I notice a tiny, almost infinitesimal, difference in the treatment of women who accuse Republican presidents of sexual misconduct compared to women who accuse Democrats.
See if you can spot the difference. Stormy Daniels is the stripper and porn star who tried to extort Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2016, threatening to tell the tabloids they'd had sex, a claim he denies. Whether Trump's description of his extortion payment to Daniels as a "legal expense" constituted a criminal violation of the federal campaign finance laws is a central element of New York's prosecution of Trump.
The truth of Daniels' supposed sex romp with Trump is utterly irrelevant to the criminal charge, but it's humiliating to Trump, so the prosecutors put her on the stand for hours, and the media covered her testimony like it was the 9/11 attack.
Most grippingly, Daniels testified that she became unglued upon seeing Trump in his underwear, an unlikely story from a woman who'd had sex on camera with fully naked men in literally hundreds of porn films. She said she blacked out during the sex and, afterward, her hands were "shaking so hard" she could barely put on her shoes.
Obviously, Trump attorney Susan Necheles questioned Daniels' credibility on this point. She raised Daniels' extensive experience with seeing naked men and then having sex with them, to suggest that maybe it wasn't that much of a bombshell to see a guy in his underwear.
The media promptly exploded in indignation on behalf of the hothouse flower Daniels, howling about "slut-shaming." (In this case, the "slut-shaming" consisted of asking the witness, "What do you do for a living?")
On CNN, Nia-Malika Henderson said Trump "is essentially trying to slut-shame." Jim Acosta agreed, saying, "... there's some slut-shaming." USA Today published an entire article on the "slut-shaming," replete with "experts" mocking our society's tendency to "stigmatize" porn stars, and expressing confusion about why it was considered "taboo" to have sex on camera for strangers. Other experts lamented that "women face particularly heavy scrutiny when it comes to sex, sexuality and porn."
By contrast, male porn stars are the height of respectability. The New York Times was especially adulatory toward Daniels, which was passing strange. At the very least, the Louisiana-born, non-college-educated Daniels is not the sort of hard-charging feminist that would normally send the Times into a swoon.But our brave heroine was extolled in Times in articles with titles like "Stormy Daniels Will Not Be Shamed." Among her other feats, it seems, "Daniels has largely been unflappable in the face of combative questioning. But that did not stop the defense from pursuing what is perhaps the oldest trope in the book: harping on her sexual history."
Yes, questioning a porn star's alleged trauma at the sight of a man in his underwear is JUST LIKE asking a rape victim about her dating history or the length of her skirt.
The article continued, "Daniels, for her part, was unapologetic: She is a woman who proudly makes pornography for a living and doesn't believe it hurts her credibility one bit."
She's truly a role model for little girls.
Here are some more admiring headlines about the porn star from the newspaper of record:
Stormy Daniels Fights Back, Stormy Daniels Delivers Intense Testimony,
Stormy Daniels Stood Up Well to the Taunts of Trump's Lawye, Lawyer Calls Daniels Transactional. She Replies: 'Not Unlike Mr. Trump' It is impossible to imagine such stout defenses being put up for any of the legion of women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct -- all truthfully, as we now know from the mountains of evidence, including his own (eventual) admission, as well as his DNA.
After Gennifer Flowers went public about her affair with Clinton, James Carville said of her, "If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find."
No headline: "Gennifer Flowers Stood Up Well to the Taunts of Clinton Aide"
Gov. Ann Richards of Texas couldn't stop demeaning Flowers, cackling about her stupidity, saying she didn't know how to spell, and sneering that her only claim to fame was that she'd had a 12-year affair with a married man. (Which kind of sounds like that double standard noted by USA Today's experts.) No headline: "Gennifer Flowers Will Not Be Shamed"
When Paula Jones held a press conference to accuse Clinton of groping her and asking her to perform oral sex on him, The Washington Post's Lloyd Grove ridiculed the event as "yet another ascension of Mount Bimbo." How about, "Paula Jones Delivers Intense Press Conference"? Clinton's lawyer, Bob Bennett, called Jones' claim "tabloid trash."
But no headline, "Lawyer Calls Jones Suit 'Tabloid Trash.' She Replies: 'Not Unlike Mr. Clinton"
The Times' Anthony Lewis said Jones' lawsuit against Clinton "was a worthless suit, reeking of politics. Most Americans thought just that." How about a headline, "Paula Jones Fights Back"? Like Flowers, Jones was the butt of late-night jokes. E.g., David Letterman: "Paula Jones is now upset because she is being audited by the IRS, and she claims the only reason that she is being audited is because of this lawsuit she has against the president. I don't know, you figure it out ... Anytime you write off $20,000 for hair spray, you're going to get audited."
Granted, Jones was just a low-level Arkansas state employee and Flowers a singer and model. Neither possessed the gravitas of a porn star. But I can't help thinking the media would've been more supportive of the ladies if they'd been accusing a Republican.
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