Always Blaming the Woman

I don’t know about you, but I have just about had it with people who are always blaming women. You have a male who cheats on his wife, who cheats on her often and with many women.  And we are told that his mother made him do it.

Told by whom? By his loyal and dutiful wife, that's by whom. Admittedly, it’s nicer than to say that she married a model of moral dereliction, or worse, that, being married to her made him do it.

Naturally, she will say that he is really a sex addict. He can’t control himself. Poor guy! How did he get this way? His wife will explain, with a straight face that his mother abused him so badly when he was a child that he was cursed to have a voracious appetite for sex.

Imagine how painful that must be.

Aside from the fact that sex addiction is most likely a spurious diagnostic category, the notion that a man might not be responsible for his behavior because Mommy made him do it is insulting and demeaning. It absolves him of responsibility for his serial adultery.

Of course, if the sex addict is a black man and he has been having too much sex with too many blonds you must attack him in public and then send him to rehab. Do not pass Go, do not collect… any more blonds.

Think Tiger Woods.

If the sex addict in question is Bill Clinton, he does not go to rehab. He is lionized. His wife steps forth to defend him and to denounce anyone who would think ill of her poor suffering husband.

If he is accused of having sexually assaulted a woman, the woman is lying. If he is accused of having sexually harassed a woman, the woman is lying. They are all trailer-park trash anyway. How can you believe a word they are saying?

Besides, it was all his mother’s fault. When he was a child Bill Clinton was horrifically abused by his mother. He was caught between his mother and his grandmother. Imagine the horror!

The Daily News reports:

 "He was abused. When a mother does what she does, it affects you forever," Hillary said, according to the new book.

She did not specify the nature of the abuse but said it was the source of her husband’s infidelities. "I am not going into it, but I'll say that when this happens in children, it scars you," she said, according to Franks’ account. "You keep looking in all the wrong places for the parent who abused you."

In the original 1999 Talk piece, Hillary Clinton's description of her husband's tough childhood spoke more hazily about an abusive atmosphere — focusing more on Kelley's problems with her mother Edith Cassidy, who cared for Bill when he was small.

"He was so young, barely 4, when he was scarred by abuse and he can't even take it out and look at it," Hillary was quoted as saying in Talk's debut issue.

As a credentialed expert in child development Hillary Clinton is happy to report that children never get over abuse. One might ask what message this sends to children who have been molested. Do we really want them to believe that they are ruined for life?

Besides, for a martyred victim, Bill Clinton did not do so badly for himself. If the worst thing that ever happens to you is that you are respected as a successful president and have gotten away with God knows what… this is not quite the same thing as lifelong institutionalization.

Then again, perhaps we are being too hasty to dismiss Hillary’s psychobabble. For all we know Bill Clinton’s childhood abuse might explain why he made the one life decision that most people do not understand: he married Hillary Rodham.