Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Editorial / Opinion / Op-ed / Clinton's behavior vs. Schwarzenegger's: "Susan Faludi, the author of 'Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,' penned a remarkable column for the Los Angeles Times contrasting Schwarzenegger's sins to Clinton's. Clinton, she wrote, 'may have been the aggressor, but as a seducer he really meant to seduce, thus exposing an almost feminine sort of desire and vulnerability. For this, he was humiliated, held up ... for ridicule in male eyes.'
Not so Schwarzenegger, wrote Faludi: He went after women 'frat-boy style, for the score,' with no 'courtship,' intending not to seduce but to abuse and humiliate. According to her, 'women's anger about rape and harassment is exacerbated by the knowledge that their attackers are after power, not sex' - which was supposedly why more women backed Clinton and more men backed Schwarzenegger.
Never mind that alleged 'courtship,' Clinton-style, included exposing himself and soliciting oral sex (according to Paula Jones), and groping a woman and placing her hand on his genitals (according to Kathleen Willey). Juanita Broaddrick also accused him of rape.
One feminist activist at the anti-Schwarzenegger rally, film producer Patricia Foulkrod, was disarmingly frank in explaining the double standard: 'The difference is that Clinton was so brilliant. If Arnold was a brilliant pol and had this thing about inappropriate behavior, we'd figure a way of getting around it. I think it's to our detriment to go on too much about the groping. But it's our way in. This is really about the GOP trying to take California in 2004 and our trying to stop it.'
Of course, the double standards weren't all on one side. Many"