Who better to opine about the need to “fire” Bill O’Reilly from his Fox News show? According to the liberals at the Washington Post, it’s the partisan Anita Hill, the woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment and excused Bill Clinton’s actions. Hill wrote an op-ed on Friday with this headline: “It’s Not Enough for O’Reilly to be Fired.”
After deriding the “cold blooded” Fox News, the Brandeis professor lobbied, “Firing O’Reilly, who has denied any wrongdoing, would be a start, but it would also represent an individual solution to what clearly seems a cultural problem at the network.”
She attacked, “An environment such as that at Fox News, where hierarchy and extreme loyalty are seemingly valued over compliance with the laws banning sexual harassment, makes it difficult for targets of harassment to come forward.”
Hill’s outrage at sexual misconduct is rather selective. On September 28, 1998, she came to the defense of Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Hill wrote another op-ed, this time for the New York Times:
The substance of sex-related accusations against President Clinton differs dramatically from those raised against Justice Thomas or Mr. Packwood. According to their testimony, Mr. Clinton and Ms. Lewinsky viewed their relationship as consensual. While their immoral and undignified behavior no doubt had a negative effect on others in the office and in the Clinton household, it was not coerced, unwanted or illegal.
In the case of Mr. Packwood and Mr. Thomas, the accusations involved sexual harassment. To equate those allegations with an office affair is to trivialize issues of sexual predation that women face in the workplace and on the street.
Hill went on to decry the “moral fundamentalism” of those who would demand she hold Clinton accountable:
Nor are the situations morally equivalent. The possible violation of a woman's civil rights is not the same as the emotional pain and loss of trust that result from extramarital affairs. Equating the two promotes a form of moral fundamentalism that devalues women and the issues they face and offers only a formulaic approach to addressing them.
The Media Research Center’s Tim Graham wrote in 2014 about the Times op-ed, explaining: “She comically pretended not to know that Lewinsky came up in a sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones. It was in that sexual harassment case that Clinton lied under oath about having sex with Lewinsky.”
To recap Hill’s contention: Accusations against conservatives and Republicans warrant swift actions. Accusations against liberal Democrat Bill Clinton are no big deal. It’s no wonder why the Post turned to her for an op-ed on O’Reilly.
