Just as every new generation thinks it discovered sex, refusing to wonder how they came kicking and screaming into the world, apparently the new thing is for every generation to think it discovered sexual harassment.
Historical note for my younger readers: George Washington didn't grab women's breasts or force them to watch him masturbate.
There have been tectonic shifts in Americans' attitudes about sex, but the idea of thanking someone by sending him a prostitute with a note in her vagina is of relatively recent vintage. (Hat tip: Hollywood's Robert Evans!) (For Larry David fans, Evans' birth name was Robert Shapera.)
These are the major epochs in American sexual history:
Sen. Teddy Kennedy let a girl drown at Chappaquiddick, after driving with his lights off to avoid detection on the way to a late-night extramarital liaison, and then didn't report the accident for hours, passing houses with their lights on, while he tried to construct an alibi, ending with him asking his cousin to say he was driving.
The New York Times' James Reston's first sentence on Kennedy's killing and cover-up was: "Tragedy has again struck the Kennedy family." Within 11 years Kennedy was running for president to gushing press notices.
1991-the near-present: Sexual degradation of women is still taken utterly unseriously by the left, as sexual harassment is used exclusively as a political weapon against enemies of the state: conservatives, white men, athletes and Haven Monahan, the rakish UVA frat boy who didn't exist, but was still made infamous by Rolling Stone magazine.
The proof comes from two major events from the 1990s: The false sexual harassment charges against Judge Clarence Thomas in 1991 and the true sexual assault charges against President Bill Clinton in 1998.
The whole country knew Anita Hill was not telling the truth when she claimed Thomas had sexually harassed her at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Perry Mason-style, her charges were produced decades after the alleged dirty talk, but right before the U.S. Senate voted on Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court.
Hill didn't want to go public with her story (for good reason). But she was assured by feminists that she just had to whisper vague allegations to the Senate Judiciary Committee and Thomas would quietly withdraw.
Even the accusations are hard to take seriously in the Age of Weinstein. Hill said Thomas talked about pornography and bragged about his sexual prowess. No touching, no propositioning, no quid pro quo, no grabbing a woman's breasts and taking a photo.
The media did all they could to support Hill, featuring her defenders on all the Sunday shows, but—and this was the key—Americans saw the hearings.
Poll after poll showed that the public believed Thomas by staggering margins. Not one person who knew both Hill and Thomas believed Hill. Even wacko feminists and eunuch "feminist" males didn't really believe Hill. As mentioned, they just wanted to block Thomas' nomination in order to save "choice."
In the end, 11 Democrats voted to confirm his nomination.
Feminists lost the battle, but won the war by bothering all of us with their sexual harassment training sessions for the next few decades. Men just don't get it! Women don't lie! Believe the women! (Some women were NOT to be believed: The ones telling pollsters they believed Thomas over Hill, 2 to 1.)
After years of this sex panic, with men being sued for telling their secretaries "you look great in that," feminists finally got themselves a genuine sexual predator with President Bill Clinton.
Feminists defended the predator.
Next week: Sex in America During the Clinton Era.
COPYRIGHT 2017 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
Ann Coulter is the legal correspondent for Human Events and is the author of TWELVE New York Times bestsellers—collect them here.
Her book, ¡Adios America! The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hell Hole, was released on June 1, 2015. Her latest book is IN TRUMP WE TRUST: E Pluribus Awesome
Thousands and thousands of headlines like these appeared in newspapers across the country—back in 1991. Spare us the self-righteousness, millennials.
