Credit: Dirck Halstead/Getty
“This is sexual harassment.” “No. It’s an affair.”
These lines are from Impeachment: American Crime Story, a 10-part dramatisation of the tragedy of Monica Lewinsky, which airs in the UK this week, because our appetite for gossip does not dim with the age of it. Lewinsky was 22 when she began her affair with Bill Clinton, who was 49. When the affair was exposed, and he was impeached — then acquitted — his personal approval ratings rose, which should be insane, but isn’t. American voters like tales of sin and redemption if the protagonist is male.
Lewinsky, though, was ruined as Christine Keeler was ruined. The man survives; the woman does not. In Impeachment, when the FBI arrest her for perjury — for saying she did not have a relationship with Clinton — she says: “I will never have children. Because no one will marry me.” It is an accurate prophecy so far.
Monica Lewinsky need not be shamed, but we should. I am the same age as her, and all I remember is the dirty dress and the oral sex and the cigar, none of which I wish to know about, or should know. A woman giving pleasure to a man she is infatuated with is not something that disgusts me, though we were asked to call it that: why?
Monica’s sufferings after her friend Linda Tripp, assuming the dimensions of a witch from a fairy tale, recorded their conversations and made them public, were without end. She was punished, as sexualised women are always punished; drabs are punished in other ways. Lewinsky was reduced to a series of transient acts which we are supposed to believe define her. Like Christine Keeler, she became “a dirty joke”.
The #MeToo movement invites us to examine our misogyny towards Lewinsky. She has gained some autonomy at last. She co-produced the documentary 15 Minutes of Shame about the dehumanising intent of the internet, in which she points out that she was the first woman to be destroyed by it, though many others follow her. (The affair was an early Matt Drudge scoop. Many people made money from her.) She is an executive producer of Impeachment, so it is her story, a one-sided collection of truths.
She was not sexually harassed by Bill Clinton, but she was manipulated. It was a consensual affair, and she has always said so, but she was peculiarly vulnerable, which is surely why he chose her. It was an affair she did not want to end; an affair that he ended, though he did not seem able to let her, entirely, go. They had a cruel and tender dance of novelty gifts and meetings and telephone calls. Clinton’s secretary, a decent women tasked with managing Lewinsky’s tears, had pity for them both. Clinton once chided Lewinsky, saying all he thought about, night and day, was her search for a job after she was exiled from the White House to the Pentagon but wanted to return. Folly is neither a crime, nor a story and Electra is both adult and child – who chooses to lie down? The affair brought her, by her own testimony, anguish and joy. She defended him for years but now she thinks he abused his position: that is, she wishes he had saved her from herself. He didn’t.
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SubscribeChristopher Hitchens’s book, “No-one left to lie to”, is essential reading on the Clintons. Considering its inflammatory contents, the lack of a lawsuit over its publication was telling. Rarely, I think, have a couple so deserved one another. And if the wife had to answer for the husband’s faults, it did at least distract from her own, which are many and varied.
For once and for all, can we not please accept that La Clinton failed in the presidential race, not because of misogyny, but because she was an unpalatable, conceited and ultimately jejeune person? Probably not, but at least I tried.
It would be politically incorrect to claim that Hillary Clinton was not elected because she was a pants candidate. No, no, no…it was hatred of women. Actually, when the whole Lewinski thing broke, I was still a committed leftist and thought their zeal to remove Clinton from office just proved how wicked those evil Republicans were. Who knew they were actually defending women?
I had a discussion with a leftist who used to be a friend, just after the 2016 elections.
As he raged on about how Trump “stole” the elections, pizzagate etc….
I asked him, with genuine innocence, that surely Hillary was at least partly at fault for blowing it despite all the support she had in terms of the media, funding, etc.
He looked at me blankly, as if I had said something incomprehensible.
Misogyny: the concept that you hate women unless you unconditionally accept that they are brave, stunning and absolutely perfect in every way, but also defenseless, helpless victims that are in no way responsible for their own life choices or outcomes.
Utter nonsense. Hilary Clinton was a woman of little talent. She saw the snake oil salesman Bill had gold dust and out of pure ambition hitched herself to his waggon knowing full well she was buying tainted goods but calculating she could tolerate the smell if she got what she wanted and in many ways it has paid off in spades
“Folly is neither a crime, nor a story and Electra is both adult and child – who chooses to lie down?”
When Tanya writes sentences like this, does she imagine she comes across as deep and enigmatic? Personally it puts me in mind of my very poor efforts at writing poetry during my teenage years.
As for her parting paragraph that #MeToo hasn’t gone far enough, she inadvertently reveals the ‘folly’ of the feminist, indeed all modern identitarian movements. The promised land will never be reached because it is baked into all ‘rights’ groups to keep demanding more, more, more.
It’s thanks to the overreach of MeToo that we now have sexual consent classes for children, an ever more officious state monitoring relations between the sexes and the threat that a man’s career may be destroyed overnight based on little more than hearsay.
If this is a sign that “#MeToo’s reach… is small so far” I shudder to think what Tanya would consider excessive.
All ‘identitarian’ movements begin by demanding equality, but what they really want is superiority and, ultimately, supremacy. And so, we are well on the way to seeing ‘The Patriarchy’ displaced by ‘The Matriarchy’. But with all these things: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’
Tanya should lead from the front and name names . Who abused you Tanya ? Come on , set the sisters an example
Read a great article on the Lewinsky story that described it as being the midwife to America’s acceptance of Trump.
it’s amazing how Democrats go after Trump for his language and attitude towards women, but defend Bill Clinton who actually exploited his position to sexually abuse multiple women.
And then Hillary paraded the alleged rapist around at her rallies and Democrats cheered the ‘old dog’. Their hypocrisy leaves you breathless.
Boo hoo hoo….
What absolute tosh! A direct line from Christine Keeler to Monica Lewinsky to Crooked Hillary? Really?
What is the point of this article? I would argue that there is no point: a writer the same age as Monica makes a pathetic attempt at girl power solidarity. Monica Lewinsky was a young girl on a mission: be careful what you wish for. She had every advantage, arguably played her cards poorly, and life moved on. She made some bad decisions in her twenties–like most of us (all of us?)–and she seems to have monetized them to a greater or lesser extent. She has not withdrawn from public life and has spent decades playing the victim card, while crying all the way to the bank. As a public figure who has repeatedly re-inserted herself into the conversation, she is fair game to be praised or ridiculed. If she is a punchline laugh or don’t laugh, but it’s time to move on.
To say “Bill Clinton got away with it” is rubbish.
The problem is you’re humanizing a serial rapist. Monica Lewinsky had a consensual relationship with Bill Clinton. Eilsteen Wellstone, Juanita Broadrick, Kathleen Wiley, and who knows how many more women did not. Lewinsky’s isn’t a story of an extra-marital affair in which the women gets all the blame, it’s the story of Bill Clinton, a criminal sociopath, being protected by a liberal press corps which enabled him for decades to brutalize women.
She was monstered by the liberal media, the Democrat party, and Hillary Clinton, all intent on protecting Bill Clinton’s presidency. She was never a victim of “misogyny.” If anything, she was just another victim of Bill Clinton’s lasciviousness. As were Paula Jones, Juanita Broderick, et al. I notice you don’t write about them.
A foolish and infatuated young woman, let down by Bill and monstered by Hilary. Is there anything more to it than that?
Total rubbish. The liberal press is responsible for keeping Slick Willy protected. His outsized sexual appetite was well known before he became POTUS. The evil part about him was that he preyed upon innocent and helpless women, who succumbed to his position, whereas Trump went after the biggest prizes, who seemed perfectly satisfied with cavorting with a decent looking billionaire. To link the two is simply ridiculous.
I loved Carville’s quote to the media defending his boss, “You drag a “C” note (hundred dollar bill) through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”
Could it be, that far from being a misogynistic press, the press wrote what they could about the affair? Only two people knew what really happened, and one of ’em was the POTUS. He wasn’t going to say diddly squat, and the other was an easy target, and an unearned income to many.
The whole business was so stunningly squalid that it is pointless trying to draw a moral from it. I can sympathise with Lewinsky but cannot understand why she didn’t remain implacably silent. There can be dignity in silence. And she wouldn’t have become unmarriable – At least not in my eyes and I can’t be that unusual.
“Monica’s sufferings after her friend Linda Tripp, assuming the dimensions of a witch from a fairy tale, recorded their conversations …, …”
Do you mean the villain of the pantomime?
“If Linda Tripp had not taped their conversations, Monica Lewinsky would have been allowed to become herself.”
But then we would not have had the opportunity to be treated to “Impeachment: American Crime Story, a 10-part dramatisation of the tragedy of Monica Lewinsky, due to be aired in the UK this week, because our appetite for gossip does not dim with the age of it.”
“Our appetite”? Ah yes, because the public is in part to blame for this tawdry business, as pointed out, being one-third of the trinity aspect of the third villain of the piece.
Then one reads: “She (Monica L) is an executive producer of Impeachment, so it is her story, a one-sided collection of truths.”
I’m nearly surprised the inventor of recording tape hasn’t yet got a few boos yet. He is …. behind you! Behind all of this, the arch villain, whoever he is. (I don’t think a lady invented magnetic recording tape).
One’s appetite may wane, by the way.
No mention of Gloria Steinem.
I did not realise that Monica Lewinski was Jewish
“Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand.
Why dost thou lash that w***e? Strip thine own back.
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her.”
Once again, Shakespeare sums it up so well, in King Lear