Antipathy toward Hillary

Re “Why isn’t Hillary outraged?” Opinion, March 13

Rosa Brooks’ column is an expression of pure animus toward Hillary Rodham Clinton with no redeeming logic. No one has yet laid out a rational argument for saddling Clinton with “baggage” for her husband’s peccadilloes, and this article does no more than darkly hint about how Bill Clinton will be spending his free time if his wife is elected. My question is: So what? If a political spouse stands by her alcoholic husband, she’s a saint. But if she stands by a man whose addiction is to sex, apparently it’s a stain on her character -- as is, according to Brooks, any failure to jump on the bandwagon of recrimination whenever a fellow politician takes a fall.

Clinton’s inclusion of both Eliot Spitzer and his family in her expression of goodwill seems to me like empathy and good manners -- not evidence of some festering character defect. Wouldn’t it have been better just to print a statement saying, “Rosa Brooks stills hates Hillary Clinton; check this space periodically for updates”?

Margaret Daugherty

Los Angeles

--

I agree with Clinton’s sentiment condemning “the heinous practice of buying and selling women ... like commodities.” However, that isn’t the result of prostitution but the criminalization of prostitution, as was explained so well in the companion Op-Ed article by Patty Kelly.

Prostitution doesn’t necessarily exploit or demean women. It’s the illegality of prostitution that gives rise to the sex-slave trade and the wholesale exploitation and degradation of women, not only by pimps but in many countries by corrupt law enforcement that should be protecting women. In the legal Mexican brothel Kelly studied, almost all the women were there by choice, were not unhappy and were doing much better than their unexploited compatriots. And conversely, after Sweden criminalized paying for sex in 1999, women sex workers were far worse off.

I hope Brooks carefully studies the issue and reexamines her biases.

Glenn Bradley

Santa Monica