Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, accused of sexual assault four weeks ago, has picked former Senator Chris Dodd (shown), accused of sexual assault 35 years ago, to help choose the lucky woman who will become Biden’s running mate.
Dodd joins a panel of three other Democrats, Fox News reported today, who will offer advice on the important decision.
The problem? As Tara Reade says of Biden, Dodd has a history of roughing up women, although he had a partner named Ted Kennedy, the late senator from Massachusetts.
Drunken Vandals
The story about Dodd is as bad if not worse than Reade’s allegation about Biden.
As Michael Kelly recounted in GQ magazine in 1990, Dodd and Kennedy routinely drank so much out on the town together they lost complete control of their senses.
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The blotto pair vandalized La Colline, a fine French restaurant near Capitol Hill, for instance, when they seized a “long-stalked gladiolus from a vase in the front hall and [were] fencing ‘just like D’Artagnan.’”
As well, Kelly reported:
At the same restaurant in 1985, Kennedy and drinking buddy Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut did a “Mexican hat dance” on their own framed photographs. According to The Washingtonian magazine, which broke the story, “Kennedy spotted Dodd’s framed photo [on the wall] and shouted ‘Who’s this guy?’ Laughing, he grabbed the photo from the wall and threw it on the ground, breaking the glass in the frame. Dodd, not to be outdone, located Kennedy’s photo and returned the favor.” A new Kennedy photo adorns the wall today, inscribed with, “Laissez les bons temps rouler — Let the good times roll.”
But those drunken revelries aren’t the point here.
Waitress Sandwich
More relevant to Biden’s choosing Dodd was the night the two assaulted a waitress at another nearby restaurant, La Brasserie. The two routinely drank so much at that restaurant, a waitress told Kelly, that the management “put a makeshift bar near their habitual table. ‘They drank so much you couldn’t get to the [regular] bar fast enough.’”
[On a] “standard evening,” she says, each man would knock off half to three quarters of a bottle of hard liquor, then switch to wine or champagne, and sometimes then to after-dinner drinks: “They would [sometimes] stay at the restaurant till three o’clock in the morning, just drinking and drinking. By the time they got up, they could hardly stand.”
But those Olympian feats of alcohol consumption are nothing compared to Kelly’s account of one particular evening the rowdy pair enjoyed at the small bistro.
Again, it was 1985, and Dodd and Kennedy took two young blondes to the restaurant. When the two went to the restroom, the liberal senators ordered the co-owner to send a waitress, Carla Gavilgio, to their table.
As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following a friendly argument between the senators over the check.
Eyewitness Betty Loh [the waitress who served the pair], told me that Kennedy had “three or four” cocktails in his first half hour at the restaurant and wine with dinner. When she walked into the room after Gaviglio had gone in, she says, “what I saw was Senator Kennedy on top of Carla, who was on top of Senator Dodd’s lap, and the tablecloth was sort of slid off the table ’cause the table was knocked over — not completely, but just on Senator Dodd’s lap a little bit, and of course the glasses and the candlesticks were totally spilled and everything. And right when I walked in, Senator Kennedy jumped off … and he leaped up, composed himself and got up. And Carla jumped up and ran out of the room.”
By any account — particularly in the #MeToo era — that constitutes sexual assault.
What Will Biden’s Women Do?
The 75-year-old former senator from Connecticut will not, one would think, add much luster to a campaign already reeling from a sex-assault charge.
As campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said, “selecting a vice presidential candidate is one of the most important decisions in a presidential campaign and no one knows this more than Joe Biden. These four co-chairs reflect the strength and diversity of our party, and will provide tremendous insight and expertise to what will be a rigorous selection and vetting process.”
Maybe, but some women might wonder who is vetting the vetters.
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
