The good news is that the media is finally interested in sexual abuse allegations by a president from the 90s. The bad news is it's President George H.W. Bush who is 93 and in a wheelchair.
You can't get the media to report on Bill Clinton's accusers. But it's lavishing a great deal of attention on allegations that President George H.W. Bush groped or touched an actress last year. For the record, here's the reply from his office.
“At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures. To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely.”
I have no idea whether the allegations are true. But they're being made about a 93-year-old man who has been confined to a wheelchair due to Vascular Parkinsonism.
Vascular Parkinsonism is caused by a series of small strokes in the basal ganglia area of the brain and can lead to slow movements, tremors, difficulty walking, and stiffness.
I don't know what Bush's mental condition is these days, but video from the hurricane aid concert doesn't appear to show him speaking. Nor does it suggest he's doing so well.
And I say this as someone who has no love for Bush I.
Yet the media is trying to build a sex scandal out of the actions of a wheelchair bound 93-year-old man who has suffered stroke damage and who couldn't seem to do anything at the concert except shake hands. But continues to ignore the accusations of sexual abuse and assault against Bill Clinton.
#MeToo has very carefully bypassed the Clintons. Little notice has been paid to Monica Lewinsky's #MeToo tweet. Or James Carville's. “If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”
We all live with media bias. We're all aware of it. But we should never stop talking about it. Or challenging the hypocrisy of our betters who gave Bill Clinton a pass, but are now charging up their outrage machine for George H.W. Bush.