Former California Rep. Katie Hill resigned after only 10 months on the job … and it doesn’t sound like she did it willingly. Hill admitted to having had an affair with a female campaign staffer but denied an alleged affair with her male congressional legislative director — a violation of House ethics rules. RedState and the Daily Mail posted pictures of a naked Hill apparently brushing the hair of her female love interest. Hill blamed the photo release on her husband, since they are engaged in a nasty divorce.
On her way out, Hill was honored by the media elites for giving a lectern-pounding farewell address in which she claimed she was victimized by a sexist double standard. This is downright bizarre. Anyone with some experience in Washington can cite careers ended by sex scandals — Republicans like former Sen. Larry Craig and former Reps. Mark Foley and Christopher Lee, and, most recently, former Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Hill was the pioneering female in this parade. This proves there isn’t a double standard.
The liberals pretended that because Hill is the first millennial member of Congress to be ousted over cellphone photos, her generation has met some horrifying new demise. In Time magazine, Charlotte Alter claimed in a large headline that Hill merely resigned “Because of Nudes,” skipping over the allegations of Hill having sex with two staffers. Alter changed the subject to the risk of sexual messages for everyone, citing a 2015 poll that found 82% of respondents ages 18 to 82 had “sexted” in the last year. This completely sidestepped the ethical issues of sex with subordinates.
Democrats are always the victims and never the victimizers.
The New Yorker ran an article unsubtly titled “The Terrorization of Katie Hill.” Writer Masha Gessen began by reporting that a mysterious white powder was mailed to one of Hill’s congressional offices in California and closed the article by insisting that Hill was violently attacked. “Revenge porn is an act of violence that hurts its victims in many of the same ways that sexual assault does,” he wrote. “It is also an act that finds easy accomplices, from the people who decided to publish those photographs to whoever sent the white powder to Hill’s office on Monday.”
This kind of creepiness happens to both parties. A man was convicted earlier this year for sending threatening letters filled with white powder to President Donald Trump’s sons. It’s disgusting to compare that kind of anthrax scare to a reported sex scandal.
Libertine-left interest groups also got involved. Alphonso David, head of the Human Rights Campaign, told The Hill newspaper that Katie Hill was victimized as a bisexual. “(I)t’s not unusual or it’s not a surprise to conclude that she’s being treated differently because she’s bisexual,” he argued. But was he sure? “We, of course, don’t have any data or evidence to support that,” he said. Who needs evidence? To the left, it sounds plausible.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted Hill was not forced out of office by her party and decried Hill’s “humiliation by … cyber exploitation.” Pelosi added that she has warned her children and grandchildren that “appearances” like Hill’s “can come back to haunt you if they are taken out of context.”
But the only people wrenching Hill’s reckless alleged sexual behavior with staff members out of context are liberals.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.