Why Bernie Sanders' Decades-Old Rape Fantasies Matter to 2016

The reaction to what presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders wrote in an alternative newspaper in Vermont back in 1972 about men and women with rape fantasies has, of course, been divided: His defenders argue that the article is so far in the past that what he wrote then is irrelevant, while critics feel it’s only fair to crown him this year’s Todd Akin. (Unless you’ve mentally blocked it, perhaps in the same way that Akin said women can mentally block conception following “legitimate rape,” you’ll recall that the GOP congressman, who was Senator Claire McCaskill’s Republican challenger in 2012, became his party’s poster child for how not to talk about sexual violence.)

Conservative writer Dan Joseph sounds a common theme on the right when he argues that while reporters shrug over what Sanders wrote, if “Ted Cruz or Rick Santorum wrote something along these lines—even 40 years ago—the media wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks.” Which is incontrovertibly true.