There were many reasons to reject Hegseth -- his lack of qualifications, his drinking, the fact that he wants America to be a Christian nationalist theocracy. And then there's the way he treated women. We learned this week that his payout to a woman who accused him of sexual assault was $50,000. We learned about an affidavit from Danielle Hegseth, his former sister-in-law:
Danielle describes in the affidavit allegations of volatile and threatening conduct by Hegseth that made his second wife, Samantha Hegseth, fear for her safety. Among the allegations are that Samantha hid in a closet once from Hegseth, that she developed escape plans for use “if she felt she needed to get away from Hegseth” that would be activated with a code word and that she did once put the escape plans into action....This was not a problem for 50 U.S. senators.
In the affidavit, Danielle Hegseth also says that one time, “sometime in 2015-2016,” Samantha did text her one of the words and activated the escape plan....
Danielle also alleges that she personally heard him make multiple misogynistic comments.
According to the affidavit, she heard Hegseth “say that women should not have the right to vote and that they should not work.”
She also recounts a night in 2013 in which Hegseth “got very drunk” at a bar.... Leaving the bar with Hegseth, she says, he “repeatedly shouted ‘No means yes!’”
And not a problem for voters in New York City, apparently: the sexual misconduct allegations against former governor Andrew Cuomo.
A new January 2025 poll released by national opinion research firm Bold Decision ... finds ... that if the election were held today likely voters would overwhelmingly choose former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo if he were to enter the race....You know, this Andrew Cuomo:
When presented the eight currently declared candidates, plus Cuomo, 33% select the former governor as their first choice candidate. On first ballot, Cuomo stands several rungs ahead of other candidates including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams (10%)....
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 13 women who worked for the state over the course of an eight-year period, the Department of Justice announced....That was President Biden's Justice Department reporting early last year, nearly three years after reports of Cuomo's behavior led to his resignation.
Cuomo and his staff engaged in “a pattern or practice of discrimination against female employees based on sex” and found they retaliated against the women, Justice Department officials found.
The justice department found Cuomo “repeatedly subjected” women in his office to non-consensual sexual contact, ogling and gender-based nicknames. Top Cuomo staff “were aware of the conduct and retaliated against four of the women he harassed,” the DOJ concluded.
There was a moment in our political and cultural life when stories like this mattered. Then the backlash hit. It's starting to seem as if #MeToo was a fluke.
It began in the fall of 2017 with allegations against Harvey Weinstein. I think some of the feminist, progressive, and liberal anger against Weinstein was partly anger that had originally been directed at Donald Trump, who'd clearly gotten away with sexual misconduct of his own. That moment wasn't like now -- prominent people on our side weren't afraid to speak out. However, I think the Weinstein story gained traction for other reasons.
The right-wing media was gunning for Weinstein because he was a prominent Democratic donor and he was from Hollywood, which the right despises. Fox, Breitbart, and other right-wing media outlets joined the pile-on. In addition, Weinstein was extraordinarily ugly and grotesque -- he looked like a fairytale ogre. He was Jewish, which made him seem foreign to much of Middle America. And his importance in Hollywood was waning -- his Weinstein Coimpany was noticeably less successful by the mid-2010s than his earlier studio, Miramax, had been in previous decades -- so he didn't have the clout to stop the story.
We got him. And we got a few other people. Some of the men brought down by the #MeToo movement were Democratic politicians like an earlier New York governor, Eliot Spitzer. Senator Al Franken was pressured to resign his seat. Cultural heroes the right didn't much care for -- Garrison Keillor, Woody Allen -- were also targeted. The right was happy to let this happen as long as it seemed as if liberal culture was eating its own.
But all this lasted only a few years. The backlash was inevitable, because much of America doesn't really believe that white male entertainers like Louis C.K., whose fans base includes non-feminist and anti-feminist bros, could possibly have done anything terrible, especially when you know what liars those women are. And the pendulum was tugged hard in the other direction by online figures like Andrew Tate, who became famous by seeming treating reports of #MeToo misconduct as an instruction manual.
Trump is president, Hegseth is secretary of defense, and Cuomo will probably soon be the mayor a supposedly progressive city that has never had a female mayor. In retrospect, it's amazing that this culture held any sexual predator to account for even that brief window of time after the Weinstein allegations broke.
No comments:
Post a Comment