THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: “Not since Bill Clinton was asked about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and replied, ‘It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is,’ has there been such parsing.”

Writes Maureen Dowd, in “The Ivy League Flunks Out” (NYT), talking about the line “It is a context-dependent decision” spoken by U Penn president Penn’s Elizabeth Magill.

We were just talking about Bill Clinton rhetoric — 2 posts down, here — but that was about “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and the topic was Biden’s denials of involvement in his son’s influence peddling.

Dowd is writing about the “pathetic display” put on by the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania “when they were asked if calling for genocide against Jews counted as harassment.” Dowd only uses the word “harassment” once and doesn’t seem to see any need to define it or discuss it in any depth. When is an ugly/cruel/immoral/hateful statement harassment? Dowd — like many others, and unlike the “pathetic” presidents — glides immediately over to the much easier matter: It’s ugly, cruel, immoral, and hateful to call for genocide, against the Jews or against any people.

Clinton was a precursor.