May 11, 2007
Gary Hart V Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 06:30 PM EST Two observations about John Steele Gordon’s last post. First, regarding the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Mr. Gordon writes that because they did not call for Bill Clinton’s head, ”prominent members of the feminist movement show[ed] no little hypocrisy themselves, or at least political selectivity. But then I’ve long argued that the National Organization for Women might a good deal more accurately be called the National Organization for Upper-Middle-Class Liberal Women.” At first, I thought Mr. Gordon was arguing that prominent second-wave feminists should have made the case that the President’s conduct constituted a form of sexual harassment and as such violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and subsequent amendments, and the 1963 Equal Pay Act. As early as 1975, when a group of women at Cornell University accused a male professor of “sexual harassment” (they are widely credited with having first invoked the term), and when feminist legal scholars like Nadine Taub and Catherine MacKinnon began arguing that sexual harassment diminished women’s economic independence and thus constituted a violation of employment law, feminists have argued for stricter regulations governing sexual overtures and conduct in the workplace. In 1980 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission responded to these calls and issued its first guidelines, instructing employers how to remain within the limits of the law. Generally speaking, the EEOC’s “Guidelines on Discrimination” defined unwelcome sexual and romantic overtures as a violation of a woman’s civil rights. At the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, some conservative pundits took aim at prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem and Catherine MacKinnon, who had been outspoken in their denunciation of Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood but who did not view Clinton’s conduct as falling under the rubric of sexual harassment. I suppose there’s some argument to be made here, inasmuch as Clinton was a man of great authority, and however much she may have consented to the affair, Lewinsky could never be considered a free and equal partner. (This is partly why military personnel are not permitted to become romantically involved with persons under their command, broadly defined. A staff sergeant simply cannot enjoy a level of romantic autonomy equal to that of a major.) That said, the rules governing military and civilian establishments are different, and there’s a glaring difference between what Bill Clinton did and what Bob Packwood and Clarence Thomas did (or, in the case of the latter, were accused of doing). It’s one thing to enter into an affair with a subordinate; it’s quite another thing to chase employees around desks, grope them, or place erotica on their desks. Though I’m inclined to agree with Steinem and MacKinnon on this matter, I assumed that Mr. Gordon’s argument with second-wave feminists had something to do with their alleged non-concern for working women (in this case, Monica Lewinsky). Why else quip that NOW should be renamed the “National Organization for Upper-Middle-Class Liberal Women”? This strikes me as an unfair and historically inaccurate barb. NOW was a creature of the state and federal Commissions on the Status of Women. These investigative bodies, which John Kennedy created by executive order in 1961, studied lingering inequalities in employment, wages, and education and sparked consideration of 432 bills at the congressional level, and countless others at the state and local levels, to redress these problems. Many if not most of the women who staffed the commissions were labor feminists and thus, by definition, working-class. Frustrated by the refusal of the EEOC to enforce the gender provisions of Title VII, in 1966 prominent representatives of the state and federal commissions founded NOW, an organization that focused primarily on wage, income, education, and credit inequality well into the late 1970s. As a historian, I am more interested in what NOW was doing in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but I have no reason to believe its agenda is any less concerned today with issues faced by working women, than it was 30 years ago. At second glance, however, I’m not sure that this was Mr. Gordon’s beef with second-wave feminists. Later in his post, he argued that Clinton’s affair, unlike most instances of sexual misconduct on the part of public officials, was “legitimate news” because “Bill Clinton was President of the United States, entrusted by the people with the country’s highest office, and as such had a profound obligation to behave himself in a manner that did credit to the country. Having a tawdry affair with a White House intern less than half his age in the White House itself was an outrageous violation of that duty and very much a matter of public concern. He disgraced himself and therefore, ex officio, disgraced the country.” Maybe so, but earlier in his post Mr. Gordon wrote that the media and the public should stay out of the private lives of politicians “unless that private business is illegal or evidence of gross hypocrisy or other disqualification for office.” Nothing that Clinton did was illegal; and the term “disqualification for high office” is a loose one. It would seem to cut against the very argument that Mr. Gordon made earlier in his post. More to the point, exactly why does Mr. Gordon believe that prominent feminists were both hypocritical and class-biased in their response to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? He never says exactly why this was so, and I’m genuinely eager for some clarification. My second point refers to Mr. Gordon’s belief that “the zone of privacy should extend not only to their sex lives, but to such things as their income taxes. I see no reason whatever why candidates and officeholders should make their private financial affairs public unless there is credible evidence of something nefarious going on.” I can only assume that Mr. Gordon also disagrees with the requirement that congressmen release a yearly accounting of their financial holdings and transactions. The reason for these customs and regulations is that we can’t really know if something “nefarious” is going on unless we have access to some form of disclosure. Whether congressmen are accepting gifts from interested parties, buying houses at below-market rates and selling them at above-market rates (e.g., Randy Cunningham), investing in companies that their committees regulate and oversee, or improperly hiding income (which may have been improperly gained) is impossible to determine without some form of disclosure. I believe that’s the rationale for this level of scrutiny.
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