Ethics Observations On The Eric Schneiderman Scandal

I probably shouldn’t say this, but the guy always looked a little scary to me….I sure would never get in bed with him.

The New Yorker revealed yesterday that four women who had relationships with Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, accused him of violent abuse. In response, he  issued the kind of explanation that is usually as damaging as the allegations it responds to : Schneiderman, 63, denied abusing the women, and said, “In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”

Ah! As long as it’s not rape, he’s OK with it then.

This did not help. Demands that Schneiderman resign flooded the internet and airwaves, including one from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. By the end of the day, Schneiderman, who had been a champion of both the #MeToo movement and the anti-Trump “resistance,” had resigned. His statement:

“In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me. While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time. I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018.”

The irony and hypocrisy are strong with this one. In 2010, as a state senator, he introduced a bill to make intentional choking to the point of unconsciousness a violent felony. Coincidentally, one of his accusers quoted in the New Yorker revealed

“It just came out of nowhere. My ear was ringing. I lost my balance and fell backward onto the bed. I sprang up, but at this point there was very little room between the bed and him. I got up to try to shove him back, or take a swing, and he pushed me back down. He then used his body weight to hold me down, and he began to choke me. The choking was very hard. It was really bad. I kicked. In every fiber, I felt I was being beaten by a man.”

 The state chapter of the National Organization for Women, Bill Clinton’s fan club, endorsed Schneiderman in his successful bid for attorney general, citing his “unmatched work” in “protecting women who are victims of domestic abuse.” Once elected, his office published a “Know Your Rights”  brochure for victims of domestic violence…you know, when you get beat up by the man you are sleeping with.  Schneiderman had rushed to the front of the #MeToo movement, filing a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein’s company and seeking to re-open a prosecution against the harraser/abuser/rapist mogul.

“We have never seen anything as despicable as what we’ve seen right here,” Schneiderman said of Weinstein’s conduct.

Weeeell, that may depend on one’s point of view. For example, one of the ex-AG’s bed-mates told The New Yorker, “We could rarely have sex without him beating me….He started calling me his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was ‘his property.’”

Nice.

54 thoughts on “Ethics Observations On The Eric Schneiderman Scandal

  1. What is it with all these Jewish guys and kinky sex? I don’t get it. Really surprising. What ever happened to the “nice Jewish boy” stereotype?

      • I read that on the sly (“borrowed” from my parents) when I was in grade school. I similarly read Shelley Berman’s First Book of Cleans and Dirtys.

        But Dad and Mom were “prudes.” So I had to sneak out into the briars behind the bowling alley with the other bowling-parents’ orphaned sons on Friday twilights, to pass around the stash of Playboys and similar mags.

        • It’s been a while since I’ve read Portnoy, or any other Roth, or Saul Bellow. But I don’t recall any of those guys jacking off in front of horrified women or choking women or assaulting women in their offices? Weren’t most of Portnoy’s sex acts solo and in private? These guys are menaces.

          • The Cleans and Dirtys book was very funny. Portnoy’s, on the other hand (ahem!)…all I could think as I read was, “I am just never going to think like this person – and I hope I get locked-up if I ever get caught acting like him.” But, yeah, today’s bad actors make Portnoy seem like a nice boy.

            • I may not even have read “Portnoy.” Pretty sure I did read “Goodbye Columbus.” And watched the movie. Can still hear the OSU Bball record playing in the background. That and the two uncles at the wedding reception pacing off the square yardage of the carpet installation. Funny movie. Just didn’t seem as creepy and truly menacing as the current day guys, Weinstein, Louis C.K., Schneiderman, Lauer, et al. Kind of a shock.

  2. “This is another reason why I am absolutely certain Democrats have to nominate a woman in 2020,…”

    I’m going to sound like I am echoing the professor Jack referred to:
    Come on!

    Black woman vs. white man. Billionaire vs. billionaire. Celebrity vs. celebrity. Long history of having a fawning, adoring public, vs. long history of making enemies, making big money in a rough business (real estate), running roughshod over people, pussy-grabbing, and famous for saying what no non-self-employable person ever wants to hear: “You’re FIRED!” Someone well able to conduct herself in public with grace and dignity while speaking in a manner that shows inner strength plus outer assertiveness plus empathy plus “tough grace,” even “tough love,” even if occasionally a tad mystical, quasi-religious, and odd…vs…word-cloud rambler and carnival barker with a knack for delivering personal insults, with a Twitter-use obsession…

    Is there any reason for the Democrat Party NOT to nominate Oprah Winfrey for President in 2020??

          • So her pregnancy, and her intended outcome of it, are known. It isn’t typical to be known, but, I am sure, it’s entirely typical of many, many Democrat women, including many already previously elected. (There’s another potential “MeToo” blitz to galvanize the “choice” side.) It seems unlikely that knowledge that Oprah lost a pregnancy, whether she wanted to lose it or not, would sway very many, if any, votes against her.

            What other Democrat women would have a better chance than Oprah of defeating the incumbent president, especially this one? Michelle Obama? Okay then, I still stick to my prediction that the 2020 Democrat top ticket will be two females and two blacks; it’s just a question of which will be the nominee for POTUS and which will be the VP running mate.

            • Oprah is on record with some veeery racist statements, that would be used to remind melanin deficient Trump voters what the left really thinks of them, in addition to some

              How racism will be conquered:
              “Old white people have to die…”

              Americans are racist no matter what:
              “People don’t feel it’s race because people don’t call it race. … A lot of people think if they think they’re not using the n-word themselves, they physically aren’t using the n-word themselves, and do not harbor ill will towards black people that it’s not racist. But to me, it’s ridiculous to look at that case and not to think that race was involved.”

              Obama was treated badly because of racism:
              “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs, in some cases—and maybe even many cases—because he’s African-American…”

              LOTS of baggage here

              • “Old white people have to die…”

                That’s not a direct quote. This is what she said:

                “As long as people can be judged by the color of their skin, the problem is not solved. There is a whole generation — I said this for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own community in the south — there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in that prejudice and racism and they just have to die.”

                The other two are pretty milquetoast.

                  • You think those same statements made by a Republican would be damning? Perhaps among certain other Republicans…Democrats wouldn’t have a problem with them, and would point to them as rare examples of a Republican getting it right on race. Or do you mean if a Republican made those statements about white people? They wouldn’t make sense applied to white people. I’ve never heard anyone say that Trump is disrespected because he’s white.

                    Oprah’s comments weren’t “racist” at all. They were condemnations of racism.

    • The cognitive dissonance would be overpowering. Democrats have spent the last two years telling the world that celebrities should not be trusted with higher office. Actually running a celebrity of their own would, I think, keep a whole lot of Democratic butts on their couches voting day.

    • She has a long history of promoting, and fawning over, various con artists and frauds.

      Not that Trump DOESN’T, but I’m guessing that Oprah cares too much about her personal brand to open herself up to the kind of scrutiny that a presidential candidate suffers.

      • Isaac, yours is probably as likely a reason as any to explain why Oprah will not run. I dunno, though…billionaires are not like us. They can decide to do things that the rest of us would never anticipate. Power has its own seductiveness, and wealth can fail to satisfy a billionaire’s desire to step into work that makes a less narrow impact on the public and the public’s future than mere money-making. That, combined with the known wiles of the Democrat Party, are my reasons why I cannot count Oprah out until late in the 2020 primaries.

        • Today there are a lot of articles about how much money Disney lost on “A Wrinkle in Time,” which played a lot on Oprah having a major role. For a media star, that’s a blow. Oprah has good reason to believe that getting outside her area of natural dominance isn’t wise.

          She is also almost certainly gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But she hasn’t be open about it. Remember Kevin Spacey…

          • Black, Female, AND Gay??? That is a TRIFECTA! (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Since when did a money-losing venture like a movie stop, or even inhibit, a billionaire? Didn’t TRUMP’s casino file for bankruptcy? There is plenty of time to media-up Oprah to make her the second coming of…well, pick one…FDR (ghosted by Eleanor).

  3. The answer to the last question is probably “Yes, it is unreasonable because battered woman syndrome”. You can’t tell if the woman is coming back over and over again because she likes it or because women are afraid to walk away from an abusive relationship.

    • Considering that some of Weinstein’s accusers were in possible danger from the actual DAs (the ones meant to be in their side) it is not hard to imagine a woman being rightly afraid of doing anything to enrage a powerful cog in the Democrat political machinery. That’s what appears to have kept Juanita Broderick quiet for years. It’s not paranoia when these people can literally ruin your life.

  4. I just want to hearken back to Late November, when I posted the following comment on this blog post:

    Humble Talent
    November 30, 2017 at 9:39 am
    I think…. I have a new respect for the liberal position on rape culture. It’s still generally a load of bollocks, but there was always a small part of me that asked: “Hey Jeff, you know you don’t live in a rape culture, you know these things don’t happen in the places you’ve worked, who do these assholes think they’re trying to fool? Are they lying so loud and so often they hope people will eventually forget they’re full of shit, or do they actually believe this?

    Well….. I think the answer has come in, and it’s: “They believe this. And with good reason! Where I knew that I didn’t exist in a rape culture, because not only did I not condone, encourage or tolerate rape, they knew that they did.” A smug, partisan, bear-poking part of me would say that the liberal preoccupation with rape culture was projection, but I don’t think I really believed it, I thought I was shaming an idea so stupid it could not possibly be true.

    Weinstein could have been an outlier, shitty people are out there, and the king’s pass was strong with him…. But as the bodies continue to pile up, I’m forced to relook at the paradigm with which I examined rape culture, and I’m disgusted. I now know they were telling the truth, as opposed to lying, I just have no conception under God why it’s been allowed to fester this long.

    I’m officially willing to call it: Anyone preaching from the rooftops a holier than thou ideal based on a preoccupation with a phenomenon that drastically diverges from the average experience of the average person, without any qualifying life experiences, should probably be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. The idea that these problems are endemic, despite the relative infrequency of occurrence, comes from somewhere, and we’ve seen enough evidence this last year that it is projection.

    • Isn’t this Shakespeare’s “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” principle?

      Or in the colloquialized version: “Methinks [so-and-so] doth protest too much”.

  5. Ack. Well, consensual sex is just that — consensual. Some people like to get beaten — a la 50 Shades of Grey.

    But, if these women signed up for vanilla sex and then got beaten or choked, then that is assault. If they came back again, that makes them damaged — similar to women who stay with their abusive husbands.

    Even if this was truly consensual though, the optics are so horrible that he needs to go if the Dems want to retain credibility on these issues.

    Plus, now HRC can be the NY AG. Win-win!

      • I suspect Sparty was being sarcastic, and connecting “HRC” voters to “damaged, abused” persons who “come back.”

      • It was a joke obviously. I don’t think she is barred in NY in any event. And even if she did become AG, she would be horribly conflicted in bringing an action against Trump, but it still is funny to think about. I’m sure the idea passed through her mind today to waive into the bar. I “think” it’s just a $300 fee and some paperwork.

        • And even if she did become AG, she would be horribly conflicted in bringing an action against Trump…

          I don’t think she would be conflicted AT ALL, given her past. HRC’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. She has gotten away with far worse than an ethical violation.

          And that was NOT a pro Trump statement, either. He has is own ethical issues… heck, he IS a walking ethical issue. (just not a criminal one)

          • Conflicted as a matter of law. Most lawyers would recuse themselves, but if HRC did not, any remotely competent lawyer would demand that she not be involved in the investigation or litigation. And a Judge would agree. Of course, we are discussing Trump here, and so far his attorneys appear to come from the bottom of the barrel ….

            • Spartan,

              Please forgive my lack of faith that the system that gave us a faked dossier that led to wiretapping of a political campaign, fixed felony charges for the same person who paid for the dossier, and is rife with so called ‘lawyers’ who abuse and ignore the law in the name of politics will follow what should happen with regard to that same candidate in any such scenario.

  6. It seems that researchers from Cornell and the U. of Michigan have evidence that climate change skeptics are more responsible environmentally than the most fervent believers in the notion:

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494418301488#!

    The lesson, I think, is not so much that leftists are…whatever negative you want to assign to them. Rather, the lesson should be that when you attach virtue to someone simply because they endorse a certain public position, every mess and monster within earshot will immediately and loudly assert their agreement with that position.

    • ”The latest on #metoo.”

      I wonder if self-anointed Feminist Jill Filipovic (NYT) was one of the ones running interference for Roman “It wasn’t a rape rape” Polanski.

      Why? On Schneiderman:

      “It hurts the most when it’s one of the ‘good’ ones.”

      No clarification on what constitutes “one of the good ones.”

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