US radical feminist Naomi Wolf says literary bigwig Harold Bloom "sexually encroached" on her when she was a student at Yale twenty years ago. British MP Clare Short says the UK government bugged Kofi Annan's phone.
Ms Wolf says she invited her supervisor Bloom around for a candlelit supper a deux, hoping he would cast an eye over her poetry. Instead, she claims, he put his hand on her thigh, causing her to vomit in the sink and drop grades all over the place.
Meanwhile, Clare Short wirejaws her way through the sensational news that Britain bugs people. Sometimes quite important people. Like the Secretary General of the UN. Ms Short knows this because as a Cabinet Minister (albeit a lowly one) the details of Mr Annan's pizza outsourcing trickled across her desk. This outraged her, but not quite enough to tell people how naughty MI6 was being and resign from the Government. Instead she's decided to tell us about it now, when she's a political nobody and has nothing to lose.
Neither story is particularly shocking, as far as I'm concerned. A male academic goes to a female student's house for a candlelit dinner and ends up putting his hand where he shouldn't. British intelligence bugs a top politician's private office. (What else do we pay them to do?)
But what does puzzle me is why did neither woman thought to blow her whistle a little sooner. Wolf says the grievance procedure at Yale back then was a bit flaky so she kept schtum. Fine. But why break that silence now? As for Ms Short, goodness knows what her motivation is, other than a loathing of Mr Blair. Undertandable, perhaps. But for us to have any respect for her, she should have spoken out sooner.
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