Thread by @DrewHolden360

Last night, former President Bill Clinton, who has been credibly accused of rape & has been connected to Jeffrey Epstein’s global child sex trafficking ring, gave a speech at the DNC.

The left & the media bent over backwards to avoid the elephant in the room.

🧵thread🧵

Starting off the linguistic dodges is @CNN (@StCollinson and @husca) who said that “the young guns” might see him as a bit of “an embarrassing uncle.”

I don’t believe any of my uncles were placed by an eye witness at Epstein’s pedophile island, for what it’s worth.

@nytimes struck a similar note, saying his “influence has faded” but pointing the blame first to Clinton’s age before mentioning “the baggage he carries.”

Credible accusations of rape and sexual assault should be disqualifying, not just a reason to limit his speaking time.

The euphemisms get even better with @NYMag and @ed_kilgore who, I kid you not, distilled Clinton’s decades of sexual impropriety down to something that causes him to be “identified with bad male behavior.”

My jaw hit the floor.

@AP/@apwillweissert calls the appearance of a man tied to a global cabal of child rapists “tricky” and allows the passive voice to do the heavy lifting for why the #MeToo movement is “complicating” for Clinton.

@CNBC and @christinawilkie mention Clinton’s “tarnishing legacy in the ‘Me Too’ era” but leave their readers to connect the dots on just why his legacy may be tarnished.

But don’t let that take away from how great his speech was!

Current and former electeds got in on the act too. Here’s former governor @JenGranholm wondering aloud on @CNN how far back the social statue of limitations is for rape and if we can just stop talking about it already. (h/t @Julio_Rosas11)

And @SenDuckworth can’t seem to figure out that you can have a big tent party that doesn’t tolerate rapists.

@politico/@harrispolitico wrote a fawning piece about Clinton without bothering to interrogate why Democrat’s may have “demanded that he yield to the imperative of compression.”

Maybe the rape and sexual harassment allegations cut down his time?

@voxdotcom /@ella_nilsen even seems to nod to this fact, then sidestepped the allegations and concerns altogether and instead said it was more important to focus on what Clinton “was actually saying.”

Interesting that this is a lower standard than they held comics to.

@washingtonpost goes back to painting the Clintons and #MeToo as moral equals, as if Bill and #MeToo are two competing ideological positions battling for the soul of the party.

Which, in a way, is a pretty spot on metaphor for the Dems at the moment.

@USATODAY chalks up the response to Clinton’s behavior as “troughs of disfavor” instead of a whole bunch of people concerned with his history of sexual impropriety.

@ABC entirely side steps the concerns and allegations in their reporting, because apparently #MeToo is no longer newsworthy.

Quite a change in perspective from the outlet with an entire section devoted to the cause.

This story didn’t make the list.

@MSNBC with their eyes on the ball as always.

@NPR said that it was “good for the Democratic Party” that Clinton, whose record we are “reassessing” couldn’t be booed because the conference was virtual.

I listened to the podcast so you didn’t have to. The print story makes no mention of why anyone might be booing him.

@NBCNews just entirely ignored the allegations against Clinton as well, instead running a veritable DCCC press release about the speech.

And @TheWeek went full-blown conspiracy on this one, saying that maybe Clinton gave a short speech because he’s “taking great precautions during the coronavirus pandemic” and not because it’s a bad look to have a sexual predator in the spotlight.

The idea that Clinton shouldn’t be in the spotlight isn’t new. @michelleinbklyn made this point well in 2017. nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opi…

Bill is still getting one of the most coveted opportunities to speak for @TheDemocrats three years later.

It’s impossible to square the Democrats’ and the media’s purported commitment to addressing #MeToo with the linguistic tricks & hagiographies of Bill Clinton. It makes a mockery of them, and kicks the victims (of Bill and beyond) to the curb as a no-longer-useful political tool.

And it’s shameful. What it really is is shameful. Reporters are meant to grapple with harsh realities in clear terms, to help tell difficult truths. Afflict the comfortable and all that.

The reporting on Bill Clinton continues to fail in doing so.

Also, this should go without saying, but the accountability for the media shouldn’t be some 28 year old dude with an unverified twitter account & screenshots.

They should be pilloried for these decisions. The reason it’s so infuriating is because they keep getting away with it.