It is a measure of how far Bill Clinton has dragged the US down that so much of the media remained paralysed for months over the Juanita Broaddrick story.
Ms. Broaddrick says that Clinton raped her, an allegation of an altogether different order from any with which Clinton has previously been confronted. And yet the Washington Post hesitated for three months before publishing the first interview in which she went on record with the claim. The interview, conducted in November, finally appeared on February 20th.
60 Minutes, the NBC network s flagship current affairs programme, delayed six weeks before transmitting an interview with Ms. Broaddrick on February 24th.
It is possible that neither piece would have seen the light of day even yet if Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal had not set out to investigate the rumour, widespread in media circles, that a sensational story about the president was being suppressed.
Following the trail to Arkansas, Rabinowitz asked Ms. Broaddrick whether it was true that she had given an interview to NBC which had not been broadcast. Ms. Broaddrick not only confirmed that this was true but went on, apparently unprompted, to repeat what she d told the 60 Minutes team. The Journal ran the story at length on February 19th. The Post and NBC followed.
Even then, and despite the extraordinary and shocking nature of the allegation, many journalistic outlets continued to hesitate. During the fortnight after the story broke in the US, Eamon Dunphy s Last Word on Today FM was the only Irish broadcasting slot to acknowledge that the president of the US had been publicly branded a rapist.
In Britain, neither ITN nor BBC News carried the story. It was also ignored by newspapers which present themselves as exemplars of liberalism and defenders of the public s right to know. The Observer, for example, didn t mention the story, even in passing, in its edition of February 28th.
At the time of writing, no Irish or British tabloid has put the story on its front page.
The explanation offered around for this strange silence has to do with scandal fatigue , as if public weariness with the Lewinsky affair is a sufficient reason for turning a deaf ear to a woman s claim of rape.
In 1978, Ms. Broaddrick ran a nursing home in Arkansas, as she still does. Bill Clinton was the State s Attorney General and running for governor. She says that when she was asked by his office to meet him at a Little Rock hotel, she assumed it was to discuss care policy or to seek her support for some aspect of his campaign. Clinton suggested they have coffee in her bedroom, away from the hubbub of the lobby and lounge.
She says he grabbed her roughly, bit her lip hard while forcing kisses on her, threw her on the bed, ripped her panyhose open and forcibly entered her. She says that during this time she was struggling, weeping and pleading No. No .
She says that he called her a bitch and told her to lie still as he raped her, and that he paused at the door as he left and advised her to put ice on her lips, which were bleeding.
Those of us who have long regarded Clinton as a lout and a scoundrel will be minded to accept Ms. Broaddrick s account. Those who have so far shut their ears to the truth about Clinton will refuse to hear what she is saying.
What cannot be gainsaid and this is an additional difficulty for journalists trying to cover the story is that Clinton has so coarsened public life and comprehensively trashed the truth that it is virtually impossible to assess the story objectively.
If Clinton looked America in the eye and denied that he had ever had sex with that women, Juanita Broaddrick, who could be confident he was telling the truth? As the Washington Post put it in a self-exculpatory editorial on March 3rd: Mr. Clinton s word in this realm by now has no value.
In a matter of rape, according to a newspaper which for years has been supportive of Clinton above and beyond the call of journalistic duty, his word has no value: as accurate an indication as we have so far had of the moral standing of Bill Clinton and of the Clinton presidency.
Irish politicians who cluster around Clinton demean themselves and, more importantly, those who look to them for leadership. n