Trump nixed for sexcapades honor
Donald Trump has enough money to get into any exclusive club he wants. . .except maybe this one: the super-exclusive Cads Hall of Fame, whose members include such luminaries as Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner.
You’d think he’d be a shooin for this males-only cohort of rakes who have disported themselves scandalously in the presence of the fairer sex.
But, alas, Cads’ persnickety membership application winnows out more candidates than Harvard’s admission’s committee does. The application states right at the top:
“The successful applicant will have served in, or sought, high public office and, in that capacity, will have shocked the public’s moral sensitivities vis-a-vis females in a manner that generated extensive national news coverage, preferably including exposure by the National Enquirer.”
These criteria have excluded from the Cads Hall of Fame such notables as Bill Cosby and Rev. Jesse Jackson. Cosby never held nor even sought public office, although he did endorse Barack Obama for such office.
Rev. Jackson sought public office (the Presidency) but never attained it. He was turned down for Cads membership despite a seemingly persuasive case for acceptance.
Making the case was the public spectacle he had staged praying for the Lord to forgive Bill Clinton his libidinous trespasses, back during the hoo-hah over the Monica dalliance.
As it later turned out, the married preacher was schlepping around his own baggage of sin — a child sired out of wedlock with a Rainbow Coalition staffer.
Though impressive, that was not quite sufficient to get Jackson admitted to Cads. Against those who argued heatedly for his admission, the Cads’ board controversially ruled that “scandal must become a permanent, identifiable component of the successful applicant’s identify.”
The board cited the example of two leading Cads members — Bill Clinton and Gary Hart. Clinton’s name you’ll readily recall, of course. Hart may require some memory-jogging. A U.S. senator, he was a front-runner candidate for President in the Democratic primary, 1988, until scandal upended his bandwagon.
The Cads Hall of Fame board offers the following explanation: “When Bill Clinton is mentioned, the second word that comes to mind — right after ‘Hillary’ — is ‘Monica.’ And when Hart’s name is mentioned, the immediate word association is ‘Donna Rice.’”
Historical footnote: Rice was the hot babe the married Hart was photographed canoodling with on the yacht “Monkey Business.” (Old joke from the era: “Why does Gary Hart all at once sound so inarticulate? Because he has a mouth full of Rice.” Bada-boom.)
In Jackson’s case, the Cad Hall of Fame board explained that the Reverend, despite the “love-child’ scandal, “is still most readily identified in terms of his civil-rights activities.”
And now we come to the elephant in the room. Or maybe we should say the donkey. A discomforting and undeniable fact is that Cads Hall of Fame membership is dominated by prominent Democrats.
Which is not to say the Republican Party itself lacks lecherous rogues and other morally turpitudinous characters. But mostly they have been quickly forgotten back-benchers. Run-ofthe mill congressmen. Political nobodies whose names the media have to Google.
These Republicans for the most part managed to garner publicity only in their hometown news media. A few — sneaky fellows given to oozing sanctimony — commanded a brief flurry of national attention due to the hypocrisy of their peccadilloes.
One major exception is Republican Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House. His scandal involved pedophile transgressions as a high school wrestling coach. But this was before he held public office. And his behavior was understandably regarded as revolting. There was nothing at all roguish about it, like, say, Bill Clinton’s horn-dog skirt-chasing.
Furthermore, Hastert was never one of those all-too-familiar Republicans who go around larding the earth with piousness as they walk, to borrow an expression from Shakespeare. So the long and short of it is that Pete Rose may be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame before Hastert is admitted to the Cad counterpart.
The big names of Cads-dom stand out for their brazenness, for the chutzpah of their “sexcapades.” Take the aforementioned Gary Hart — foolin’ around on a yacht named “Monkey Business” and actually daring the press to catch him. Or Bill Clinton, foolin’ around right outside the Oval Office.
Clinton is the gold standard of Cads membership. His unwelcome lechery in the civil case of Paula Jones remains engraved in the law books by a federal court. It found him in contempt for giving “intentionally false testimony.”
And Clinton’s law license was suspended for five years. Court and bar association fines totalling $115,000 were levied against him on top of that.
Plus, Independent Counsel Robert Ray took the extraordinary step of noting, on the legal record, that there had been “sufficient evidence” to prosecute Clinton had the Independent Counsel chosen to do so.
But if there’s a Cad extraordinaire, it has to be John Edwards, former North Carolina senator, Sen. John Kerry’s Vice Presidential running mate in 2004 and a presidential candidate himself in the 2008 Democratic primary.
In that campaign, he brazenly carried on an affair with a staffer whom he impregnated, all while his wife was dying of cancer. Now that’s a Cad!
Even the late Edward “Ted” Kennedy — “Liberal Lion of the Senate,” as admirers dubbed him — was hard put to match such exalted Cads status. As is universally known, the married Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge on Chappaquiddick late one night after a party and left a young female staffer in the submerged car gasping for breath in a dwindling pocket of air. Meanwhile, he made his own way to safety, summoning battalions of Kennedy family lawyers and political fixers to clean up the mess.
A 60-days jail sentence — suspended — for fleeing the scene of an accident was arranged for the senator in the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne in Ted’s upside-down Delta 88, submerged, yes, but in shallow enough water for a portion of one tire to remain above the surface, according to investigative sketches of the scene.
There are other Cads Hall of Fame members of noteworthy stature, deserving plaques on the wall in recognition of their disreputable antics. Two in particular rush to mind: Eliot Spitzer, former New York Governor, and Anthony Weiner, former New York congressman and protege of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
Family-man Spitzer, when serving as New York State’s Attorney General, had styled himself as an uprighteous, squarejawed lawman out of the Dick Tracy mold. But while serving as Governor he was exposed for hiring the professional attentions of an upscale ‘ho.’ As for Weiner, until recently the hubby of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, he’s now facing slammer time for “sexting a minor.”
In the cases of all of the above-mentioned Cads — Clin-
ton, Hart, Kennedy. Edwards, Spitzer and Weiner — not even the most militantly misandrous of feminists ever advocated for their admission to the Cads Hall of Fame.
Indeed, in the cases of Clinton and Kennedy many feminists aggressively advocated against their admission. The feminists maintained that, all appearances to the contrary, the two men actually were not Cads at all but downright chivalrous gentlemen when it came to “women’s issues,” as opposed to, apparently, women themselves.
Today, however, the most vociferous of what you might call the battleax faction of feminism is out front pressing the case for Trump’s admission to the Cads Hall of Fame. The case rests principally on the Billy Bush tape.
The tape caught Donald and Billy privately engaging in guys’ “locker room talk” — not intended for public ears — just before a “Hollywood Access” segment.
“When you’re a star,” said Trump, there are hotties hanging around and “You can do anything.”
“Whatever you want,” agreed Bush.
“Grab ‘em by the p---y,” said Trump.
The 11-year-old tape found its way to the Hillary Clinton campaign outlet, the Washington Post. Other Clinton-backing media disseminated the tape with gleeful alacrity — while proceeding to vent outrage at the thought that such lewd commentary was now assailing the innocent ears of America’s distaff gender, especially the ingenue contingent thereof.
Among those now nominating Trump for Cads membership (and also impeachment, by the way) is a strident group calling itself “UltraViolet.” It claims an activist force of harridans one-million strong.
In his presidency, Trump has “continued the pattern of abuse” revealed in the Billy Bush tapes, says UltraViolet cofounder Karin Roland. The basis of her assertion is. . .um. . .well, she doesn’t really say. To paraphrase the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, conviction first, evidence later, maybe.
Despite the strong appeal of Trump’s reputation to prurient interest, three pesky facts militate against his admission to the Cads Hall of Fame. Remember the Cads membership prerequisites?
One, the Billy Bush tape revealed remarks made long before Trump was in public office or seeking public office.
Two, the tape didn’t reveal any actual grabbing of females, in the manner of, say, a Bill Clinton. The tape merely revealed Trump’s observation that one can freely do so if one is a star.
Would, say, any multimillionaire professional athlete dispute the assertion? Would a Hollywood star like, oh, say, Warren Beatty, notoriously priapic in his day and a stalwart Democrat on the side, quibble over the accuracy of Trump’s observation?
And three, even if Trump is one day shown to have given himself over to grabby impulses in the presence of attractive women, will the circumstances show brazen disregard for caution the way Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards and Anthony Weiner did?
They set a chutzpah standard for Cads membership not easily equaled. Trump may get his entire legislative agenda enacted before he’s waved into the Cads Hall of Fame.
Yet, unless he’s impeached first, there’s still time for Trump to rise to the challenge — although at his age, 70, the challenge surely isn’t getting any easier.
The anti-Trump “Resistance,” meanwhile, seems determined to see Trump get his “due.” One way or another.
Amid the ongoing antiTrump hysteria, hope springs eternal that something’s gonna turn up. Something that gets Trump escorted into the Cads Hall of Fame — tarred and feathered and carried in on a rail amid celebratory whooping, howling and yowling.
And If nothing does turn up? Well, since when did mobs need evidence?
And three, even if Trump is one day shown to have given himself over to grabby impulses in the presence of attractive women, will the circumstances show brazen disregard for caution the way Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards and Anthony Weiner did?