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Trumping decency

Image by Michael Vadon

Image by Michael Vadon

Well, this is a first – the F-word, the S-word, the T-word and the P-word in political coverage. It all comes courtesy of the latest Donald Trump revelations – that in a hot-mike conversation with Billy Bush in 2005, Trump admitted to groping women. 

I have to admit that I’m inured to his shenanigans by now. There are so many of them that I’ve grown a thick skin. What disturbs me here is not Trump, a lost cause, or the predictable blaming of Bill and Hillary Clinton as philanderer and enabler but the idea that this is just boys-will-be-boys banter.

Really? Why? Why is misogyny acceptable male bonding? Why is it par for the course to joke about sexually assaulting women? Yet when you read about Bengazi and how Hillary Clinton “murdered” those diplomats – even though the CIA and not the State Department sets security at American embassies – among the things you read is that one of the male diplomats was raped.

Men seem to have a great deal of sensitivity for men being raped; women being raped, not so much.

Sexual assault is no laughing matter, whoever the victim. And I would agree with the psychologist I recently had lumch with, who said we mustn’t descend to Trump’s level.

But come Election Night I predict Trump won’t ever have to worry about sex again.

He’ll be able to consider himself royally screwed.