Bill Clinton is not above a reckoning

It seemed like only yesterday that polite American society recoiled in horror at the latest lap in Donald Trump’s “race to the bottom,” as a Hillary Clinton spokeswoman put it. Two days after the Washington Post broke news of Trump’s “grab them by the p***y” tape, and just a few hours before the two presidential candidates were to debate in St. Louis in October 2016, Trump hauled some skeletons out of Bill Clinton’s closet for a press conference: Kathleen Willey, who alleges Clinton sexually assaulted her when she was a White House aide; Juanita Broaddrick, who alleges Clinton raped her in a Little Rock hotel room when he was governor of Arkansas; and Paula Jones, who alleges he exposed himself to her in another Little Rock hotel room.

From Trump, it was characteristically crude trolling. But as Hollywood’s and American politics’ vast reservoir of sexual assault and harassment allegations overspills, it looks rather prescient. Several recent pieces have argued — from the political middle, not from the right — that Clinton and his supporters are overdue for a “reckoning,” as Caitlin Flanagan put it in The Atlantic.

“Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism,” Flanagan observed (citing in particular a breathtakingly dismissive 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem). “The (Democratic) party needs to come to terms with the fact that it was so enraptured by their brilliant, Big Dog president and his stunning string of progressive accomplishments that it abandoned some of its central principles.”

In Flanagan’s view, if Louis C.K. and Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey and Roy Moore — and now, on Thursday, Democratic Senator Al Franken — are owed “swift and pitiless justice,” then why not Clinton?

Why not, indeed? Some worry about “due process,” but America does have libel Bill Clinton laws after all — and the highest-profile accused who are actually contesting the allegations tend to have multiple accusers, which bolsters their credibility. Still, a proper response to this moment in history shouldn’t just be about tying the score — about advocating “swift and pitiless justice” less hypocritically. Our brains simply aren’t wired to do that. Let off the leash, they madly bargain away alleged misbehaviour by people we like, ideally by shifting the blame to people we don’t like.

When CBC defenestrated Jian Ghomeshi, a good few who liked him, or disliked CBC, or both, bought his explanation entirely: our ridiculous white-bread public broadcaster just couldn’t handle a prominent host enjoying consensual rough sex. Some mainstream commentary on Julian Assange’s arrest on sexual assault charges in Sweden — an obvious cover up; open your eyes, sheeple! — makes Steinem’s op-ed look like an attack on Clinton. Many seem convinced Rose McGowan’s recent arrest on drug charges is thanks to Weinstein’s psy-ops campaign against her.

Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. The key is to understand that our brains will jump to these conclusions, and try to manage that as best we can. But a brain that’s wired to see the good in people is a good thing, not a bad thing; the problem is when it excuses the bad in people. If you appreciate Clinton’s policies and think he did great things for America, there’s no logical reason you can’t also think it’s at least possible he did terrible things to women. That’s the square we should be trying to circle.

“If every woman in America started talking about the things that happen during the course of an ordinary female life,” wrote Flanagan, “it would never end.” And there’s no reason it should end: by all means let’s drain that reservoir. But what then?

Who is redeemable? What of their work? Should we deny ourselves the joys of Annie Hall and Sleeper because Woody Allen married his daughter, or Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby because Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl, or Off the Wall because Michael Jackson was very obviously a child molester?

Well, hell ... I write all that down and “Yes” seems like a pretty solid answer. But I don’t think most human beings, certainly in private, are capable of denying themselves things they love because the people who made them did awful things. I’m not, and I’m not going to feel bad about it. We have to take joy where we find it; we have to try to see good in people, while never being blind to the awful things of which some of us are capable.