Right, I guess to be more accurate, generally you need some sort of charm or charisma to paper over the fact that you’re an arrogant, repulsive freak. Bill Clinton is the obvious example here. What distinguishes the New York breed is their lack of charisma and their absolutely unvarnished, unconcealed contempt for voters. Trump is a sort of hybrid of the two where he definitely is a New York guy with contempt for his voters but has enough of the showman about him to convince his fans that he only has contempt for the other side.
Sorry everybody, I didn’t mean to derail the thing. I was just trying to get an answer from jman since he bumped a comment I made a while back to highlight a specific point. Had I known it would lead to a bunch of the kind of comments I got in response I would have simply left it alone. Been a bit enlightening, at least.
Since I’m here, here’s an article with accounts of Reade telling people about it at the time, that also addresses the number of specious arguments people have made to “debunk” her.
Also, Chris’ use of “believe women” in his post here is vile, as is his use of “victim narrative” to describe an actual victim. And worse, I think he knows it. (Let’s see if he believes the woman who wrote the article I posted.)
I’m profoundly disappointed how many people are happily buying into the “if you’re not a perfect victim it didn’t happen” story. But I’m learning a lot about some of you, I guess.
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Thanks for the link. I’ll have a look at it.
Can you quote the vile part in the @ChrisV post? I don’t see the words “believe women” in the post you linked.
He means this:
My point here is that thank God it is a woman, because otherwise her contradiction of Reade’s account would instantly be judged inadmissible. I know this because that’s exactly what happens in the article RC just linked, as the author doesn’t yet know that a woman is about to come out with a piece where she contradicts Reade’s account:
He’s got a point: I mean, can you imagine that a man spoke to a woman and made her feel dismissed and uncomfortable? Can you believe that a woman then held back because she was worried she wouldn’t be believed, when women in her particular situation are rarely believed?? Has ANY man EVER spoken to a woman this way??? Has it maybe happened literally every other goddamn day in the life of every woman in the entire goddamn United States of America???
If anyone hasn’t clicked through, yes, the entire article is written in this astonishingly childish “sassy” tone. The McGann Vox piece postdates this article by three days, so I’m not sure if the omissions in it are because it’s a biased piece or because the information wasn’t out yet. A few examples briefly:
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The piece claims that “…when Reade first went public she told the press only that she was harassed, not that she was harassed AND assaulted” but that’s not what happened. Reade explicitly said that she was NOT assaulted.
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Similarly, the same friend who later corroborated Reade’s assault story originally said this to McGann:
“On the scale of other things we heard, and I feel ashamed, but it wasn’t that bad. [Biden] never tried to kiss her directly. He never went for one of those touches. It was one of those, ‘sorry you took it that way.’ I know that is very hard to explain,” the friend told me.
That’s a volunteered denial that assault took place, not the same as not mentioning it.
- Her brother did, eventually, claim that “there was a moment he had her up against the wall and made a hand move under her clothes” but he gave an entire interview to WaPo where he merely said that he remembered his sister being upset about “Biden touching her neck and shoulders”. The claim about a hand under her clothes came in a followup text message days later. Slipped his mind in the interview, I guess?
Re-reading the Vox article I noticed something that I’d glossed over earlier. Here’s what Reade originally told McGann:
Reade told me that she wanted me to think of this story as being about abuse of power, “but not sexual misconduct.” Her emphasis was on how she was treated in Biden’s office by Senate aides, who she said retaliated against her for complaining about how Biden touched her in meetings. “I don’t know if [Biden] knew why I left,” she said. “He barely knew us by name.”
She sent me an email that evening with an essay she’d written. Her local paper in California, the Union, published a similar version a few weeks later with a line she’d sent to me, too: “This is not a story about sexual misconduct; it is a story about abuse of power. It is a story about when a member of Congress allows staff to threaten or belittle or bully on their behalf unchecked to maintain power rather than modify the behavior.”
Later in the piece:
In a recent conversation, I asked Reade why she would say the media was shutting her down when she was initially so adamant with me (and other outlets) that this wasn’t a misconduct story. The only answer she gave was that she was speaking about the response to her claims “collectively.” And in her opinion, the added details still fit her construct that “this is not a story about sexual misconduct,” because, she told me, sexual assault itself is about power.
To Reade, though, none of this is that complicated.
“My story never changed. I just didn’t come forward with all the details. It’s really simple,” she said to me. “I held back this story because I was afraid of a powerful man.”
Not only is she claiming that it’s the media’s fault that her story didn’t include the assault allegation the first time, she refuses to even acknowledge any inconsistency with her previous story!
If you can’t see a Mt Everest composed entirely of red flags here, I don’t know what to say.
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OK, that was long. Just so I’m clear, based on your article the two people that she told contemporaneously are her brother and her neighbor. Is that right?
The vox article refers to her mother and a friend, but I didn’t see those mentioned in your article. I guess I could have missed it.
Anyone over 20 is suspect.
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That guy was rightfully diagnosed as terminally stupid and unfit for office.
It’s all in section 1 of the article. The two people are her mother and the friend. Her mother is deceased and there’s no direct evidence that Reade did tell her she was assaulted. The brother claims that their mother told him about it, but he only started making this claim after already having been interviewed by WaPo. As detailed in my post above, the anonymous friend explicitly volunteered to Linda McGann - that is, she wasn’t asked about it, she just came out with the information - that no serious assault had taken place, back in 2019. Her story changed when Reade’s did. That’s it for who she told contemporaneously.
I’m inclined to believe Reade.
That said, it’s pretty funny to see RC and Victoar wrap themselves in the virtue of #believewomen as if their desire to believe Reade has anything at all to do with her or the movement and not their pathological hatred of Biden. This isn’t some difficult to crack code. They both spread qanon conspiracy theories about Biden’s health in the exact same #believewomen posts.
It’s a disservice to #metoo to use it only when it supports your preexisting political narrative.
Dang, wish I had maxed out my Predictit gamble for Cuomo not in office on Dec 31.
I think I got in for 42 cents last week.
Could you imagine Republicans holding their own accountable like this?
We really do live in two different realities.
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Well, part of the difference in accountability is that liberals think sexual misconduct is a bad thing, but conservatives think it’s the divine right of the rich and powerful, so engaging in it is a sign of authority and power.
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The world has changed a lot in 25 years.
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Cuomo doing a phone conference and he’s not resigning
https://twitter.com/mattbinder/status/1370437275109187591?s=21
https://twitter.com/mattbinder/status/1370437544123510791?s=21