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Ignoring Lessons of #metoo,
Media Scrutinize
Biden’s Accusers
view post on FAIR.org
by Naomi LaChance
Lucy Flores’ essay in The Cut (3/29/19) reopened a conversation about Joe Biden’s interactions with women.
As women come forward to accuse former Vice President Joe Biden
of inappropriate touching, some media
have responded by scrutinizing their political
motives.
Former Nevada Assemblymember Lucy
Flores described in an essay for New York magazine’s
The Cut (3/29/19)
how in 2014 Biden put his hands on her
shoulders, smelled her hair and slowly
kissed the back of her head. Since Flores
spoke out, six other women have come forward to
say that Biden touched them in ways that made
them feel uncomfortable.
Shortly after Flores explained to CNN’s Jake
Tapper (3/31/19) that Biden made her feel
“shocked” and “powerless,” Tapper questioned
her politics. He asked Flores to explain her
political motivations, mentioning that she
supported Bernie Sanders for president in
2016, and recently attended a Beto O’Rourke
rally.
“I would say politics was definitely the impetus,”
Flores answered. “The reason why we’re having
these conversations about Vice President Joe
Biden is because he’s considering running for
president.”
“Did you have any conversations about what
happened with any presidential campaign
before you wrote that piece for The Cut?”
Tapper followed up.
“No,” she answered.
Biden’s creepy behavior has been written
about for years, but apparently video evidence,
combined with his poor record on abortion and
his 1991 interrogation of Clarence Thomas
accuser Anita Hill, is not enough information
for pundits to determine whether Biden could
in fact have some issues with accepting women
as actual people with bodily autonomy.
On ABC’s The View (4/1/19), Whoopi Goldberg
said that she doubted Flores for not immediately
saying something to Biden, dismissing the idea
that the power dynamic between a vice president
and a state lawmaker could discourage someone
from speaking up:
It would have been nice if she would
have turned to him and said,
“You know what, J, I don’t really
like this.”… Something, cause he’s
standing right there.
Goldberg engaged in classic victim-blaming logic:
“If someone makes you uncomfortable,
tell them.” She added: “Don’t sit and wait and
say ‘I’m uncomfortable’ on national television,
because it makes us suspect of your thoughts.”
Jonathan Capehart, an opinion writer at the
Washington Post (4/2/19) who wrote that
Biden had touched him and it was OK, cast
doubt on Flores on MSNBC’s AM Joy (3/31/19).
Capehart said that he “was wondering,
you know, people were talking about Vice
President Biden going for the Democratic
nomination in 2016, so why not come out then?”
There is a very simple answer to Capehart’s
disingenuous question, which is that the
last time Biden was considering running for
president, the #metoo movement had not
started yet. This context does not diminish
what Flores is saying; rather, it makes her
point stronger, because it’s clear that this
more nuanced conversation would not be
happening without all the other people who
have already come forward to demand
accountability from politicians, celebrities
and CEOs for the way their actions have
caused harm.
Lucy Flores to Jake Tapper on CNN (3/31/19): “This really is about women feeling like we have agency.”
Flores told Tapper:
Frankly, on a much larger scale, we also need
to have a conversation about powerful men
feeling that they have the right to invade a
woman’s space whenever they’d like.
This really is about women feeling like
we have agency.
Analysts have been clear to point out that
no one has accused Biden of sexual
harassment, but what’s missing is an
understanding of the way that inappropriate
behavior toward women can impact women’s
political advancement or even exclude them
from a career.
Like Flores, the woman who came forward
to say that Biden touched her inappropriately
when she worked in his Senate office in
1993 (Nevada County Union, 4/3/19) has
experienced media scrutiny for her political
opinions. Alexandra Tara Reade explained
that when she spoke up to Senate personnel
about her concerns, Biden retaliated.
She was unable to get another job on
the Hill, changing the trajectory of
her career.
“My life was hell,” she said.
Edward-Isaac Dovere, a staff writer at The Atlantic,
tweeted that Reade had previously
written about her love of Russia and, given this,
questioned whether her account of the
blacklisting was accurate. The implication
of Dovere’s line of thinking is that certain
people are only entitled to personal space
or careers if they have the correct opinion
on Vladimir Putin:
latest woman to accuse Biden of touching her inappropriately – https://t.co/GY8BNSsOtI – wrote in December: “I love Russia with all
my heart … President Putin scares the power elite in America because he is a compassionate, caring, visionary leader.” https://t.co/gzbhSRps43
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) April 4, 2019
Some of those given space in corporate
media to defend Biden have taken it upon themselves to do so on their children’s
behalf. The Washington Post (3/31/19)
asked Sen. Chris Coons (D.-Delaware) to
speak for his daughter Maggie about a 2015 incident in which Biden
was filmed kissing
the then-13-year-old’s forehead and
whispering in her ear.
“She did not think of it as anything,” Coons said.
“All three of my kids have known
Joe their whole lives.”
Although it seems journalistically
irresponsible—not to mention paternalistic—
to assume that Coons would accurately
represent his daughter’s opinion,
it’s clear from the video, where Maggie
grimaces and moves away from Biden,
that she isn’t having a good time.
Eve Gerber (Atlantic, 4/4/19) lamented that “avuncular attention” is “now interpreted as at best pernicious paternalism and at worst septuagenarian sexual harassment.”
A main defense of Biden is that there have been occasions where he did not cross a line, as if that invalidates the times when he did. Eve Gerber, whose husband, economist Jason Furman, was a top Obama administration appointee, wrote an essay for The Atlantic (4/4/19) to say that, actually, Biden is an “unusually good” man. Alongside photos of her young son and daughter with Biden, Gerber argued that he was “touchy-feely with everyone,” and her kids loved it.
At Vox, Matt Yglesias (4/2/19) asked
whether the real problem is “millennial snowflakes,”out-of-control political correctness, and a zealous neo-Puritanism that can’t even take a joke or see an affectionate gesture for what it is.
Calling Biden “old-school,” Yglesias builds on the false idea that Biden’s line-crossing has some kind of legitimacy as a vestige of an earlier time. The common narrative that the #metoo movement is generational is inaccurate. It erases older feminists like Biden accuser D.J. Hill, while also suggesting that some people should be allowed to behave inappropriately because of their age.
Defenses for Biden don’t necessarily follow a logical path. In addition to questioning the motives of the accusers and victim blaming, media analysts have invented reasons to excuse his behavior. At CNN (4/3/19), historian Douglas Brinkley brought up Biden’s cancer advocacy work.
“He’s been doing a cancer moonshot, and he’s talking to people that are afflicted with cancer a lot, and he grabs them a lot,” he said.
None of the accusers met Biden under these circumstances. And if they did? Cancer patients have boundaries, too.
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