Does politics tinge sex assault accused response?
Global Times
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Illustration: Liu Rui (Photo: Global Times)
Last week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman became the latest public casualty of the "MeToo" movement. He resigned abruptly after the New Yorker magazine published a story in which four women who have had intimate relationships with him accused the senior legal official of assault. These were not necessarily sexual assaults but more like what one may do in a sadism and masochism relationship, except that the women said they did not agree to his behavior. It was not consensual.
It came as a shock to the public as well as those familiar with the 63-year-old public official. In a 16-year career in the political arena, starting as a state senator and taking over as the state Attorney General in 2011, Schneiderman had managed to maintain a nearly spotless image. He was known as a smart and ambitious prosecutor who never hesitated punching bullies, be they unscrupulous lawyers siphoning money from helpless immigrants or the current president sitting in the White House. He was also, ironically, a women's rights advocate who sponsored a law that makes strangulation, which often takes place in abusive relationships, a crime in the state.
But what's shocking is the speed with which Schneiderman pulled himself out of the public eye. He resigned within three hours of the New Yorker uploading the story online, although denying the allegations. When he quit, a probe hadn't even started.
The MeToo movement by now has claimed many prominent figures in varied fields from entertainment to journalism to politics. As intriguing as the incidents themselves are the ways the accused predators react to public disgrace. If you look carefully, they seem predictable in keeping with the political leanings of the men: Liberals tend to apologize or withdraw from the battle much more quickly than conservatives.
For example, Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie guru who donated heavily to Democrats was fired from the cinema company he co-founded three days after The New York Times published a story in which women accused him of sexual harassment, and worse. But it took 15 days for Roger Ailes, former Fox News chairman to resign after former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him and several other women followed with their stories of torment emanating from his ugly behavior.
CBS sacked long-time talk show host Charlie Rose a day after the Washington Post published accounts of several women accusing him of sexual misconduct. And it took 19 days for Fox News to show its host Bill O'Reilly the door after The New York Times revealed he and the network had paid five women to stop them from coming out with harassment claims against him. Among the five US Senators and Representatives accused of sexual harassment or misconduct, two Democrats resigned quite quickly, and only one of the three Republicans quit immediately. The other two refused to go although one of them was voted out and the other decided not to seek re-election this year.      
This of course doesn't mean liberals are morally superior to conservatives and are more likely to inflict self-punishment when things go wrong. Those who apologized or quit did so as a result of mounting public pressure.
But it may as well be true that the public are more intolerant of questionable utterances and behavior of liberals than conservatives. This applies even to presidents. Former president Barack Obama had to apologize after calling California Attorney General Kamala Harris "the best-looking attorney general," while president Donald Trump hasn't apologized for anything he said or did to women despite the many publicly documented vulgar comments and a series of allegations of sexual harassment.
But I have no sympathy for liberals. Those who make equality, justice and the suffering of the poor and the disadvantaged as their talking points deserve to be put under tighter scrutiny.
More rapid response of liberals doesn't make them any better. The liberals are losing the battle to the conservatives. And their biggest problem is not the conservatives but hypocrites like Schneiderman who act diametrically opposite to what they say.
When this happens, good causes are reduced to rubble, you lose people's trust quickly, and the damage takes a long time to repair if it ever does.