Bonnie and Clod ride again

Wes Pruden instructs the young about the sexual predations of Bill and Hillary.

With her repeated assertions that women never lie about sexual harassment, her careless mouth put the cat among the pigeons. Twitter, where American politicians fight their fiercest battles, was quickly littered with charge and countercharge. “To every survivor of sexual assault,” Hillary tweeted to abused women, “You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you.” The Donald tweeted a warning that a fight over who abuses women was a scrap that Hillary shouldn’t want.

Bubba and the missus got a pass years ago for his sordid sexual romps, famously with the 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Hillary called the story the product of “the vast right-wing media conspiracy,” and Betty Friedan, the founding mother of modern feminism, agreed. “[Mr.] Clinton’s enemies are attempting to bring him down through allegations about some dalliance with an intern … whether it’s a fantasy, or a set-up or true,” she said. “I simply don’t care.” Anita Perez, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus, conceded politics trumped justice when Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer who said Bubba “manhandled” her in a private meeting about the job she had applied for. She said Mrs. Willey’s accusation was “disturbing, but to come to any judgment now is definitely not something I think is timely.”

Timely for Hillary now or not, the pass the media gave Bubba seems to have expired. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post offers a two-part guide to Bubba’s dalliances “for younger voters who may be wondering what the fuss is about,” dating from his origins in the land of the magic huckleberry. “We will divide the stories into two parts,” he writes, “consensual liaisons admitted by the women in question, and allegations of an unwanted sexual encounter.”

Bubba, like most Arkansas good ol’ boys, had a taste for the beauty queens who abound in the South, bedding two Miss Americas and a Miss Arkansas, who said she was told by “a Democratic Party official” after an affair with Bubba ended that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut he couldn’t guarantee “what would happen to my pretty little legs.”