What have Bill Clinton, Gary Condit, Ted Kennedy and Gary Studds in common with former Japanese Gov. Knock Yokoyama?
I contend that the sexual profiles of all five political leaders reveal them as clearly dependent on pornography, thus driven to increasingly reckless, violent sexual acts on young victims.
And no, their obsessions do not excuse their crimes.
The July 15 New York Times reported in "Fighting Molestation, and a Stigma, in Japan," that Knock Yokoyama, governor of Japan's second-largest prefecture was given an 18-month suspended sentence for indecent assault of Moeko Tanaka, a young political campaign worker.
Tanaka's boyfriend, her relatives, friends and colleagues had warned her she would be ruined in Japan as "another Monica Lewinsky," unless she abandoned her crusade. Then they abandoned her. Fearing retribution, she "testified from behind a screen throughout the trial."
Tanaka received an unprecedented award and a public apology from Mr. Yokoyama. Still fearful of reprisals, the young Japanese maid uses the pseudonym Moeko Tanaka in her book, "A Governor's Sexual Harassment, My Struggle."
Her courtroom victory stunned the Japanese, a land whose men are known for modernized pornography consumption and whose women are known for traditional submission to male authority.
Tanaka courageously testified that the governor sexually molested her "for 30 minutes" as she was "frozen with fear, in a van in the presence of several other campaign workers." No one defended her in that van.
For nearly half a century those of us who have warned of the consequences of mainstreaming "erotica," have heard the pornography lobby tout the alleged "harmlessness" of Japan's pandemic pornography consumption.
Well, Japan's post-pornography era triggered such unabashed sexual assault – even of schoolgirls on crowded commuter trains – that this year Japan instituted "women only" commuter cars.
As in other nations, although the headlines condemn "foreigners" who commit sex crimes against their women and children, inter-cultural sexual violence is not only tolerated but encouraged and trivialized via a daily fare of violent cartoon pornography which is increasingly exported to the United States.
This pornographic media blames women and girls alike for arousing the sexual lusts of vulnerable schoolboys and suit-and-tie businessmen.
Japanese affluence is well-known. Also well known is the pornographic view of women and children which has become ingrained in the fabric of this once-reserved culture, the rising popularity of "love hotels" and the thriving tourist packages for men seeking to sexually violate children on nearby destitute islands.
Just as most American legislators grovel before the pornography lobby (too many embarrassing photographs in someone's safe), just so one could say most Japanese men have by omission or commission groveled before the pornographers who have conquered their land, violating their women and children.
Few challenge the way Japanese men brazenly display their skin magazines and gratuitous photographs of naked women in public venues and on public transit vehicles (rather like the ACLU defense of pornography in the public library).
As part of a "campaign" to end harassment, a poster in the Tokyo subway warns that molesters will be punished. In a display psychology folks like to call "denial," the cartoon poster exhibits a red-haired, non-Japanese woman (the victim) and man (the molester), as their "Stop Harassment" protagonists.
Reality however is evidenced in the Times photograph of Japanese schoolgirls waiting to board the railroad "women's" car "introduced to deter molesters."
The worst of our shame-filled secrets, sexual assault of women and children, sexual assault of congressional pages and federal interns – including youthful deaths under mysterious circumstances – sodomizing of our children, even by older family members, teachers, judges, religious and camp leaders, take decades, if they are ever included in the FBI and federal data. And, the growing toxic sexual environment is worldwide.
By the time the people are permitted to learn about the real harms of "soft" and "hard" pornography, school sex "education" and such, interns have disappeared and folks in vans must look the other way as their governor sexually violates a terrorized young girl in plain sight.
Yep, we've come a long way, baby from the "Greatest Generation" and, may God help us, it looks like we are not even halfway there.