theollady
theollady, Welcome to Able2Know, glad you've joined this great group of people from around the world.
I applaud your response and I'm so glad someone gets my point.
BumbleBeeBoogie
Sozobe
Sozobe, I've been around long enough to have learned long ago that women's complaints about sexual harassment and assault generally have not been taken seriously until recently.
Even in the instant case, though the women reported the events to others, if not the police, they and those they confided in understood the harm that could come to them if they made waves. For instance, loss of jobs, blackballing in the industry, not being taken seriously.
Such instances are hard to prove because even though the predator may be a world class arsehole, they usually have enough guile to make such assaults when not observed by others.
Arnold was not even that smart because several instances of his predatory behavior were witnessed by others---both men and women---who also were afraid to make waves. That's the protection morally and ethically corrupt powerful people use.
BumbleBeeBoogie
ehBeth wrote:Craven de Kere wrote:ehBeth wrote:Sexual harassment is not frivolous.
It was till the election. I presume it was less important to you before?
I hope your intention was to be offensive.
Not at all. It was to illustrate that this is a bandwagon that you are on. You might have legitimate concerns but there is no denying that you are on a politically propelled bandwagon.
sozobe wrote:
1.) If if we assume that a pattern of actual sexual harassment DID take place, should it be ignored?
Only if you do not consider it your business.
Quote:2.) Is the issue that you (sofia, Craven) don't believe the allegations, or that it shouldn't matter?
Of course not.
Quote:3.) Is this about Arnold's sex life? Groping people in public, as they resist, knowing he could get away with it... is that about his sex life?
No, it's about his candidacy.
Quote:4.) Would you care if he raped someone? More specifically, would you think it legitimate that if he did in fact rape someone, that would destroy his career?
That would be a matter for the courts. See, we have courts to deal with rape. The court of public opinion is a lynch mob whose feckless whim has little to do with justice.
Yeah. I said before that I wish the courts HAD dealt with it.
Most of my follow-up questions have to do with whether "personal life" ever has to do with political life, which Dlowan has already started, so can just continue there.
I agreed with Dlowan's summary of her view.
I emphasize that I am discomfitted by allegations about sexual harassment by both Clinton and Schwarzenegger, and allegations about sexual assault by Schwarzenegger. I can make my own assumptions of probability, thus my discomfort, but do not know the truth, at least at the present time.
While I feel/fear much stated about these individuals' behavior is true, it remains possible that some incidents can be contrived; it is a feature of matters so hard to prove, with descriptions so susceptible to the Roshomon tale, that people can see the same events differently, but more troubling, people can set other people up, even lie.
I admit that as someone who liked and likes much about Clinton I am more apt to see the potential for set up in his situations, and, as someone who was cool about Schwarzenegger before all this surfaced, I see the numbers of complaints as menacing. Still, I don't know the truth yet.
I am no fan of harassment or assault, and both have happened to me; I take them very seriously. Still, I am more worried about other aspects of the recall campaign.
I agree people in the US have a skewed view of the importance of marital fidelity as a virtue of their politicians. Anyone remember Gary Hart? Harassment and assault are a different ballgame (heh), if substantiated.
To be truthful, I don't know myself what I would feel about a little bit of harassment versus a long pattern, is it sort of like being a little bit pregnant?, and whether the knowledge of it being true would affect my vote, if in all other matters the political candidate represented my way of thinking. If it was harassment that affected the employment of the harassed associate, I hope that I would consider it enough not to vote for the candidate; I think it would depend on the specifics.
With proven assault, I wouldn't vote even for a candidate I otherwise liked.
On hypocrisy about view of what the wives should be doing relative to their marriages: I really don't care much what the wives do, but assume that what some feel about what the wives do may be colored by their political enthusiasms and possibly hypocritical.
On Joe Nation's take on what liberals should do, I enjoyed it as a concept, but think that, however appealing, it is the dead wrong direction for a country in serious messes.
I do think it's important for me to say this:
I am THRILLED about this bandwagon hitting Arnold.
I do not want him to be govenor and this looks like the only thing that has a chance to take him down.
This is hypocritical on my part but I see a scandal bandwagon as better than mere name recognition based on gaudy celebrity.
That's exactly why Schwartzenneger would be elected, Craven, and it is based on dissapointment of the course of the present governor. I don't believe this is entirely fair but life isn't fair and politics is rarely fair. The ominous cloud of any of these alleged victims beginning a Paula Jones lawsuit (or even criminal proceedings) against the alleged governor Swartzenneger is deja vu. It would put into place yet another recall but based on an entirely different motivation.
I will laugh ruefully if Arnold is elected and a recall effort is launched against him.
It won't be funny for California but Clinton had the Gennifer Flower's affair to overcome. Ahnold has fifteen complaintants and growing. Could be too little, too late to torpedo Ahnold's bid for the governorship but I doubt that it will die away. He keeps saying he won't cater to special interests and yet his "tax the indian casinos" ad was cut on the exact same day as the indian casino ads dropped the deragatory reference to him off their ads. What a deal. Is Swatzenegger holding a bluffing hand? That politician for the people baloney smells like Austrian sausage.
Austrian sausage must stink to High Heaven.
ABC's Peter Jennings revealing Arnold interview
Its bad enough that George Bush can't speak in understandable sentences, now we have Arnold Schwartzennegger. AND, its the women's fault for his troubles.
---BumbleBeeBoogie
------------------------------------------------------------------
ABC NEWS JENNINGS PRESSES ARNOLD
Mon Oct 06 2003 11:13:38 ET
GOOD MORNING AMERICA
PETER JENNINGS: It cannot be easy to spend the last few days of this campaign having to deal constantly with being called a serial groper or a serial abuser to women, and being compared, in some way--your admiration for Hitler. Is that tough?
SCHWARZENEGGER: I get upset about it. But I knew that before I got into this campaign, that this is going to be that kind of a situation that people would throw everything at me at the last minute and the last week. And it's going to become a dirty campaign, sleaze campaign and, you know, down to the gutter. I mean, I knew that--because it was won.
People--political leaders from both parties said, ``You know, Arnold, I don't know if you want to do that. Because let me tell you, I have campaigned. I have run for office and all this. In the last week, they throw things at you that is embarrassing, many times. It's terrible for your family. You may want to think that over, because no matter what it is, they will find it...''
JENNINGS: Does this mean none of it's true? SCHWARZENEGGER: ... calling the baby killer and then the--Simon quoted me...
JENNINGS: None of it's true? None of it's true?
SCHWARZENEGGER: It is--the fact of the matter is I have realized that this is campaign trickery and it is dirty campaigning...
JENNINGS: Well, why is it...
SCHWARZENEGGER: ... and it is...
JENNINGS: ... dirty campaigning?
SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, because it is not true. Many of those things are not true.
JENNINGS: What are not true?
SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, like, for instance, you know, I had despised anything and everything that Hitler stands for. I have been--from the time I was a young kid, fought against anyone that has protested for Nazis or had any kind of Nazi sympathizing or anything like this and I campaigned against that. And I came over here, did the same thing. I always was against anything and despised anything that Hitler stood for and what the Nazis stood for. And I'm very sensitive about it, because I come from a country where we had a history of that.
You know, people came up to me many times, when I came over here, with the ``Heil Hitler'' signs and then say, you know, ``The boys from Brazil are coming,'' and all these kind of derogatory things, which I understood. But I mean, and I'm sensitive about that.
And so, I've sued the tabloids when they've said anything about me being a Nazi and have won the lawsuits.
JENNINGS: But you had to know that this was all going to come out in a campaign. It is, after all, your past. It isn't made up, is it?
SCHWARZENEGGER: You don't hear me complaining. You're just asking me the question, you know, that this is part of the campaign.
That's what I'm saying, when I got into the campaign, people said, ``Look, you will have some wonderful moments, you will be meeting some interesting people, smart people. You will be reaching out and they will look at you with hope and everything like this. You will have a great time. But there will be the bad times, the bums, the people start throwing everything at you. And you know that Davis has been known for dirty campaigns.''
And now I experience all that stuff. That's what it is. But the good thing about it is that the people are not buying in on it. That is the good thing about it.
JENNINGS: The question I'm just trying to understand is you say some of it's not true and some if it you don't remember. What don't you remember and what isn't true?
SCHWARZENEGGER: It doesn't make any sense to go through details here with you.
What is important is--what is important is that I cannot remember what was happening 20 years ago and 15 years ago. But some of the thing sounds like me and this is why I was the first one to come out and say, ``You know, some of the things could have happened.'' I want to apologize to the people if I offended anyone, because that was not my intention.
JENNINGS: Do you think that that's...
SCHWARZENEGGER: ... and I'm sorry.
JENNINGS: ... enough?
SCHWARZENEGGER: I'm sorry about it. Well, let me tell you something, that no one every came to me in my life and said to me that I did anything, then said, ``I don't want you to do that and you went over the line, Arnold.'' Now, all of a sudden, isn't it odd that three days and four days before the campaign, all of a sudden, all these women want to have an apology? Isn't it odd?
JENNINGS: Are you blaming the women?
SCHWARZENEGGER: I mean, you have common sense, Peter. You can figure it out for yourself.
JENNINGS: Are you...
SCHWARZENEGGER: Come on now.
JENNINGS: ... well, no, you figure it out for me.
SCHWARZENEGGER: I mean, no, no, no, no. But I'm just trying to tell you, you know it and I know it.
END
I am very much afraid that the case of Arnold Schwartznegger compared to President ( previously Governor Bill Clinton) are not exactly the same. When the wives were backing them up they were backing qualitatively different people.
Arnold is( at this time) just a movie actor running for office.
Clinton became governor years ago and was elected president.
There are some who hold that there is a critical distinction between Public and Private Morality.
quote below from "An Affair of State" by Judge Richard A. Posner
P. 150
"Now it is true that Americans no longer believe that politicians have any committment to telling the truth. It can be argued that candor in a statesman, while occasionallya smart tactic might not be part of his job description. This is an area in which the correct standard of public morality is probably lower than the correct standard of private morality--an area in which, indeed, a private virtue of truth telling may be a public vice. It is the number, publicness, transparency, solemnity and gratuitousness of President Clinton's liesboth under oath( whether or not technically perjurious- some were- some weren't) and not under oath, that sets him apart from other presidents. If anything, the essential triviality of his objective in lying-saving his own skin--aggravates the offense. IT IS ONE THING FOR A LINCOLN OR A ROOSEVELT TO LIE, OR EVEN TO VIOLATE THE LAW, UNDER CONDITIONS OF CIVIL WAR AND WORLD WAR RESPECTIVELY, and another thing for a lesser figure in calmer and easier times to lie for purely
personal gain. No one supposes that Lincoln or Roosevelt should have resigned to atone for their violations of law or morality; many people think Clinton should have. Even Nixon, or more plausibly, Reagan on the Iran-Contra affair, could argue reasons of state in extenuation of illegal acts committed in time of (cold) war. Clinton couldn't."
and
Quote P. 133
"Intelligent evaluation of the moral dimensions of the Clinton-Lewinsky mess requires distinguishing between Private Morality and Public Morality.
The former term refers to the duties that the moral code of a society imposes on people regardless of their office or job, the latter to the duties that the code imposes on people who occupy particular offices( not necessarily public). A lawyer has special moral duties- the domain of "legal ethics_--by virtue of his or her profession, as well as the moral duties that are common to all persons in his society. AND SO WITH EVERY OTHER PROFESSION AND VOCATION, INCLUDING THAT OF POLITICAL LEADER"
End of quote.
It would appear that according to Judge Posner's excellent construct, President William Clinton was bound by a higher code of morality- that of Public Morality.
Therefore , Mrs. Clinton's defense of her husband was qualitatively different from the defense of Mrs. Schwartzenegger's-
Mrs. Clinton knew she was defending someone who was bound by Public Morality.
the plain sad truth is that the Bushs' and Schwartzneggers, or Clintons for that matter, of the world will now be successful regardless of their past because the majority of Americans...no matter what they say publicly.....don't care about nazi connections or mistreatment of women or children or any other minority any longer in their heart of hearts...they care about the person they feel will best represent their interest....if that person used to be a nazi...and I'm only using that as an example, not putting forth that anyone is.....then a way will be found to ignore, excuse, or spin it. If the person they don't feel represents them is accused of the same thing, then it will be spun into a moral concern.
But wake up and at least admit the truth to yourselves folks....most people don't really give a ****. Empathy, sympathy, sense of conscience...old school dinosaur **** in todays' brave new world.
Things are about to get even more interesting.
Well, just call me an old-school dinosaur cause I do care about this kind of ****. I don't trust a man who thinks he has the right to put his hands on someone jujst because he's bigger, stronger and male.
I am in agreement with you eoe, don't get me wrong.
I know you are, bi-polar.
