SPECTRUM: The most juvenile defense of Bill Clinton’s behavior I’ve ever heard

In the past 25 years, I’ve heard just about every BS excuse available trying to rationalize Bill Clinton’s abusive and exploitative behavior towards women.

Remember Hillary’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” theory or the unanimous Democratic chorus during impeachment of “It’s only sex.”? But I can truthfully say I’ve never heard anything as juvenile or puerile as Frontiersman Editor Matt Hickman’s Oct. 11 column.

Do you honestly believe that Bill Clinton assaulted multiple women and lied about it to the American people not because he was “a politician trying to bury a scandal, but as a player trying to protect the integrity of his game”?

Really!?!

Integrity?

Game?

It’s 2016 and you sound as if the only thing you’ve ever read was a 1960’s Playboy article by Hugh Hefner on the swinging 60’s and the sexual revolution.

Is Bill Clinton really a “gentleman” telling little white lies so as not to embarrass other less adequate men? Is he really just an alpha male trying not to make the beta’s jealous of his “natural” ability to abuse and rape women? Is the “game” concerned with nothing more than good manners among cads? Apparently, a true gentleman doesn’t rape and tell or brag about his conquests. And this is to be admired in your opinion?

As a newcomer to Alaska you can be forgiven some of your earlier comments. Even if not highly informed, a fresh perspective is always welcome. But this isn’t about PFD’s or North Slope oil. This is basic human decency irrespective of geographic location. The only saving grace of your asinine comments seems to be that you put them forward in a non-partisan fog of vacuous and inane thought.

But whatever good will and respect you’ve earned since arriving in Alaska just evaporated ...and rightly so.

As the editor of the Opinion page of our local paper you have a very specific responsibility to think before you act. You obviously didn’t do that. And given the totally sexist and regressive nature of your comments, I doubt that it would have done any good. You’re not 16 anymore and you’re not writing for some sophomoric high school scandal sheet geared to virginal computer nerds or oversexed football jocks.

Grow Up! It’s not a game — it’s real life. And the behavior by our former president that you so cavalierly dismissed hurt and damaged a great many women. Far more than the mere words, however crass and lewd, of Donald Trump.

Before you enlighten us again on the sexual peccadilloes of our Presidents and nominees, you might want to recall Mark Twain’s famous aphorism: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

Paul Scheideberg is a resident of Palmer.