By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
A string of athletes and people associated with professional sports — extending from basketball superstar LeBron James to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban — rushed to the microphone to proclaim that no one in their locker rooms engages in the coarse language about women that Donald Trump used on tape with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in early October, the comments that Trump labeled “locker-room talk.”
I have never been in a professional sports team’s locker rooms, but I have been in locker rooms or similar settings with men, for more than 60 years, from high school to when I was a member of Catholic men’s groups in parishes from the Bronx, to Westchester County, to North Carolina to the suburbs of New Haven, Conn. I think I have information about what is said in those places that will be of interest to the women reading this column. (I think it will be old hat for the men.) My observations should be reassuring to these women.
Why do I think they need reassuring? Because of comments I have been hearing since the Trump conversation about touching women improperly became a widespread topic of concern. Such as? Well, I haven’t heard it myself, but friends have told me that many women are saying, “All men talk that way when women aren’t around?”
Usually, the women who say this are Trump supporters and seeking to keep him alive politically. But that is not the point just now. The point is that Catholic women should not be led to think that their husbands, sons, and male friends talk in any way similar to Trump. It is not true, at least not in most cases.
To be sure, there are men who talk like Trump. I have encountered them since I was a teenager, boorish and vulgar know-it-alls, who try to impress the males in their company with their “worldliness” and sexual prowess. But the men I have known either disengage from conversations with these lowlifes, or roll their eyes to each other to express their disbelief at the trashy, over-the-top language they are hearing.
I must stress that the men I have known over the years have not been prudes and hothouse flowers. They have been mostly practicing Catholic blue-collar New Yorkers, cops, firemen, construction workers, or middle-class office workers who are the children of such blue-collar workers. Their language can be salty, rough, and sprinkled with cuss words now and then. But they don’t talk about women the way Trump did, in the Access Hollywood video or in his conversations with the sleazy comedian Howard Stern.
They will, at times, make comments about physically attractive women. I hope I will not offend readers of this column by giving you examples of what I mean. Here goes: The Catholic men I have known will use terms such “hot,” “stacked,” “legs that go on forever,” and “curves on top of curves” as part of their small talk. I know: not exactly what you would expect from Cardinal Newman. But it is not even in the same ballpark with Trump’s smutty language.
Trump’s language was what you would expect from. . . . Trump. If someone told you a few years back that Trump talked this way, you would not have been surprised. It is the way that we expect smarmy show business types and big money wheeler-dealers to talk. It is the everyday language of the rap music stars that the Obamas invite to perform at the White House, the language of the snarky political operatives who appear on the talk shows to defame the character of their opponents.
I am not talking only about liberal Democratic operatives, by the way. There are more than a few Republican defenders of Trump whom I would bet serious money talk about sex in the same manner as Trump. (Come on — those of you who watch Fox News know the guests that I am talking about.)
Am I saying that Trump’s comments about women should disqualify him for the presidency? I’ve had to wrestle with that question. (For the moment, let us hold off on judging him by the accusations of the women who say he made improper advances to them in the past. As I write, they remain “he said, she said” accusations, perhaps politically motivated.) I don’t know how I could defend voting for Trump to my grandchildren.
With my adult children, it is a different matter. I think I could justify that vote by using the lesser of two evils argument. I remain convinced that Hillary Clinton would be far worse for the country on illegal immigration, Supreme Court appointments, economics, law enforcement and military questions, to say nothing of abortion.
We can’t shrug off that Hillary wants taxpayers to pay for abortions, even partial-birth abortions, something liberal Democrats once told us they would never require of us. There is nothing Trump has done with women that it is as unacceptable as that. Being forced to pay for partial-birth abortions is sufficient grounds for single-issue voting, a deal-breaker if there ever was one.
But don’t Catholics who are Republicans have a moral responsibility to oppose Trump because of his immoral behavior? I say no; at least not until liberal Democrats demonstrate a willingness to do the same in regard to politicians whom they favor. Which never happens. Bill Clinton remains a great favorite among liberal Democrats. So was the late Ted Kennedy. It didn’t matter how egregiously they behaved. Electing a candidate who would promote their agenda has always mattered more to liberals than the candidate’s moral failings. Remember how we were lectured about how “It’s just sex” when Bill Clinton’s sordid behavior became known.
It is not that two wrongs don’t make a right, not when politics is involved. If Republicans and conservatives turn against their candidates who behave shamefully, and Democrats do not, all that is accomplished is the disarmament of the conservative side at election time, not a modus vivendi. There is no justice in that scenario.
That said, I cannot defend or support Trump in public. It doesn’t matter that John Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton did far worse. It strikes me that we are faced with a classic case of holding one’s nose and voting for the lesser of two evils. I repeat: It is Hillary’s goal to require us all to pay for partial-birth abortions. It is sad that the country has come to this point, but we can’t escape what it will mean if the Clintons return to power.
No question: Donald Trump would be a deep embarrassment to us if he were our brother or son. He is not a good man. But, in my opinion, he would make a better president than Hillary Clinton. And Hillary, we must not forget, is not a good woman.
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