In Byron’s piece on the Gore stuff, we read this: “Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her ‘to just suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.’”

That reminded me of a great hit from the Lewinsky era. Time magazine’s Nina Burleigh said, “I would be happy to give him” — Bill Clinton — “[oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”

And let me also remember Gus Savage, the Chicago congressman who set himself on a Peace Corps volunteer — black, like the congressman himself — in Zaire. He said, “Oh, come on, baby, when you help the shepherd, you help the whole flock.” He also said, if she submitted to him, she would be helping “the movement.” Later, when the young woman reported the congressman’s actions, he called her “a traitor to the black movement.”

Savage was voted out of office — in favor of Mel Reynolds, who was later arrested for preying on underage girls. Oh, well. America the Beautiful. America the Screwed Up.

ADDENDUM: I see that Mark Krikorian beat me to the Gore-masseuse punch. Byron did indeed report a “terrible detail” — but, as I’ve said, one with kindred details in recent history. What a crazy nexus, the one between ideology and sex.