Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. John McCain. And the late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.
And oh yes, the current Ruling Class outrage over Donald Trump.
Let’s start with First Lady Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama took to the campaign trail to say this of the allegations swirling around Donald Trump. The First Lady, as reported by CBS, said this about Trump, bold print for emphasis supplied by me:
“Too many are treating this as just another day’s headline. As if our outrage is overblown or unwarranted,” Obama said, her voice trembling with emotion as she alluded to the recent flood of sexual harassment accusations against the GOP nominee. “As if this is normal. Just politics as usual.”
The first lady reiterated to the crowd in the battleground state of New Hampshire, where she was campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: “Be clear. This is not normal.”
“This is not politics as usual,” she continued. “This is disgraceful. This is intolerable. It doesn’t matter what party you belong to. Democrat. Republican. Independent. No woman deserves to be treated this way.”
“I can’t stop thinking about this,” she said of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape recording, where Trump boasted about being about to “grab [women] by the p****” because “you can do anything” when you’re a star. “It has shaken me to my core in a way I could not have predicted.”
“I know this is a campaign, but this isn’t about politics,” she added. “It’s about basic human decency.”
“If all of this is painful to us as grown women, what do you think this is doing to our children,” she asked. “What messages are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act?” And, she went on, “How do you think this is affecting men and boys in this country? Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this. To dismiss this as ‘everyday locker room talk’ is an insult to decent men everywhere.”
Apparently — somehow, someway — Mrs. Obama has forgotten this piece of news from 2008 as reported by the New York Times: The headline:
Kennedy to Endorse Obama
The Times reported the story this way, again, bold print supplied:
“MACON, Ga. — Senator Edward M. Kennedy intends to endorse the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama during a rally on Monday in Washington.
The Kennedy endorsement has been underway for days, even before the outcome of the South Carolina primary. Mr. Kennedy told his decision to Mr. Obama on Thursday.
“I’ve had ongoing conversations with Ted since I’ve got into this race,” Mr. Obama told reporters today as he flew to Alabama.
Of all the endorsements in the Democratic Party, Mr. Kennedy’s is viewed as the most weighty. He had vowed to stay out of the presidential nominating fight, but as the contest expands into a state-by-state fight — and given the tone of the race in the last week — associates said he was moved to announce his support for Mr. Obama.
The endorsement will be announced at a rally at American University on Monday, hours before the State of the Union Address at the Capitol.”
What has Mrs. Obama smartly ignored? What clearly made no difference to Senator Obama as he had “ongoing conversations with Ted since I’ve got into this race”? This.
A lengthy 1990 story (it prints out at 38 pages) that appeared in GQ magazine about Ted Kennedy, with mention of Kennedy’s Senate colleague and fellow Democrat Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. The story was reported by Michael Kelly, who would gain future fame as a tenacious New York Times reporter and tragically lose his life while covering the Iraq War. Kelly sets the scene. It is December, 1985. The restaurant where this occurred was located on the Senate side of Capital Hill. The waitress mentioned in the story is Carla Gaviglio. Here is an excerpt from Kelly’s reporting, bold print supplied by me:
Carla Gaviglio, declined to be quoted in this article, but says the following account, a similar version of which first appeared in Penthouse last year, is full and accurate:
It is after midnight and Kennedy and Dodd are just finishing up a long dinner in a private room on the first floor of the restaurant’s annex. They are drunk. Their dates, two very young blondes, leave the table to go to the bathroom. (The dates are drunk too. “They’d always get their girls very, very drunk,” says a former Brasserie waitress.) Betty Loh, who served the foursome, also leaves the room. Raymond Campet, the co-owner of La Brasserie, tells Gaviglio the senators want to see her.
As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following a friendly argument between the senators over the check.
Eyewitness Betty Loh told me that Kennedy had “three or four” cocktails in his first half hour at the restaurant and wine with dinner. When she walked into the room after Gaviglio had gone in, she says, “what I saw was Senator Kennedy on top of Carla, who was on top of Senator Dodd’s lap, and the tablecloth was sort of slid off the table ‘cause the table was knocked over—not completely, but just on Senator Dodd’s lap a little bit, and of course the glasses and the candlesticks were totally spilled and everything. And right when I walked in, Senator Kelly jumped off…and he leaped up, composed himself and got up. And Carla jumped up and ran out of the room.”
Got this? According to Michael Kelly, at his death a famous and much credentialed New York Times reporter, two United States Senators — Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd — brutally sexually assaulted waitress Carla Gaviglio who finally “jumped up and ran out of the room.” And in 2008, there is Senator Barack Obama proudly — say again proudly — boasting that he has received Kennedy’s endorsement. Note well this brazen statement by Mrs. Obama as quoted above:
“Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this.”
This is not true. The truth is that Ted Kennedy played a considerably important part in the success of Michelle Obama’s life — endorsing her husband for president at a key moment of the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign. This being the very same Ted Kennedy who was alleged to have physically and sexually attacked a waitress — a waitress for heaven sake — at a Washington restaurant.
Then there is Hillary Clinton, who served in the United States Senate with Ted Kennedy. Said Hillary at Kennedy’s death:
“When I was First Lady, we worked together to provide health insurance for America’s children. When I arrived in the Senate, he was a generous mentor and a thoughtful colleague. We worked together to raise the minimum wage, improve education, and champion the cause we shared so deeply: ensuring that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care…I will always treasure the memory of his friendship.”
And let’s not forget John McCain, he — who begged Donald Trump for his endorsement in his hotly contested recent Senate primary and has now withdrawn his own Trump endorsement because of the Billy Bush tape that has Trump talking sex — heaping accolades on Kennedy as a speaker at Kennedy’s memorial service. Among other things, McCain said this:
“He was good company, my friend, Ted. He had the Irish talent for storytelling and for friendship.”
At the time, John McCain was a Senate colleague of both men, Kennedy and Dodd. By 2001, the newly sworn-in Senator from New York Hillary Clinton was a colleague of both men. By 2005, Barack Obama was a colleague of both men.
But now? Of a sudden both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are now professing fury and indignation at Donald Trump’s alleged treatment of women. So too is Michelle Obama. But when it came to their buddy and Senate colleagues Ted Kennedy — and Chris Dodd — not a one of these people could possibly have cared less about the vivid allegation that two of Obama’s, Clinton’s and McCain’s colleagues had brutally sexually assaulted a waitress. They made no effort to have the Senate censure Kennedy and Dodd, as the Senate famously did Joe McCarthy, for bringing the Senate “into dishonor and disrepute.”
Coverage of this massive double standard in the media about Obama, Clinton, and McCain’s ignoring Ted Kennedy’s sexual assault in that Washington restaurant? Zero.
In Florida this week Donald Trump said this:
There is nothing the political establishment will not do — no lie that they won’t tell, to hold their prestige and power at your expense. And that’s what’s been happening.
The Washington establishment and the financial and media corporations that fund it exist for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself.
Nothing could better illustrate Trump’s point than Barack Obama’s eagerly seeking the endorsement of a well-publicized sexual predator, with Hillary Clinton and John McCain painting a picture of their friend Ted Kennedy as just one heck of a guy.
You want to know why the American people hate the political-media Establishment? Look no further than this tale of elites giving a pass to Ted Kennedy — his sexual assault that night in a Washington restaurant be damned.
There are three words for this: Ruling Class Hypocrisy.
Worse? Not a one of them has any shame.
