I’m not the first to note that it’s pretty sleazy for a man who puts three of his SEVEN children — his three oldest daughters — front and center in his campaign to call charges from several women who claim they were sexually harassed a “bimbo eruption.” But Jon Huntsman’s Mormon sexism is showing.
Huntsman was first quoted in the Boston Herald.
“We’ve got real issues to talk about not the latest bimbo eruption,” Huntsman told the Herald today.
The recent ambassador to China was referring to an admission by a colleague of Herman Cain, the former head of the lobbying organization the National Restaurant Association, that she and Cain carried on a 13-year affair. She stepped forward after it was exposed that Cain’s lawyers had settled at least three sexual harassment cases against him while he lobbyied for the trade group. Cain’s explanation about the lawsuits shifted from denial to faulty memory, but he claimed he’s been true to his wife throughout their marriage.
The businesswomen who have gone on record about Cain’s harassment have been held up to the usual sexist attacks, but this is the first time I’ve heard them being called “bimbos.” For someone running for president to so characterize these women is bad, but for someone whose adult daughters use the Twitter handle @Jon2012girls to do so seems doubly awful.
Huntsman’s faith, Mormonism, teaches that because of their various flaws women may only enter heaven if they are pulled in by their husbands. Leaving its history of polygamy aside — which for Mormons meant men could have as many wives as they liked while women could share only one man — it is doubtless one of the most patriarchal cults practiced in America today. One would think someone trying to dispel such bad impressions would avoid sexist slang terms like “bimbo,” which my dictionary defines as, “an attractive but empty-headed young woman, especially one perceived as a willing sex object.”
To group one woman who claims a consenting relationship with Cain with at least three others who were paid damages because they emphatically did not desire his attentions shows how Huntsman views women. We are apparently all alike.
