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Sexual indiscretions didn’t start with Bill Clinton; Elizabeth “Betty” Asche Douglas; Beaver County Times; November 2, 2016.
Mrs. Douglas is a local artist and, according to previous letters, “is a retired Geneva College professor.” Previous letters from Mrs. Douglas are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The most recent Douglas letter I reviewed was “Hitler’s rise to power being replayed with Trump.”
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“No, Bill Clinton didn’t start it all. The intrusion of sexual indiscretions into presidential politics has a notable history.
“Most notorious is that of the election of 1800 when President John Adams was challenged for the office by Vice President Thomas Jefferson. At that time, Jefferson, a widower, was deeply involved in his long-term relationship with Sally Hemings, his late wife’s half sister. It had begun when she was still in her mid-teens. He could not marry her because she was a slave, the daughter of his Virginia planter father-in-law and a slave mother. As we know, Jefferson won the election.
“In ‘Before the Scandal Broke,’ an article by historian Mark Silk in the November 2016 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, documentary evidence of the matter is spelled out. Four of the Jefferson/Hemings offspring survived into adulthood. They were freed from the slavery into which they had been born by his estate.”
[RWC] Are we supposed to equate the actions of Bill Clinton (WJC) and Hillary Clinton (HRC) with those of Thomas Jefferson more than 200 years earlier? This is the “but Bob did it” excuse. The activities are not comparable, even if you ignore the fact they took place in vastly different times.
Thomas Jefferson, years AFTER his wife’s death in 1782, allegedly had a long-term, sexual relationship with a woman (a slave) he did not marry.
In comparison, not only did WJC repeatedly cheat on his wife, HRC actually enabled her husband’s extramarital activities for more than 20 years while he was Arkansas Attorney General, Arkansas Governor, and President of the United States. HRC spent a chunk of her time as FLOTUS dealing with her husband’s “bimbo eruptions,” blaming them on a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” The “vast right-wing conspiracy” theory fell apart when we learned of the blue dress.
Mr. Clinton’s middle name may be Jefferson, but he’s no Thomas Jefferson.
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