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Liberals learned some new poses too. Confronted with Jones, the great pseudo-populist James Carville started to sound like a Saltonstall from Beacon Hill. "You drag hundred-dollar bills through trailer parks, and there's no telling what you'll find," he sniffed. Carville trashing trailer parks! It was like Shamu making fun of Sea World. The liberal cave-in was good news for lechers everywhere. A boss paws his employee, drops his drawers, asks for some non-job-related assistance, and the feminist establishment wonders whether this really can, in fact, within the confines of the law, be called, as a technical matter, you know, sexual harassment. The question turns, apparently, on the boss's feelings about federally subsidized child care. "We've got a legal system, and it works," chirped Senator Carol Moseley-Braun when the suit was dismissed. Moseley-Braun owes her election in part to public outrage over the manhandling of Anita Hill. On that happy day when the Senator is returned to private employment, we can only hope her future boss takes note. "Ms. Moseley-Braun, could you step into my office?"
From such unexpected turns you might conclude that our political fault lines are extraordinarily subtle and complex. Or you could conclude that our pols and activists and professional ideologues are throne sniffers who care more for power than principle. With the precision of a poli-sci prof, Jones has shown us the answer.
And finally she has taught us a great deal about our nation's Feminist-in-Chief, its leading Sensitive Guy. In public Bill Clinton surrounds himself with the Donna Shalalas of the world, the Alexis Hermans and the Janet Renos, the admirable career women of the 1970s ideal. But alone in a hotel room, with a trooper as emissary, it is the Paulas of the world he wants to see, with the permed hair and the puce lipstick and the long, blood-red nails--the gals with that come-hither look. There are things we probably shouldn't know about a President, but this isn't one of them.