OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
OUR VIEW
Hillary’s travails, male tormentors
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian
Kelli Stewart, right, celebrates with Maureen Valdez outside the Mark
O. Hatfield United States Courthouse after the leaders of an armed
group who seized a national wildlife refuge in rural Oregon were ac-
quitted Thursday in the 41-day standoff that brought new attention to
a long-running dispute over control of federal lands in the U.S. West.
Feds fail to prove
conspiracy theory
L
ast week, an Oregon jury made a stunning decision.
They found seven occupiers of the Malheur Wildlife
Refuge, on trial for conspiracy, not guilty.
Even Bundy supporters — the ones who said the U.S. court
system was rigged and Judge Anna Brown was a government
stooge — were surprised. They whooped and hollered and cele-
brated a momentous upset in a federal court of law.
But the celebration didn’t last
long. Ammon Bundy’s attorney
It’s clear
yelled at the judge, resisted fed-
who the
eral marshals, was stunned with a
Taser and arrested. It was a shock- winners
ing end to a shocking case, one that
(depending on your point of view) and losers
exemplified government overre-
of this case
action to dissent, or the occupiers’
were in the
unwillingness to respect the rule of
courtroom.
law.
Now that the dust has cleared,
But it’s not
we can talk briefly about the facts
so clear
of the trial — what went wrong
for the prosecution and what the
what the
defense did right. It seems clear,
effect will
thanks to interviews with anony-
mous jurors, that no one in the jury be for those
box bought into the prosecution’s
outside of it.
arguments that the occupiers on
trial had “conspired” to do anything.
Which raises the question, why did the government choose
to level that charge? And why did the government not follow up
its charge of “conspiracy to impede government workers” with
the substantive “impeding government workers?” Those on trial
freely admitted that they took over the refuge, and government
workers were not able to do their jobs during the weeks-long
occupation.
The conspiracy decision was an error, perhaps because of
overconfidence of prosecutors that bordered on arrogance.
The Bundys and their defense teams were able to make long
political arguments, which were sometimes persuasive and
sometimes not, yet were always imprinting on the jury that
there were ulterior motives to the occupation. They showed that
impeding government workers wasn’t planned, it was just an
extra little side effect of their protest.
Another problem with the government’s case was presenting
all seven defendants together. While a jury could have found
some defendants guilty of one crime and others not guilty of the
same crime, the trial tied all their fates more tightly together.
And we surely wouldn’t have wanted to put David Fry, a
mentally unstable young man who only picked up a gun when
he was considering self harm, behind bars for years. Perhaps
sympathy for his plight rubbed off in a helpful way for the
Bundys.
Yet some decisions remain head-scratchers.
For instance, Ken Medenbach — arrested after driving a
vehicle that did not belong to him — was found not guilty of
theft. Can you imagine anyone, anywhere, being found behind
the wheel of a stolen car and getting off scot-free?
It’s clear who the winners and losers of this case were in the
courtroom. But it’s not so clear what the effect will be for those
outside of it. What will it mean for federal employees in rural
Oregon, for anti-government militias, for forest collaboratives,
for Native protesters in the Dakotas, for the next occupation of
federal land, be it in the middle of nowhere or in the middle of
the National Mall?
That remains to be seen. But this will not be the last time you
hear about the occupation trial and the verdict — it will rever-
berate in rural Oregon for some time.
W
einer or no Weiner, Hil-
lary Clinton is likely to be
our next president.
But she can’t seem to escape
insatiable men.
She married one — for better, for
“bimbo eruptions,” for two terms in
the White House,
for impeachment.
She’s in the cli-
mactic week of a
grotesque battle
with another. If she
prevails, his boasts
of sexual aggression will partly be
why.
And if she fails? Again there’s
a priapic protagonist. The FBI
wouldn’t be examining Anthony
Weiner’s laptop if he hadn’t invited
so many strangers to examine his
lap, and her fate is enmeshed once
more with the wanton misdeeds of
the weaker sex.
Over so many of her travails
hangs a cloud of testosterone.
Milestone
No woman before her earned a
major party’s presidential nomina-
tion, drawing this close to the Oval
Office. Should she reach that mile-
stone and make that history, she’d
probably also work with a Congress
in which there are more female law-
makers than ever before.
But her journey doesn’t only
reflect the advances of women. It has
also been shaped by the appetites
and anxieties of men. (Maybe the
two dynamics go hand in hand.) And
it has exposed gross male behav-
ior while prompting fresh examples
of it. Prominent men on the edge of
obsolescence have never acted so
wounded, so angry, so desperate.
Yes, Newt Gingrich, I’m looking at
you, though you’ll have to wait your
turn while I assess your master.
Donald Trump’s candidacy is
an unalloyed expression of male
id: Yield to me, worship me, never
question the expanse of my reach,
do not impugn the majesty of my
endowment. It’s less a political mis-
sion than a hormonal one, and it
harks back to an era when women
were arm candy and a man reveled
in his sweet tooth.
His archaic masculinity is her
opportunity: a stroke of good fortune
in a presidential bid with plenty of
bad luck, too. When he seethed that
she was a “nasty woman,” he might
as well have been offering to carry
her luggage into 1600 Pennsylva-
nia Ave.
Not the first time
It’s hardly the first time that a
man’s cravings colored her fate.
How much of her Achilles’-heel
defensiveness is a byproduct of her
marriage to Bill? When he was gov-
ernor of Arkansas and when he ran
for president in 1992, there were
constant rumors of his philandering
and a ceaseless effort to keep them
from spreading. She learned early
on to see the media as invasive, her
opponents as merciless, and privacy
as something to be guarded at all
costs. That doesn’t excuse her use of
a private email server as secretary of
state, but it does help to explain it.
Her husband converged with Gin-
grich in Washington in the 1990s,
and when Gingrich’s Republican
troops conquered Congress in 1994,
it was widely characterized as the
revenge of angry white men, whose
provocations included her assertive-
ness. The president and Gingrich
were both portraits of epic neediness.
They were as impulsive and messy
as little boys. They were destined to
torment each other, and did.
The humiliations that she suf-
fered — and the public sympathy
that she reaped — were inextricable
from the dueling displays of male
vanity around her.
Fast forward two decades. While
there are still angry white men and
they favor Trump, it appears that
there aren’t enough to counter her
advantage with women, who are
poised to get the president of their
wishes. Not everyone is taking this
well.
Just days after Trump called Clin-
ton a “nasty woman,” Gingrich
lashed out at Megyn Kelly of Fox
News for being unduly “fascinated
with sex,” a rich remark from a
thrice-married man with a record of
affairs. He wasn’t just a pol jousting
with a journalist. He was a portly,
toppled despot aghast at how stub-
bornly an intelligent woman refused
to defer to him. He was an aged
Everyman, reeling at changed roles
and altered rules.
Around the country there are
Senate and House races with a sim-
ilar flavor: older man, younger
woman, stew of resentments. In Illi-
nois, Sen. Mark Kirk, 57, made
fun of the Thai heritage of his chal-
lenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, 48,
and when I watched the exchange,
I wondered if the tension between
them was a function of gender as
well as race.
In Florida, Rep. John Mica, 73,
dismissed Stephanie Murphy, the
37-year-old college professor who is
running against him, as a “nice lady”
who just isn’t ready for prime time.
Maybe he has always been that
big a boor and having a female
opponent just made it obvious. But
Clinton gets under Trump’s skin in
a way that male rivals didn’t. In that
sense, her gender is not a weakness
but a weapon.
It’s about time.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Bond answers
s parents and business own-
ers, we have discussed the Sea-
side school bond measure with many
friends. Here are our answers to the
questions most asked, all having to
do with the price tag.
Question: $99 million is a lot for
our district. Why no government
help?
Answer: Remember the 2008
Bridge to Nowhere? A federal ear-
mark ban fiasco resulted. Sens.
Wyden and Merkley have gone to bat
for us to no avail. But we are first in
line to receive $4 million with bond
passage.
Question: If it doesn’t pass who
pays for building repairs?
Answer: We do. Taxpayers pay
$300,000 to $500,000 yearly to patch
decaying buildings. Over $30 million
is needed to correct electrical, plumb-
ing, heating and roofing. It doesn’t
begin to address seismic worries;
just a $30 million Band-Aid clasping
together steady disintegration.
Question: I’m a retiree; why pay
for something I don’t need?
Answer: Even fixed-income folks
have a right to quality medical care,
recreational centers, dedicated law
enforcement, all deserving a top-
notch staff. Professionals we want to
attract need assurance their families
will thrive.
“How good are your schools?”
is the first real estate question. Dis-
couraging skilled newcomers with
impoverished schools encourages
them to look elsewhere. Who, then,
buys? Well-heeled persons wanting
a vacation home, not a doctor. When
you create a community in which
only the wealthy can afford to live, is
that truly a community?
Living across the street from the
A
Gearhart Elementary School tsu-
nami assembly area, we often watch
the students march past during evac-
uation drills. We waved to them as
they recently paraded by. One young-
ster called out, “We are practicing for
when the Big One comes!” We nod-
ded. He then asked, “When it does
come, my idea is: Can we come stay
at your house?”
Don’t our children deserve a bet-
ter plan than this?
KARIN WEBB
Gearhart
Jones for council
ear city of Astoria Ward 4 com-
munity members: I want to
share with you my support for Bruce
C. Jones for City Council. I know I
do not live in your ward, but every
ward in this city is my community. I
respect people who move into a com-
munity and make it almost instantly
their home. Bruce and his family
moved here in 2011, and five years
later he is willing to get into the
unforgiving world of public service.
Yes, I am impressed by his years
of service with the U.S. Coast Guard,
but I am more impressed by his ser-
vice as a community volunteer on
the boards of directors of the United
Way of Clatsop County (2011-2014),
Friends of the Astoria Armory (pres-
ident since 2014), and Friends of
the Astoria Column (2014-2016), a
trustee of the Columbia River Mari-
time Museum and his service to the
Astoria Library Foundation.
My friends in Ward 4 shared with
me that Bruce had visited them, and
I thought that showed great interest
and passion for his community. He is
willing to learn about his neighbors
and I am pretty sure, new friends.
D
Bruce is a honest person looking to
engage with his community in diffi-
cult issues, who is willing to listen to
them and compromise.
I support Bruce C. Jones for City
Council, and you should, too.
NORMA HERNANDEZ
Astoria
Shortman for mayor
ob Shortman is running for
mayor of Gearhart. I encourage
you to vote for him.
I am a homeowner in Gearhart,
and have been regularly attending
public meetings for several years, all
the while watching our local govern-
ment at work. I think Bob would be a
great person to lead the city council-
ors as mayor.
He knows Gearhart, having lived
and worked there for many decades.
He has volunteered countless hours
for the community. He has raised
children in Gearhart. He understands
Gearhart’s unique coastal community
with the idyllic coastline, and just a
short distance away, the busy U.S.
Highway 101 thoroughfare.
He appreciates the present and
historic mix of businesses and of
homeowners — those who are in
Gearhart full-time, those part-time,
and the many people who have vaca-
tion homes. Every community has
a unique mix of inhabitants. Bob
appreciates that.
Bob listens and will continue to
listen, and additionally will seek out
information and expertise on issues
pertinent to Gearhart — before form-
ing personal opinions. He holds the
community first, with no precon-
ceived personal agendas.
KATHERINE SCHROEDER
Gearhart
B