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A few weeks ago, I was in a restaurant sitting next to a woman I had just met. He touched my arm continuously while we were talking and sometimes he brushed my leg with his hand. I have witnesses. There were four other people at the table.
If this woman were to be nominated in ten years for a political position in the United States, I would have in my hands the opportunity to put an end to her dreams. A tweet would suffice. A tweet in which I would proclaim that the above has touched "inappropriately". Soon, do not doubt, they called me from a radio or a local newspaper; from there, he would go to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, generating editorials and opinion pieces; the politicians of the rival parties would give a party of indignation; I will be interviewed on CNN and Fox News; the international press would pick up the news and, immediately thereafter, it would appear in a newspaper like Clarín, the raw material of a column like this one.
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Fortunately for the woman who touched me at the restaurant the other day, she is not American, but Spanish. The place where what happened in the United States was consideredto a crime so serious as to destroy a political career it was not Washington but Madrid. I want to believe that if he imagined me to denounce, the Spanish media, far from being scandalized, otherwise they would ignore me completely or would die laughing.
This is not how the American political world reacted to accusations that two women have just launched against Joseph Biden, former vice president of Barack Obama and probably Democratic candidate to the presidency in the 2020 elections. Although several candidates have recently appeared for this candidacy and to face Donald Trump, Biden appears as most likely at the moment.
The media and politicians reacted exactly as in the sequence I present in the second paragraph of this article.
What were the sins committed by Biden? Not so bad, I dare say, like those of the woman (married, from elsewhere) who touched my leg in Madrid. The first case to be revealed is that of a woman named Lucy Flores, who claims that at an election ceremony five years ago in Las Vegas, Biden kissed him in the back of the head. Biden was 71 years old and Flores 35. The second, ten years ago, happened in Hartford, Connecticut. Amy Lappos recounts that in another election, Biden put his hands on his face and rubbed his nose. Biden was 66 years old and Lappos, 33 years old.
According to the testimonies of the two women, Biden never behaved like an old green. They do not accuse him of badual harbadment. Not directly They may insinuate it, but they merely badert that the now unlikely candidate to replace Donald Trump at the White House acted "inappropriately".
I do not defend Bidenalthough it is a moral and intellectual titan compared to Trump. I do not defend it because a political veteran should be more aware of where he is.
He lived all his life in the United States. I understood what it was about two weeks after my stay in Washington in January 1995, well before the #metoo movement was born. I had just arrived from Johannesburg where people are as tactical as in Madrid, Buenos Aires or Bogotá. I went to cover the trial of a man accused of murder. A young local journalist helped me a lot and I invited her to lunch. During the meal, he said something with which I was totally in agreement and, as a sign of understanding, I touched him slightly with his right hand on his left arm, covered with A sweater, between his elbow and his wrist. I will never forget his face. He looked at me like he was terrified. For me, it was an innocent and habitual social reflex, it was for her, at least his gaze the prelude to an attempt at rape.
The incident was not repeated. From this meal and every day until I get out of Washington and go to Barcelona three and a half years later, I treated women I did not know well, as if they were were a mixture between a jellyfish and a Chinese vase of the Ming Dynasty. A kiss when it is presented? Not even in dreams.
I learned the lesson. Biden did not want to learn or understand the society in which he lives, the puritan of the western world, the one who more constipatedly interprets what is or is not "appropriate" when a man coincides in the same space as a woman.
To return to the person who touched me in Madrid, the truth is that I would have completely forgotten this, just as I have forgotten thousands of similar encounters, if we had not needed to have an example here to compare the protocol for male / female relationships in the United States with that of the Latin countries in which I have lived most of my life.
Having said that, I recognize that I have the courage to address these issues. One is open to the possibility of being accused of trivializing the ancient plague of badual abuse. I would say that to trivialize, is to put in the same boat silly and badly judged actions, like those of Biden, with undeniably offensive or violent affairs. It is not difficult to distinguish between one thing and another.
This is why Lucy Flores and Amy Lappos could have remained silent instead of publishing their comics in public with Biden, knowing full well how disproportionate the consequences for his political future would be.
It is also why, like us, I feel uneasy when I come into contact with women in the United States. Or, even here in England, the country from which the Puritans fled to America in the early sixteenth century. As if it was a historic revenge, today, they infect us every day more with their solemn cultural rigidity. What is terrible is that the contagion has spread to countries like Spain, Argentina or Colombia where I arrive and I always feel that life is more cheerful, fun and natural.
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