3 of the Biggest Misogynists to Reach the Oval Office Before Donald Trump Got There – AlterNet

Photo Credit: Marc Nozell / Flickr Creative Commons

Perhaps something useful can be accomplished as a consequence of the transparently repulsive Trump: rousing Americans to reconsider honoring US presidents with Presidents Day, and replacing it with a holiday that recognizes a more respectable group of people.

Trumps misogyny has long inflamed Democrats, but now even Republicans, including Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham, haveexpressed repulsionover his bleeding badly from a face-lift insult of Mika Brzezinski. For both Republicans and Democrats, recent history tells us that drone bombings of117 civilian noncombatants,whistle-blower persecutions, andbanker stay-out-of-jail-free cardsare not politically incorrect offenses. But a transparent misogynistnow thats a politically incorrect offender.

So, one way to eliminate Presidents Day would be for Americans to discover that Trump is not even the worst misogynist or worst sexual predator president ever. Below are some US presidents misogyny and sexual predatory practice lowlights. Spoiler alert: Except in the arena of transparency and bragging, Trump cannot out-scum Grover Cleveland or Thomas Jefferson, or maybe even Ronald Reagan.

Grover Cleveland: Honoring Presidents Day in 2015, theBoston Globetold us how Americans once elected a president with great integrity: Not since George Washington had a candidate for president been so renowned for his rectitude. Grover the good, his supporters dubbed him. The standard account of Cleveland is the following: The 22ndand the 24thpresident, the only one to serve two non-consecutive terms, who as mayor of Buffalo, governor of New York, and president was a crusader against corruption. Some accounts include that Cleveland was alleged to have fathered an illegitimate child and was taunted in the 1884 presidential campaign with, Ma, Ma, wheres my Pa, but that Cleveland honorably handled this matter, was victorious, and his supporters had the last laugh, retorting, Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!

But was he really Grover the Good or Grover the Gross?

For several months in 1873, Cleveland courted Maria Halpin, an attractive 38-year-old sales clerk; then Cleveland date-raped her. Journalist Charles Lachman, author ofA Secret Life(2011),discoveredan affidavit from Maria Halpin about her sexual assault by Cleveland by use of force and violence and without my consent, she stated. When Halpin threatened to notify the authorities, she said Cleveland told her he was determined to ruin me if it cost him $10,000. Impregnated by Clevelands rape, Halpin gave birth in 1874 to a baby boy in a hospital for unwed mothers in Buffalo; and then Cleveland arranged to have the child forcibly removed from Halpin and placed in the Buffalo Orphan Asylum. Halpin was thrown into the Providence Lunatic Asylum but released after it became clear that her incarceration was the result of an abuse of power by political elites.

Cleveland won the Democratic nomination for president in 1884, and the media exposed the existence of Clevelands illegitimate son. In response to that, Grover Clevelands team conducted a malicious smear campaign against Halpin: falsely claiming that she drank to excess and was sexually active with at least three (and possibly four) married men; and that Cleveland honorably took responsibility for the childs conception because he was the only bachelor among Halpins sexual partners. The truth was that Halpin was the opposite of promiscuousa widow with two young children, and a church-going woman held in high esteem by all who knew her.

The salient difference between Cleveland and Trump is their private-public congruence. Trump has beenaccusedof sexually assaulting twelve women. However, unlike Cleveland, Trump has publicly braggedmost notably inseveral interviews with Howard Sternabout his predatory behaviors, for example, going backstage at beauty pageants to ogle naked contestants changing clothes. And Trump is tweet-transparent in his misogyny.

Thomas Jefferson:The standard account is Founding Father and author of the Declaration of Independence, and so venerable as to be one of four presidents on Mount Rushmore as well as having a memorial for him in Washington D.C. While many of his contemporaries saw him as the supreme hypocrite, it is only recently that popular culturefor example, Lin-Manuel Mirandas musical,Hamiltonhas caught up with Jeffersons hypocrisy and ignobility.

Henry Wienceks 2012Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slavesis one of many books that document how Jefferson was a hypocrite in many regards: espousing freedom while holding slaves; advocating revolutionary militancy while exhibiting chicken-hawk cowardice; and promoting frugality while amassing huge debt with an extravagant lifestyle. More than simply hypocritical, the case has increasingly been made that Jefferson was a sexual predator, or asFeministeproclaimed,Thomas Jefferson: The Face of a Rapist.

For generations, Jefferson apologists disputed the claim of the descendants of Jeffersons slave Sally Hemings that Jefferson had fathered children with her.Genetic testing has helped change most historians minds, and today even the official Thomas Jefferson/Monticello site reports (inThomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account) the following: Based on documentary, scientific, statistical,and oral history evidence, theThomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) Research Committee Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings(January 2000) remains the most comprehensive analysis of this historical topic.. . TJF and most historians believe that. . . Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings.It is now accepted by most historians that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings, likely beginning when she was 14 or 15 years old.

InThomas Jefferson: Americas Founding Sociopath, investigative reporter Robert Parry notes:

Recent historical examinations of records at Jeffersons Monticello plantation have providedsupport for contemporaneous accounts of Jefferson having sexual relations with at least one other slave girl beside Hemings and possibly more. . . .The historical record increasingly makes Jefferson out to be a serial rapist, exploiting at least one and possibly more girls who were trapped on his property, who indeed were his property, and thus had little choice but to tolerate his sexual advances.

The Monster of Monticello was the title of a 2012New York Timesreview of Wienceks book, and monster does not seem hyperbolic, considering the following. Jefferson wrote, A child raised every 2 years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man, and according to Wiencek, The enslaved people were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest. While Jefferson ultimately freed the children he had with Sally Hemings (in what is believed to have been a deal he made with her so she would not flee him in Paris), Jeffersons slave breeding enhanced his personal wealth.

Ronald Reagan:Ronald Reagans all-American pristine public image is certainly the opposite of Trumps, but what was Reagans private reality? In 1991, themainstream press ridiculedKitty Kelleys account (in her bookNancy Reagan) of actress Selene Walters claim that Ronald Reagan date-raped her in the early 1950s.The ridicule continued even thoughPeoplemagazine got Walters to repeat this story almost verbatim. Walters did correct some of Kelleys version, as Walters said, I opened the door. Then it was the battle of the couch. I was fighting him. I didnt want him to make love to me. Hes a very big man, and he just had his way. Date rape? No, God, no, thats [Kelleys] phrase. I didnt have a chance to have a date with him.

Given Reagans gentleman image, Walters story was mostly dismissed, but in 2011, actressPiper Laurie wroteabout her sexual encounter with Reagan. They had met when Laurie was 18 and still a virgin, and Reagan was 39, playing her father in the 1950 dramaLouisa. In Lauries autobiographyLearning to Live Out Loud, she reports that Reagan was initially the perfect gentleman, asking her mother for permission to take her out on a date. But instead of going out, Reagan took her to his home where he made hamburgers, then took her into the bedroom where he turned into a show-off who had sex without grace, with Reagan bragging about his staying power. Laurie wrote, He made sure I was aware of the length of time he had been ardent, but when she told him that she was not satisfied, Reagan responded: Theres something wrong with you. You should have had many orgasms by nowafter all this time. Youve got to see a doctor. While Laurie did not claim that Reagan raped her, her description of Reagans emotional abuse following intercourse makes Walters claim more plausible.

Womanizing, misogynist, sexual predator presidents have actually been quite common in American history. Bill Clinton was forced to admit his sexual escapade with Monica Lewinsky, but there were numerous other accusations, includingJuanita Broaddricks claimthat he raped her. John Kennedy biographersdescribe himas a compulsive womanizer; and when Kennedys many affairs were mentioned to Lyndon Johnson, he would competitivelybragthat he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose. This is by no means the complete list of womanizing, wife-cheating, sexual predator presidents.

The reality of course is not only private sexual predatory practices but monstrous crimes against humanity are common among US presidents. Numerous presidents presided over the crimes of African-American slavery and Native-American genocide; and since WWII alone,by some estimates, 20 to 30 million deaths around the world have resulted from multiple presidents trumped-up wars and shameful foreign policies.

With the transparently repulsive Trump, can we finally end the humiliation of Presidents Day, and replace it with another holiday that recognizes a more respectable group of Americans? How about Mail Carriers Day?

More:
3 of the Biggest Misogynists to Reach the Oval Office Before Donald Trump Got There - AlterNet