Secretly they will DO almost anyone. especially the guys. More closet gays exist in the REP party.
Republicans Involved in Sex Scandals as Much as Democrats
From Garfield to Harding to Eisenhower to Reagan to Bush to Giuliani to Schwarzenegger
IF YOU took a public survey on who was most likely to have had an extramarital affair, [a] A Democrat, [b] A Republican, or [c] Both, [a] would be the overwhelming choice.
But the correct choice is [c].
Of course, you wouldn’t know that from the U.S. mainstream media coverage. In 2003, the national and local media was all over the sexual assault allegation against NBA star Kobe Bryant - who said at one time he usually voted for Democrats - and ignored or downplayed cases against Republicans like California groper Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bush Jr. 1
That trend continued on the heels of covering former California Democratic Rep. Gary Condit’s affair with an intern to the point of nausea in 2002, while ignoring the case of former Florida Rep. Joe Scarborough, a Republican who was forced to resign after a female employee was found dead in his office. While Scarborough did not admit to having an affair with Lori Klausutis, there were several suspicious discrepancies in the investigation that pointed to a possible cover-up. 2
Moreover, the sudden resignation of the ambitious Republican from a lucrative Congress position, which came soon after Scarborough divorced his wife and Klausutis died, raised more than a few eyebrows. Condit, who was cleared of involvement in the death of Chandra Levy, was banished from sight, while Scarborough was handed his own national talk show on MSNBC. 3
During his 2003 campaign to steal the governorship of California, Schwarzenegger was pretty much given a free ride concerning his sexual scandals. Those scandals included one in which a Georgia woman accused the Terminator of sexually assaulting her in January 1997 in a storeroom of a former Planet Hollywood restaurant in Atlanta.
June told me she was standing in line for the restroom when Schwarzenegger, a former part-owner of the failed business, walked by and said he knew of another restroom where she wouldn’t have to wait in line.
“The others in line were talking to each other so I was the only one to follow him,” June said. “He pushed me into the storeroom, and I turned to joke that I must be in the wrong room. Then I was shocked that he held me down and assaulted me. He’s a powerful man, and his grip was so strong I couldn’t move.”
When Schwarzenegger finished, he violently threw June sideways to the floor. “A few moments later, I heard him zip his pants,” June said. “Then, he directed at me, “Don’t even think about mentioning this; no one will believe you! He turned on his heels and left the room, closing the door, leaving me crumpled on the floor facing away from the door he had exited.”
June said she was so shocked she didn’t call police or tell anyone. “I was involved in other matters at the time and just wanted to forget it and go on with my life,” she said.
But when Schwarzenegger announced he was running for governor of the country’s most populous state in 2003, June couldn’t get the nightmares out of her mind. She contacted me out of the blue after I wrote one of numerous columns about Schwarzenegger’s history of sexual harassment and said I was interested in hearing from others who experienced the Terminator’s “charms.”
June had nothing to do with the campaign of recalled California Gov. Gray Davis. As she wrote in her first email to me, she said she had “been through emotional ‘Hell’ since the attack, including nightmares and fears I can’t get rid of. I see that liar’s smile everywhere I look today. It may, somehow, help me to finally talk about the terror of being attacked, and how it affected me and my life since. My speaking up will certainly wipe that big smile off his face.”
So I told a Los Angeles Times reporter about June’s case, and that was one of many the newspaper investigated before writing an explosive article about Schwarzenegger’s sexual escapades, which included assaults as late as 2000 during his marriage with Maria Shriver. The Times didn’t have time to fully substantiate June’s story, which was made difficult by her not telling anyone at the time. June reported it to Georgia authorities in 2003, but by that time the statute of limitation on “aggravated sodomy” expired. And she feared filing a civil lawsuit since Schwarzenegger, who had money to burn, was known for filing counter-lawsuits and even taking the assets of his victims.
Essentially, Schwarzenegger assaulted victims who dared to challenge him twice. What a guy. The LA Times reported numerous other incidents of Schwarzenegger’s long history of sexual assault, harassment, and infidelity in the story that ran a few days before the October 2003 recall election. 4
Unfortunately, most California voters bought the Republican lies that the article was part of Democratic dirty tricks - the Times’ editors said the investigation was independent and had begun weeks before. But perhaps the story will carry enough weight to help derail any national campaign Schwarzenegger might embark on in the future.
Schwarzenegger’s campaign responded to one accuser the usual way Republicans do - with another lie. The campaign sent an email to the media suggesting that Hollywood stuntwoman Rhonda Miller had an extensive criminal background. The Los Angeles Times reported that Miller did not - it was someone with the same name who had the criminal record. Miller said Schwarzenegger groped her on a movie set in 1991, pulling up her shirt and photographing and touching her breasts as she fought him. 5
Bush and Rove told their own lies about supposedly staying out of the recall effort and not hypocritically supporting the adulterer and criminal. Bush advisers met with Schwarzenegger as early as 2001 to get him to run for governor. Rove himself met with the groper in early 2003. Before the recall, proponents and representatives of potential Republican candidates met at the Los Angeles office of Gerry Parsky, Bush’s top California adviser, to discuss the effort. 6
So much for Republican family values.
The Bush affairs
There is no shortage of stories on the Internet about alleged extramarital affairs involving the Bush clan. But for whatever reason, including that the media was owned by conservatives, they were not popularly known.
Besides the Schoedinger case, Bush Jr. was linked to a 39-year-old Texas woman, Tammy Phillips. The former stripper was quoted in the National Enquirer in 2000 saying she had an 18-month affair with Bush that had ended in June 1999, while Bush campaigned for the presidency. 7
Phillips said she was introduced to then-Texas Gov. Bush by her Republican uncle in Dec. 1997 during a political event in Midland, Tx. She said that she and Bush, who married Laura Bush two decades before, made “passionate love” that very day.
However, that raised a red flag right there. I can’t see the attention-challenged Bush making “passionate love” to anyone, unless such was defined as lasting ten seconds or less. The Enquirer also said that the uncle disputed introducing Bush and Phillips, who I could not reach for comment.
According to the story, Bush and Phillips had sex eight more times, including a Best Western motel room in Houston. “It was simply sex,” she told the Enquirer. “It was the cheapest relationship you can imagine.” Now that I can believe.
Another story was told to me by a Texas woman who said Bush Jr. followed her around the HemisFair, an international festival in 1968 in San Antonio, when he was 22 and she was but 14.
“I was mature for my age,” she said. “He approached me and insisted I drink some beer. He apparently wanted me to get drunk. I told him I was underaged, and he said if the cops came, we wouldn’t get in trouble because of who he was. He knew I was underaged and finally left me alone.”
Then there were the reports about the gay affair between Bush and former college roommate and fellow Bonesman Victor Ashe. That was covered in the first chapter of this book. 8
Who can forget Bush telling right-wing FOX broadcaster Brit Hume in 2003 that he had a “beautiful face?” That was a lie in itself – Hume looks more like a sour-faced bulldog. A Canadian newspaper also reported that in January 2004 Bush had nothing better to do at an international conference than tell Scott Reid, an aide to Prime Minister Paul Martin, that he had a “pretty face” and was a “good-looking guy. Better looking than my Scott [McClellan] anyway.” 9
Then, Betty Bowers pointedly and hilariously wrote about Bush’s overuse of the word, “fabulous.” The press reported most comments as a joke, but the frequency of such comments made one wonder – if not about Bush’s sexual orientation, then about his shallowness. 10
There were more stories about Bush’s brothers, Jeb and Neil.
Jeb Bush reportedly had an affair with Cynthia Henderson, a former Playboy bunny who he put in charge of the Florida Department of Management Services at a salary of $114,000 a year in 1999. Bush also appointed Henderson to run the Department of Business and Professional Regulation in 1999.
But he had to transfer her after a state ethics investigation into her accepting personal favors - including a private plane ride to the Kentucky Derby - from Outback Steakhouse, a company her office was supposed to regulate. Henderson also reportedly helped obtain state jobs for her nanny and the nanny’s boyfriend, and she was also sued by a state employee who alleged that Henderson grabbed him by the throat and threatened to choke him to death. 11
While some Bush advisors and newspapers called on Henderson to be fired, Bush refused and publicly denied in May 2001 that he had as much as been in a room alone with Henderson after mostly alternative media published the allegations. Unlike with Clinton, Condit, and other Democrats like potential 1988 presidential candidate Gary Hart, the major media did not aggressively pursue the story and check out whether Bush was telling the truth. In former Sen. Hart’s case, the media even staked out his Washington home to report an alleged affair he had with model Donna Rice. As late as 1998, Hart called the media frenzy surrounding him “fascist.” 12
Contrast that treatment with what The Washington Post did after learning that Democratic Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening supposedly had sex with Jennifer Crawford, his unmarried chief of staff, while he was separated from his wife. The Post put two reporters to spy on Glendening and Crawford and reported in Sept. 2001 that Glendening eased out of Crawford’s home early on a few mornings that summer.
There were several problems with the story, such as there was no regulation prohibiting state employees from sleeping with each other, the Baltimore City Paper reported. “This was a sleazy intrusion into the governor’s personal life, sleazily delivered, and for sleazy motives,” Wiley Hall III wrote in the Baltimore publication. “The only ones who emerged from this affair with dignity intact were the governor, who had his aides declare ‘no comment’ and refused thereafter to be baited, and the people of Maryland, who reacted to the message with the collective yawn it deserved.” 13
Meanwhile, did The Post or any other media outlet put such time and resources into catching Jeb and Cynthia? Are you kidding? As Online Journal columnist Sally Slate wrote in July 2001, “Isn’t the silence of the so-called mainstream media - you know, the folks who could not get enough of ‘all Monica, all the time’ and who are now obsessing over ‘all Condit, all the time’ - interesting in light of all the Jeb-Henderson stories making the rounds in Florida? Of course, when it comes to Republicans, these are just ‘youthful indiscretions,’ after all Gov. Bush is under 50. If he were a Democrat, well, just ask Rep. Condit.” 14
Slate wrote about an anecdote that could easily be checked out - how Bush reportedly used $1,900 in taxpayers’ money to replace a bed that he said broke while his wife was away. 15
Retired U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Al Martin, author of The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider, wrote in his Internet column, Al Martin Raw, that Jeb Bush had been videotaped by an FBI surveillance camera at the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa with Henderson. Martin also wrote that Henderson was seeking money to keep quiet about the alleged affair. 16
Martin said Henderson also worked for Neil Bush in the 1980s when he was running a Florida real estate company and might know something about the Bush brothers that kept her employed in the cushy Florida job. Martin also wrote that all of the Bush brothers were known adulterers. 17
To help keep the media from doing serious investigation into this alleged affair, Jeb’s mafia reportedly threatened Vanity Fair, the supermarket tabloid The Globe, and WPOW-FM’s Bo Griffin, who received a “spooky” call from the governor’s office demanding to know her source. Most media, however, needed no such calls to stay away from the story. 18
But the media could not overlook the obvious affairs of Neil Bush - check this in the New York Daily News from Bush’s deposition in his divorce case against former wife Sharon Bush in 2003:
Neil Bush: “I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don’t remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong.”
Marshall Davis Brown, Sharon Bush’s attorney: “And you were married to Mrs. Bush?”
Bush: “Yes.”
Brown: “Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?”
Bush: “No.”
Brown: “Where did you catch those?”
Bush: “Diseases plural? I didn’t catch...”
Brown: “Well, I’m sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?”
Bush: “I’ve had one venereal disease.”
Brown: “Which was?”
Bush: “Herpes.”
Brown: “Did you pay them for that sex?”
Bush: “No, I did not.”
Brown: “Pick them up in a sushi house?”
Bush: “No. ... My recollection is, where I can recall, they came to my room.”
Sharon Bush also said that Maria Andrews’s young child was Neil’s, a claim Andrews denied. Neil Bush and Andrews got engaged in 2003. 19
The press at least mentioned reports of Bush Sr. having a long-time affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald, a former aide that Bush reportedly helped rise through the ranks. Among those printing the allegation in 1988 or 1992 were The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Daily News, New York Post, and Columbia Journalism Review. 20
The right-wing site NewsMax even said that Clinton foe Linda Tripp knew about and spread the Bush-Fitzgerald connection. “To the Bushes [Tripp] is the one who exposed their own scandalous behavior and subsequent cover-up,” NewsMax wrote. 21
For some odd reason that came down to wimping out, Democrats never capitalized on these affairs. The 1988 presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis actually fired Donna Brazile for merely trying to get reporters to look into the reports that Bush Sr. had an affair. Meanwhile, Republican operatives were rewarded financially for spreading such rumors about prominent Democrats. And Democrats kept scratching their heads, wondering why they lost elections when they were afraid to really fight back.
The affairs of Reagan and the conservatives who went after Clinton
Ronald Reagan was revered by conservatives - even to the sickening point of naming a building and airport after him in Washington, D.C. But how many know about Reagan’s extramarital affairs, including how he reportedly had sex with mistress Christine Larson as Nancy Reagan gave birth to daughter Patti? Or that he was regularly known to engage in extramarital sex with various Hollywood wannabe actresses? 22
How many know about Nancy Reagan alleged intimate affair with Frank Sinatra in the White House? 23
Remember how much the media played up Monica Lewinsky’s blow jobs and Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton in the 1990s, while ignoring or downplaying extramarital activities by the hypocritical Republicans who served on Clinton’s impeachment committee like Henry Hyde and Bob Barr?
Hyde, who chaired that committee, had an affair of his own for about five years with the married Cherie Snodgrass in the late 1960s. Hyde, who was in his 40s and a married Illinois state representative with four kids when he had the affair, didn’t deny the relationship. But he said, “The statute of limitations has long since passed on my youthful indiscretions.” Of course, for Republicans, anything they do under age 50 falls under the category of “youthful indiscretions.” 24
Snodgrass’ husband, Fred, told Salon.com that Hyde was a “hypocrite who broke up my family.” Cherie declined to talk to Salon, but her daughter said, “She knows she wasn’t his first [mistress], and she wasn’t his last. She hates his anti-abortion stuff and all the family values stuff. She thinks he’s bad for the country, he’s too powerful, and he’s hypocritical.” 25
Barr, the hypocritical author of “The Defense of Marriage Act,” had an affair while still married to Gail Barr and married Jeri Dobbin a month after the divorce became final in 1986, according to testimony in the divorce case. Neither Barr nor Dobbin denied having the affair when asked about it repeatedly. 26
Then in 1992, Barr licked whipped cream off the chests of “two buxom women” during a Leukemia Society charity event. The Washington Post asked him if he would “engage in such conduct if he had it do to all over again.”
“Heavens no!” he replied. “It was a charity event ... and people were having a good time.” 27
But Barr reportedly did “engage in such conduct,” right during the time when he piously criticized Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. Kevin Jeys of the Chico Examiner wrote that Barr slipped away from his wife in 1998 to lick whipped cream off the breasts of another lap dancer at a D.C. bachelor’s party. This came after Barr told The Post he would not do that again. 28
Contrast the way Republicans reacted to Clinton’s affairs with that of fellow Republican Congressman Bob Livingston, who they chose as House Speaker in late 1998, only to learn Livingston had affairs of his own. CNN reported that Livingston’s confession, which only came after publications like Roll Call reported Livingston’s affairs, “that he had been unfaithful to his wife drew first gasps, and then a standing ovation and declarations of support from Republicans at a closed-door caucus.” 29
So the message was if you have an affair and you’re a Democrat, you get impeached. But if you have an affair and you’re a Republican, you get applause and support.
Other conservative hypocrites who castigated Clinton for sins they committed themselves included Congressman Dan Burton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, presidential candidate Bob Dole, and Sen. Strom Thurmond.
Burton, who once called Clinton a “scumbag” in the midst of the public sexual witch hunt, admitted during the 1998 proceedings against Clinton that he had an extramarital affair and fathered a child out of wedlock when he was a state senator in the 1980s. Burton said on PBS, “This is something that happened a long time ago.....The boy and the mother and my wife and my family and I have all reached an agreement about this a long time ago.” 30
Well, isn’t that special? So we should all forget about Republican affairs as long as the parties involved reach a private agreement?
Gingrich was known to force oral sex with interns and reportedly cheated on two of his three wives. He even served his first wife with divorce papers while she lying in a hospital bed fighting cancer so that he could marry a mistress. 31
Then, Gingrich divorced wife number two, reportedly for Callista Bisek, a much younger Congressional employee, and had sex with her in his Capitol Hill office during the Clinton witch hunt. 32
As columnist Robert Scheer pointed out, “As House speaker, Gingrich had ultimate power over the woman’s career, raising questions of sexual harassment.” 33
Gingrich married Bisek a few months after divorce number two was finalized in 2000. He got his second marriage annulled by the Catholic Church, even though Gingrich was not Catholic - Bisek was. That meant that the church declined to formally recognize the 19 years of Gingrich’s second marriage. How’s that for family values?
Dole, who lost big-time to the “Big Dog” in 1996, reportedly had an affair with a woman who was not his wife in 1968. The Washington Post wrote that the paper and Time both interviewed the woman at length, then decided not to run the story before the 1996 election. The National Enquirer ran the story, instead. 34
The late Thurmond, for his part, had sex with the late Carrie Butler in 1925, when he was 22 and she was a 16-year-old African-American housekeeper in Thurmond’s home. The act wasn’t a crime back in the early 20th century, but it would be now. Thurmond reportedly helped pay for the college education of his part-black daughter, Essie Mae Washington Williams, even as he referred to African-Americans as “*******” and became one of the country’s leading proponents of segregation.
That action was deceitful in more ways than the obvious hypocrisy; if white America had heard about Thurmond’s black child, his political career would have been over. While articles appeared about the tie as early as 1972, Thurmond, Williams, and Butler kept quiet about the matter until Williams spilled the beans in 2003. 35
In addition to that deceit, according to AmericaHeldHostile.com, Thurmond had an extramarital affair of his own when he was 88. 36
What family people these Republicans were.
Republican cheaters go way back in history
The list of prominent Republicans who cheated on their spouses went way back in American history.
James Garfield, who was president from 1880 to 1884, reportedly had an extramarital affair with Lucia Calhoun in the 1860s. His wife, Lucretia, discovered the liaison and made him choose between staying married or getting a divorce. Garfield chose to say married. 37
Warren Harding was more than the Republican president who presided over the scandalous, bribe-taking Teapot Dome administration in the early 1920s that ranked with the Bush Jr. one for the most corrupt in American history. Harding had numerous extramarital affairs, including with Nan Britton, who was 31 years younger than him. In fact, Britton bore Harding a child one year before he won the presidency. 38
Harding and Britton had sex in White House closets, bathrooms, and offices, even as Harding’s wife, Florence, remained in other parts of the White House. 39
Britton was not the only extramarital relationship that Harding, who died in office of a heart attack, had in the White House. In fact, Carrie Phillips, who had been a German sympathizer during World War I, attempted to blackmail Harding and was paid hush money by the Republican Party. 40
During World War II, Dwight Eisenhower allegedly began an affair with Kay Summersby, a young British woman who became Eisenhower’s personal secretary. Summersby confirmed the affair in her 1975 book, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower. 41
No less than Christian evangelist Billy Graham, a close ally of Republicans like Nixon and Bush, allegedly took home a prostitute while married, according to Marshall Frady’s book, Billy Graham, A Parable of American Righteousness. In 1952, Graham and another evangelist had dinner with two prostitutes in Paris, and each one took one home, Frady wrote. Graham told a friend that nothing happened - he got cold feet and fled after the prostitute took off her clothes. 42
Other conservative evangelists, such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, followed through with affairs. 43
Nelson Rockefeller, vice president to Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s, died in 1979 at the age of 70 while allegedly having sex with Megan Marshak, his 27-year-old secretary. In his will, Rockefeller reportedly left Marshak the deed to a New York townhouse and $50,000 in cash. 44
The affair of another Republican mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, was covered more by the media. Giuliani started seeing Judith Nathan while still married to his second wife, Donna. After another divorce in 2002, Guiliani married Nathan in 2003. 45
Millionaire druggie and liar Rush Limbaugh allegedly cheated on two of his three wives. Another rabid-right talk show host, Laura Schlessinger, reportedly has also engaged in extramarital affairs. For more on these affairs and other sex scandals involving Republicans, including Tom DeLay, George Will, and Dick Armey, see the sites mentioned in the footnote at the bottom of this chapter. 46
Some Republicans actually do time for sex crimes
Occasionally, some Republicans actually get caught in a serious sex crime.
Quick now, has anyone heard of Randy Ankeney? He was a rising star in Colorado Republican circles who held a $63,000 position in the Governor’s Office of Economic Development until he was arrested in 2001 and accused of trying to have sex with a 13-year-old girl he met through the Internet. 47
Police said Ankeney even warned the girl he’d ruin her life if she told anyone. Does that sound familiar? That’s how many of these Republicans keep their affairs quiet - they threaten a bunch of people.
Another 17-year-old girl said Ankeney sexually assaulted her while working on a political campaign. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault of a child. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2003. 48
How about Parker J. Bena, a Virginia Republican activist who proudly cast one of his state’s electoral vote for Bush in 2000, being indicted for possessing child pornography in 2001? Bena was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000. 49
Long-time Virginia Republican fund-raiser Richard Delgaudio, 50, was more fortunate. He only received two years probation in 2003 after pleading guilty to taking sexually-related photos of a 16-year-old girl in a motel room. In 2001, Delgaudio was picked up by police in Baltimore’s Patterson Park, an area police said was known for prostitution. 50
Does Republican Marty Glickman, one of those rabid dog conservative talk radio commentators in Florida who was arrested in 2001 and charged with giving drugs like LSD and money to underaged girls in exchange for sex, ring a bell? 51
Anyone hear of Kevin T. Coan, a Republican who formerly directed the St. Louis Election Board? He was charged in 2001 with trying to solicit sex from a 14-year-old girl in cyberspace. As of 2003, his case hadn’t been resolved. 52
Then there was Philip Giordano, the former Republican mayor of Waterbury, Conn., who was sentenced in 2003 to 37 years in prison for soliciting sex with underaged girls and violating their civil rights. It’s more likely you’ve heard of him since this case received ample media coverage. 53
Another case that got some attention involved Beverly Russell, a leader in the South Carolina Republican Party and the local Christian Coalition who campaigned for presidential candidate Pat Robertson, who allegedly molested his step-daughter, children-drowner Susan Smith. 54
I’ve been told that numerous Religious Right nuts read sexual material under the guise of knowing what’s in it so they can keep it from their children. Many Religious Rightists also believe a man can have sex with his wife anytime he pleases, whether she wants to or not. Some would call that rape, but I’m sure these nuts have another word for it.
Did Bennett pay for a dominatrix’s services?
Finally, there was Bill Bennett, the hypocritical, self-proclaimed morality czar who was one of Clinton’s harshest critics for having an affair. According to Jack Hughes, webmaster of www.evilGOPbastards.com, and another source, Bennett hired a Las Vegas dominatrix, essentially paying money for sexual services. Reporters from nationally-known newspapers and magazines have interviewed Leola McConnell, or “Mistress Lee,” but have not been able to obtain written proof like receipts or emails to verify the story. One source said there supposedly was a video tape of them floating around, but they hadn’t seen it.
In an email, McConnell didn’t deny that Bennett was a client or talking to reporters about it. “Contact [the reporters], why are you asking me? That’s the best way to find out if it’s true or not,” she wrote.
I contacted some reporters who allegedly spoke with McConnell. One said the allegation could be true, but McConnell did not produce any evidence to help substantiate the tie, such as receipts and correspondence.
As Joshua Green, who broke the story about Bennett’s gambling habit, wrote in The Washington Monthly in 2003, “no person can be more rightly credited with making morality and personal responsibility an integral part of the political debate” than Bennett. As drug czar under Bush Sr. and education secretary under Reagan, Bennett continually shoved his high-handed view of morality into our faces. He wrote books on morals and virtues and made millions speaking about the subject across the country, usually pointing the finger at Democratic excesses and ignoring sins committed by Republicans. 55
Then came Green’s 2003 story that Bennett had spent millions gambling in Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos since at least the early 1990s. Suddenly, Bennett and his poker buddies who defended his excesses - Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, and William Rehnquist - didn’t look so moral or credible to many people.
The point of this essay is not to say Republicans are more likely to commit an extramarital affair than Democrats; I believe the truth is closer to being that they are equally likely. The media is full of examples of Democrats embroiled in sexual scandals; I’m just trying to balance the scales a little. I find Republican sexual scandals more appalling than Democratic transgressions after all the Republicans did to expose Clinton’s private life - even spending $100 million of tax money - in the 1990s.
I’m not excusing Clinton - he should have just said no comment and not gone on TV to say he did not have sex with Monica. We don’t know what kind of agreement the Clintons had - perhaps they secretly worked out a French-style arrangement in which Bill and Hillary were free to engage in extramarital encounters. Don’t expect to read that in Hillary’s book. Ultimately, it was none of our business, but the Republicans forced this on us. So Democrats should turn the tables whenever they get the chance.
If any issue resonates with the average American, it’s sex. All those issues the Democratic leadership wants to play up, like Social Security and health care, are important and good to hit with a targeted audience. But they are, frankly, boring to the average TV-watching American. Sex is not, as we learned in the Clinton years.
Some conservatives have written me, calling my exposes of Republicans’ hypocritical sexual lives “sleazy” and other more colorful terms. As I have long said, many far-right Republicans can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
When I first tried out for my high school basketball team in my sophomore year, I was taller than most of the other players. But many competitors for the team neutralized my height advantage by elbowing me in the gut and pushing me to the floor. At first, I didn’t fight back in this underhanded way - and I failed to make the varsity squad in my junior year and had to play on the junior varsity team.
Then, I learned to throw elbows and push back. And I made the varsity team my senior year.
The moral: Don’t be surprised and cry foul when your opponent plays by the rules you devise.
Footnotes
1. The Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush, Chapter I
2. Truthout, Jan. 6, 2002, http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.07B.Klausutis.3.htm
3. Democratic Underground, March 25, 2002, http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/03/25_tape.html
4. Los Angeles Times, Oct. 2, 2003, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-women2oct02,1,4154043.story?coll=la-home-headlines
5. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 9, 2003, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-grope9dec09,1,2192543.story?coll=la-home-headlines
6. Buzzflash, Aug. 8, 2003, http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/08/08_recall.html
7. National Enquirer, Sept. 1, 2000, http://www.nationalenquirer.com/stories/news.cfm?instanceid=5978
8. Tennessee Independent Media Center, Dec. 22, 2003, http://www.tnimc.org/newswire/display/1131/index.php
9. The Globe and Mail, Canada, Jan. 16, 2004, http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040116.wreid0116/BNStory/Front/?query=scott+reid
10. “Is President Bush a Homo?” BettyBowers.com, Jan. 2004, http://www.bettybowers.com/isbushgay.html [NOTE: This is a satirical site.]
11. The Washington Post, May 2001, www.washingtonpost.com
12. Nando Times, 1998, http://www.nandotimes.com/
13. Baltimore City Paper, Sept. 5, 2001, http://www.citypaper.com/2001-09-05/urban.html
14. Online Journal, July 2001, http://www.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Jeb%20Bush
15. Ibid., http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dem-weekly/message/60
16. Al Martin Raw, 2001, http://www.almartinraw.com
17. Ibid., 2001, http://www.almartinraw.com
18. Democrats.com, May 2001, http://www.democrats.com
19. New York Daily News, Jan. 1, 2004, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/150848p-132934c.html
20. Columbia Journalism Review, Nov. 1992, http://archives.cjr.org/year/92/6/jennifer.asp
21. NewsMax, Feb. 12, 2001, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/2/12/55616.shtml
22. Chico Examiner, Oct. 29, 1998, http://www.chicoexaminer.com/col_KJ/col_KJ_19981029.html
23. His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Sinatra by Kitty Kelley, Eonline, Oct. 27, 1997, http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,1996,00.html
24. Salon.com, Sept. 16, 1998, http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/cov_16newsb.html
25. Ibid., Sept. 16, 1998, http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/cov_16newsb.html
26. CNN, Jan. 12, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/01/12/flynt.01/
27. The Washington Post, Feb. 10, 1998, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/barr021098.htm
28. Chico Examiner, Dec. 18, 1998, http://www.chicoexaminer.com/col_KJ/col_KJ_19981218a.html
29. CNN, Dec. 17, 1998, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/17/livingston.02/
30. PBS, Sept. 8, 1998, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec98/burton_9-8.html
31. Chico Examiner, Oct. 29, 1998, http://www.chChico Examinericoexaminer.com/col_KJ/col_KJ_19981029.html
32. Buzzflash, May 13, 2002, http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/05/13_Gingrich.html
33. Los Angeles Times, Aug. 17, 1999, http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/99_columns/081799.htm
34. The Washington Post, “Bob Dole’s Affair,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/dole.htm
35. The Black Commentator, Dec. 19, 2002, http://www.blackcommentator.com/21_re_print.html
36. “The Republican Wife-Cheating Hall of Fame,” America Held Hostile, http://www.americaheldhostile.com/cheating.html
37. National First Ladies’ Library, Lucretia Garfield biography, http://www.firstladies.org/Bibliography/LucretiaGarfield/FLBioSketch.htm; Champaign [Ill.] News-Gazette, http://www.news-gazette.com/starr-report/report/pres/pres/html/d.htm
38. Warren Harding biography, Knowledgerush, http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/jsp/db/author.jsp?authorId=1536&authorName=Warren+Harding
39. PageWise, “Warren G. Harding and Political Scandal,” http://ma.essortment.com/warrengharding_rkpr.htm
40. Warren Harding biography, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, http://www.americanpresident.org/history/warrenharding/
41. “Presidential Sex Scandals,” Who2, http://www.who2.com/hailtothesheets.html
42. Billy Graham, A Parable of American Righteousness, Marshall Frady, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., p. 169-170, http://members.fortunecity.com/omegatimes/falsechrist-persecution4.htm
43. Televangelists’ Hall of Shame, http://members.freespeech.org/boblarson/halosham.htm
44. Ishi Press, “Where was Megan Marshak when Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller Died?” http://www.ishipress.com/marshak.htm
45. New York Daily News, May 25, 2003, http://www.nydailynews.com/front/v-pfriendly/story/86672p-79053c.html
46. See http://www.americaheldhostile.com/cheating.html, http://www.geocities.com/blackntan43/REXP.html, and http://www.comedyontap.com/features/congress.html. Connie Cook Smith has also covered the excesses of Republicans, such as Katrina Leung, a California Republican fund-raiser who sold secrets to the Chinese while working as an FBI informant and reportedly had extramarital affairs with two FBI agents, on her blog at http://www.conniescomments.blogspot.com.
47. Denver ABC-TV affiliate, Aug. 9, 2001, http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/910489/detail.html
48. The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo., Jan 10, 2003, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/gazette/
49. The Political Graveyard’s Index to Politicians, http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/bellacosa-bendl.html
50. The Washington Post, April 24, 2003, http://www.loper.org/~george/archives/2003/Apr/869.html
51. “The Top Ten Conservative Idiots,” Democratic Underground, April 23, 2001, http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/01/top10_2001_15.html
52. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 3, 2003, http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/help.nsf/archives/$first?OpenDocument
53. The Middletown Press, June 14, 2003, http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8314444&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
54. Los Angeles Times, Aug. 1, 1995, http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/95_columns/080195.htm
55. The Washington Monthly, June 2003, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0306.green.html#byline