Whistle-Blow Promptly Or Pipe Down

Ladies, you’ve got to toughen up or hold your peace. If one more sister contends that she didn’t complain about a boss making an outrageous sexual advance because she would have otherwise ended up a bag lady in the street, I’ll scream or something. That goes doubly and triply for the demure but wellconnected women who “come forward” only when the going seems useful.

The latest, Kathleen Willey, famously announced on “60 Minutes” that President Clinton groped and kissed her in the White House four years ago. Willey says she didn’t go public with her account back then because she desperately needed a job from the Creep-in-Chief. Her lawyer husband had gotten the couple into financial trouble, and so she asked their friend Clinton for some little paying position. She suggested an ambassadorship. That didn’t pan out, but she accepted another job and some glamorous junkets for which she was in no way qualified. One must appreciate her view that Clinton was then the only person hiring in the United States.

Oh, please. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for her principles. These women won’t even risk a slowdown in their careers.

It was Anita Hill all over again. Hill continued to work for and send best wishes to the man who, she said, had talked dirty to her (gracious me) nine years before. Only when Clarence Thomas was about to be elevated to Supreme Court justice did she find her tongue. We are asked to believe that had Anita Hill, then a subordinate at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, not played along, she and her law degree from Yale would have ended up on welfare. Oh please, again.

Like Anita Hill, Willey comes off as a well-put-together woman - a lady - whose stories are quickly swallowed by many feminists and other enemies of the “male aggressor.”

The hard-hitting “60 Minutes” neglected to obtain some key information that appeared the following day. Willey’s lawyers had just been peddling her tell-all book to publishers and demanding an unrealistic advance of $300,000. The White House, meanwhile, released the “I’m-yourNo. 1-fan” letters that Willey had sent Clinton after the alleged groping, ones she had signed, “Fondly, Kathleen.” Now, a friend says Willey asked her to lie about having been told the story and observing a distraught Willey.

Whistle-blowers rarely have an easy time of it. That includes employees who report embezzlement or the illegal dumping of toxic wastes. When they do make noise, they can depend on a skeptical grilling by the press, meltdown of their present career and uneasiness at future job interviews. Sometimes, they receive physical threats. That is the price whistle-blowers pay, which is why they are a special and rare breed.

Some commentators are groping for good explanations on why, assuming that the stories are true, these women didn’t come forward right away. Easy, says Maureen Dowd of The New York Times: The women wanted the jobs. Good reason, too.

Dowd relates how a magazine editor had propositioned her the day before she was to commence work at his publication. “I wanted to throw the job back in his face,” she wrote, “but I knew I would not get another one that good.” So she took it. And the guy even apologized later, indicating that he was more a clumsy fool than a sexual predator.

Fine. But no one is going to pin any medal on Dowd’s chest for having survived but quietly tolerated what she now tells us was an abhorrent wrong. It is perfectly OK for a woman to decide that a male has stepped over the line, but she is going to ignore it for the sake of her career. Or she might consider it too minor a problem, like poor ventilation or a noisy cubicle, to make a fuss over. Those are acceptable responses.

The Kathleen Willeys of the world - women who come forward when the prospects of doing so are more attractive than anything Creep-o is currently offering - are not heroines. Again, that is assuming she was even telling the truth. If reports contradicting her veracity should prove accurate, then this is a very different and uglier case.

In any event, whistle-blowing is not for the meek. And blowing one’s whistle long after the game has ended is not the stuff of which martyrdom is made.