This week, I basically read the same story from multiple sources:
Katie Hill Resignation Exposes Sexual-Misconduct Double Standards- The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast (Again.)
Poor Katie Hill was just a young woman in California wanting to have a little fun and the sexist American Patriarchy brought her down (according to the above outlets.) Instead of dwelling on the morality of Katie's youthful exuberance, let's re-frame her argument. And let's use my hometown of Brunswick, Ohio as our sandbox.
Katie Hill in our new scenario is a teacher at Brunswick High School. Her husband is on the support staff, he's a janitor. Ohio Katie and her husband decided to have a sexual escapade with one of the college-aged Teaching Assistants at the High School. Probably, within a few weeks or so, I bet you some of the other teachers started to suspect that Hill was participating in a different sort of extracurricular activity (but kept it to themselves).
Despite being a popular and well-respected teacher, some cad leaked naked pictures of Katie to the Facebook Page Brunswick Ohio Hometown News. Not only random naked pictures, but pictures of a beloved teacher using illicit drugs.
You know how fast Ohio Katie is going to get fired from her teaching position? In about 3 seconds.
Forget about the threesome, Ohio Katie would be gone before the rest of the salacious story ebbed out. There would be no Left-Wing backlash. Katie would just slink out of town and teach somewhere else desperate for teachers. It may or may not be fair, but Ohio Katie would land on her feet, just not in Brunswick.
California Katie, though, had earned the job of a lifetime: A Congressperson. Politicians in America aren't about playing by the same rules as you and I though. Now you could argue that Katie Hill shouldn't have resigned from her awesome job, technically her behaviors were her own private behaviors, and I'd listen to that argument, but this is where things get complicated.
Why does a Congressperson think that they can do something a local teacher couldn't get away with? Those on the other team, the Republicans, welcomed Hill's departure (despite the fact that some themselves have done worse in their private time.) Those on Hill's team, the Democrats, were livid. Everyone was to blame except for Katie Hill. Revenge porn, Republicans, her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Boomers, the "mistress" and, of course, the Patriarchy.
Now if you're a Democrat in America, you're screaming that our President did worse. He absolutely did. But using the Brunswick example, let's reframe the argument using Trump and the Ukraine. Brunswick Mayor Donald Trump illegally solicited the advice from the mayor of Kiev, Ukraine on how to defeat the mayoral challenge from the Democratic side of the aisle. Multiple Brunswick City Charters were broken. Someone then posts a link to Brunswick Ohio Hometown News PROVING that Mayor Donald Trump was guilty.....
The people of Brunswick would be yawning. Half the people of Brunswick don't even know where the Ukraine is and even more are unfamiliar with the term of quid pro quo. You know what every voter in Brunswick has an opinion on? Sex Scandals. Whether they want to admit it or not, all voters are at least familiar with the concept of sex.
Which returns us to California Katie Hill. The photos that brought down her time in Congress are real, not photoshopped, so the Katie Hill team should have been taking a little more responsibility than they are, but I understand the spin. How so? Katie Hill is young, it's not too late for her to parlay this situation into a job in the media. Not on The Blaze or Fox News, but for someone on her team, like CNN or MSNBC. She can talk about the real world consequences of nasty divorces or as the victim of right-wing conspiracies.
Do I think Katie Hill should have resigned? Hard to say. If she ran a campaign that she wanted to return morals back to Washington D.C., then yes, she should have resigned. But again, being a Democrat, from California, I find it hard to believe that's the platform she ran on. If her platform was simply Democrat Talking Points, yeah she still should have resigned.
Why? Because what she should have done is went up to the podium and said "my private life is private. I'm a good Congressperson and what I do in my own time is none of your beeswax." What she should have done is owned her behavior and then quoted the Bible.
John 8:7 - So when they continued asking her, she lifted herself up, and said unto them, those that are without sin amongst you, let them be the first to cast a stone.
Editor's Note: Yes, we paraphrased the Bible.
But that's not what happened. If she owned it, I would have supported her staying in office. She did not own it and the media certainly didn't own it. The media condemned un-like minded outlets for publishing the photos. Again, certain corporate entities choosing what is and is not news.
Before you go, there's yet one more angle I'd like to briefly point out. Do you think that if Donald Trump's Senior Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway had done the SAME EXACT THING as Katie Hill, would all of the articles at the top of this story been written? Would CNN take the high road and defend Conway?
No. Which proves those outlets are just out there protecting their team.
If the CNN's of the world are saying that it's unfair that Katie Hill can't buy her way out of problems like Rich Men are able to do, aren't they missing the point? (In theory no one should be able to buy their way out of problems, right?)
One of the underreported aspects of the Katie Hill story is the tattoo. The teeny tiny photo above is the teeny tiny tattoo very close to Katie Hill's very private area. The Daily Mail claims the tattoo is of the Nazi's Iron Cross. I don't buy it.
To me it looks like a 4 Leaf Clover. You know, like you're about to get lucky if you get to see it.
Very lucky to see the tattoo....