Sterility: What Did He Think, When Did He Think It
Perhaps the most puzzling element to Juanita Broaddrick's story, as related
on the editorial page of the Feb. 18 Wall Street Journal , is her claim
that after Bill Clinton allegedly raped her in 1978, "he looked down at her and
said not to worry, he was sterile--he had had mumps when he was a child." (See
"Proving
Rape," "More
Proving Rape," and "Even More
Proving Rape." ) Subsequent events (e.g., the birth of Chelsea Clinton)
suggest that if Clinton did say this, he was lying. That wouldn't do
much to prove or disprove Broaddrick's rape accusation, but it's mildly
interesting to think about in the context of what we know about Clinton's
mendacity.
It may be, however, that (assuming he really said it) Clinton really
did think in 1978 that he was sterile. In 1996 James B. Stewart, a
former writer and editor on the Wall Street Journal 's news staff,
published a book about the various Clinton scandals called Blood Sport . On pages 66, 80, and 81 of the hardcover
edition, Stewart reports that in 1978 the Clintons were "trying to conceive. It
seemed to be a subject of considerable anxiety for Hillary, who worried out
loud to a few close friends that she might find it impossible to become
pregnant because of a medical condition." Although that sentence seems to imply
it was Hillary who was presumed to have the "medical condition," Stewart
doesn't really say. If it was Bill who was thought sterile, conceivably
the couple wouldn't have wanted to admit that even to close friends, because he
was running for governor at the time in a campaign that emphasized his youth
and vigor. According to Stewart's account, the Clintons continued to fret about
their ability to have children, and the following year even considered visiting
a fertility doctor at the University of California at San Francisco. But then
Hillary learned she was pregnant--famously, while they were in London,
prompting Bill Clinton to sing, while strolling through Chelsea, Joni
Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning."
So: Maybe Bill Clinton really did think he was sterile when he
allegedly raped Juanita Broaddrick. That tells us Broaddrick had access to a
fairly intimate detail about Bill Clinton's sex life--which she might have
gotten 1) after being raped by Bill Clinton; 2) before or after having
consensual sex with Bill Clinton; or 3) while reading Blood Sport .
Chatterbox is ready to concede that there is a little more evidence
supporting Broaddrick's story than there was when the Journal editorial
page broke it. In addition to the sterility business, there are, as previously
noted here, three additional witnesses who say Broaddrick told them of the rape
back in 1978. (This was reported by NBC, which the Journal editorial
page, writing before the NBC interview aired, accused of expending too much
effort trying to check out Broaddrick's story.) There are also President
Clinton's suspiciously sullen, give-no-more-details-than-necessary denials;
apparently the president's finger-wagging days are over. (Of course, no one is
likely to believe Clinton no matter what he says.) But Chatterbox remains
pessimistic that he will ever be able to draw a truly responsible
conclusion about whether Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick. Moreover, since
Chatterbox has already concluded that Clinton, being morally unfit to
remain in office, should resign, he doesn't really know how his political world
view would change--beyond, of course, concluding that Clinton was an even
bigger creep than he thought--in the unlikely event Chatterbox could
verify Broaddrick's story. (It's too late for Broaddrick herself to take any
legal action.)
Meanwhile, Chatterbox is wondering when the news staff of the Wall Street
Journal will write about the Broaddrick controversy. Although D.C. bureau
chief Alan Murray was right not to break Juanita's story, now that it's "out
there," the news staff is in an awkward position. Clearly, the best way for the
Journal 's news staff to write about Broaddrick would be the way the
New York Times and the Washington Post have--partly sifting
evidence concerning a widely publicized accusation, and partly examining the
ethics and motives of the Journal 's editorial page for printing it in
the first place. But while the Journal 's news staff remains free to
report on Broaddrick, it is presumably not free to really report on
(i.e., question the ethics and motives of) the Journal 's editorial
page.
-- Timothy Noah
