Despite the efforts of the mainstream media to shovel the sexual assault allegations Tara Reade has made against Joe Biden, the story is stubbornly refusing to go away. The latest iteration involves a story in Business Insider in which a former neighbor of Ms. Reade remembers being told the sordid story back in the mid-1990s.
“Now two more sources have come forward to corroborate certain details about Reade’s claims. One of them — a former neighbor of Reade’s — has told Insider for the first time, on the record, that Reade disclosed details about the alleged assault to her in the mid-1990s.”
Those details include how the then-Senator Biden allegedly pushed Reade up against a wall and, reaching inside her skirt, penetrated her with his fingers. When she resisted, Biden said, according to Reade’s account, “Aw man, I heard you liked me.” The account continues with the then-senator shaking a finger at Reade and saying, “You’re nothing to me.” He shook her by the shoulders and added, “You’re OK, you’re fine.”
What followed seems very typical for a woman who has had to rebuff the crude advances of a powerful male boss.
“Before the alleged assault, Reade said, she had already complained to her superiors in Biden’s office that the way Biden looked at her and touched her made her uncomfortable. She got no response, she said, and after the alleged assault was abruptly relieved of her duties managing interns. She said she later filed a complaint about her treatment — but not the about the assault allegation — with a Senate human-resources office.”
Demands are rising for the former vice president to step aside, mainly from Bernie Sanders supporters who are irate that their man has been passed over for a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault. Rumors abound that the boys and girls in the Democratic Party backrooms are plotting to supplant Biden, perhaps with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
In the meantime, the media has shifted from ignoring the Tara Reade story to placing a unique spin on it. Hot Air explains, referencing a Washington Post piece.,
“Faced with emerging new evidence that corroborates (indirectly) Tara Reade’s allegations that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her, the Post opts not to make those bolstered allegations the story. They don’t make Joe Biden the story. They don’t make Tara Reade the story. So who is the story? Trump allies, and no, I am not kidding.”
Leaving aside the fact that many people who are complaining are Bernie Sanders supporters, the spin seems to be a little rich. Indeed, the neighbor, Lynda LaCasse, fully intends to vote for Biden, despite what he allegedly did to her friend, such is the power of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Fox News notes the difference with which Democratic politicians treated the accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford against Bret Kavanaugh when the latter was undergoing confirmation hearings for a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
Ford had become the outraged hero and victim of male abuse, even though her story of being assaulted by a teenage Kavanaugh in the 1980s was pretty thin and lacked details. Reade, on the other hand, has few defenders, practically none among the Democratic establishment.
The inevitable conclusion that many have drawn is that sexual assault and harassment of women by powerful men is not so much a problem that needs to be addressed than a cudgel with which to beat the man in question if he is of the wrong party.
Kavanaugh had to be kept off the Supreme Court because he was a conservative, So he was a monster going back to his hard-partying teenage years. Joe Biden, though God knows how, is the last, best hope for denying the Bad Orange Man a second term as president. So, Tara Reade is not to be believed and is to be regarded as a tool of Trump operatives.
Hot Air is taking a dim view of the blatant hypocrisy.
“I guess the same editors are probably patting themselves on the back for merely ignoring Reade — until it became impossible — rather than insulting her. By casting their coverage to make Reade nothing more than a pawn for Republicans rather than take her allegations seriously, however, the Post and its editors are insulting her in the same or worse manner than they accused Republicans of doing with Blasey Ford — whose allegation had no specificity as well as no contemporaneous corroboration, even indirect. This isn’t just media bias. This is media corruption.”
