Michelle (post points to several earlier ones) and Kimberly and Joanne have been all over the story of the Pennsylvania high school football players who raped, sodomized, and generally assaulted younger teammates (one of whom required surgery) at a summer football camp while their teammates looked on, only to face slap-on-the wrist responses once the incident was publicized.
Adding insult to the assaults, their parents, the cheerleaders, other players, and many good burghers of the town only got bent out of shape when the rest of the football season was cancelled.
This whole obscene scenario reminds me, of course, … of Bill Clinton. No, not his alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick. [Attention! Even if you don’t click on it, run your cursor over that last hyperlink and look at it. Just the link itself says volumes.] The town’s response to the cancellation of the team’s games reminds me of the response of Clinton’s supporters to his misbehavior.
My favorite analogy at the time of Clinton’s, and our, troubles was to think of Clinton as a small town high school football coach with a good season but bad habits with the underage cheerleaders, habits covered up by another of his bad habits: lying about his behavior in inquiries by the principal, school board, etc.
Coach Clinton’s friends and supporters circle the wagons in defense, arguing that nobody’s perfect and besides, his most vocal critics are moralistic, fundamentalist absolutists who get upset at the prospect of anyone having a good time, even innocently. Why deprive the town and its team of a winning season, they ask, just to satisfy some right wing prudes?
[…] reminded me of Bill Clinton, and here I am simply going to repeat what I posted back in 2003 (in Rape. Reminds Me Of…), which discussed “the story of the Pennsylvania high school football players who raped, […]
[…] makes a very good point. Of course one of the reasons I think his analogy is so well-taken is that I made exactly the same point a decade […]