got ready to leave, this nice, attractive and happily married editor looked at me and said: "Stay." The room reeled. I stammered something about meeting my boyfriend to celebrate my new job. "Call him," the editor instructed, pushing a quarter across the table. Feeling dizzy, I explained that I couldn't reach him, thanked the editor and rushed out of the hotel. When I got out on the street, I screamed. I was furious. I didn't know if I still had the job. Or what the job really entailed. I had come to him out of need, and he responded with an altogether different need of his own. I wanted to throw the job back in his face, but I knew I would not get another one that good. After agonizing all weekend, I showed up on Monday. The editor was professional and encouraging. He later apologized. When Anita Hill and now Kathleen Willey came forward to tell their stories about sexual harassment, their critics yelped that these women were clearly lying, since they never would have stayed on pleasant terms with men who had acted so crudely. How could they have continued to work with, call, write nice notes to or ask favors of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton? Easy. Just ask most working women. Ann Lewis, whose skirt Mr. Clinton is hiding behind, doesn't get it anymore. In 1991 she fought conservatives who said Anita Hill's credibility was shot because she had followed Mr. Thomas from job to job, and continued calling him. Ms. Lewis lectured Pat Buchanan about the mindset of working girls: ". . . [you] have this really prestigious and powerful boss and think you have to stay on the right side of him or for the rest of your working life he could nix another job." Now Ms. Lewis, in her role as White House rationalizer, attacks Ms. Willey's credibility by saying that in '96, three years after the groping incident in the Oval Office, the former White House volunteer said she admired Mr. Clinton and wanted to raise funds for his campaign. "It is such a contradiction," Ms. Lewis says. No, it's not. Bosses often inspire feelings of admiration and disgust, depending on the moment. Women cannot always stand on principle when the men with power over them stumble across the line. Women usually behave in more layered and self-interested ways. These painful nuances of emotion and calculation cannot be captured by the blacks and whites of sexual harassment law -- which can make women look hypocritical and manipulative. But women are accustomed to putting up with immature and wormy behavior by men in their personal lives -- and in their professional lives. Women have learned, through long years of being subordinated to men in the workplace, to use their wiles and wits to maneuver past eruptions of male libido. Skeptics wonder why neither Ms. Hill nor Ms. Willey filed complaints against their tormentors. But if women took action every time a boss made an unwanted pass or an untoward remark, they would be twice injured: first when they are treated like chattel and again when they lose their bridge to a good job, a good recommendation and a good contact. The dirty little secret of gender politics is that women are not fools; in learning to sidestep the importunings of men, they have also learned to turn them to their advantage. Anita Hill and Kathleen Willey were prepared to extract the good from the bad, and make their bosses' libidos work for them. It's a way of getting ahead in a world dominated by powerful men. But self-interest, too, has its limits. A woman who is willing to be teased may not be prepared to be degraded. She may tolerate a boss's gaze but not a boss's hands. She may tolerate one crack about a Coke can, but not a daily soliloquy on porno flicks. For women, there is a steadily growing cost in personal dignity for playing the gender game at the office. So bosses beware. Some prices are too much to pay. When the line is crossed, some women may not only collapse into tears. They may also collapse into television. nytimes.com