Monica in March
The fiasco of Anthony Weiner’s political “comeback,’ including his wife’s sad Hillary imitation, has naturally conjured up the vile memories of the Lewinsky scandal, and, in turn, Monica herself. Time magazine has a post noting her 40th birthday, and as she does not do interviews, provides a timeline regarding her progress, if you can call it that, since Bill weaseled out of the political coffin of his own making.
Monica’s life reads like a cautionary fable about the perils of allowing oneself to be exploited by a powerful man. She is an expatriot, living in England because her name is a joke in the U.S. She has no husband, children or serious romantic relationship. Unable to find a stable career where her reputation and notoriety isn’t a handicap, she has sunk to repeatedly trying to cash in on her unfortunate celebrity, with a personal handbag line, a documentary, as a host of reality TV show about romantic affairs, and as a Jenny Craig spokesperson, who was dumped because local chains refused to run her ads. Now, desperate for cash, she is said to be shopping a tell-all book about the seamier details of her White House affair.
In short, her life is crap, and Bill Clinton is the reason why. While he is lionized as an elder statesman as if he didn’t disgrace the presidency and permanently lower American expectations of the office, a young, smart, attractive woman who had every reason to expect a bright future at the age of 22, is lost because a powerful man, for selfish reasons, recklessly placed her at risk of being scorched by the fiery heat of politics and history. Scorched she was, and she has never recovered.
It is easy to say that Lewinsky was a consenting adult who is accountable for her fate, but it is also callous, unfair, and ignores obvious truths. Few 22-year-old women could resist the practiced charms of a master beguiler like Bill Clinton, even if he were not the most powerful man on earth at the time. He was older, he was her employer, and he was, for God’s sake, the President of the United States: he should have cared about the danger he was exposing her to, because he understood it as she could not. He didn’t care. Clinton saved himself, but has not, as far as we know, ever lifted a finger to help Lewinsky recover from the disaster he led her into, or meaningfully made amends for the way he derailed her life. That did not stop the devoted feminists of the 2012 Democratic National Convention from making him the star speaker as they assailed the GOP’s “war on women.”
Bill, Hillary, Chelsea…Ken Starr, the U.S. Senate, Newt Gingrich…Linda Tripp, Lanny Davis, Matt Lauer…Lucianne Goldberg, Matt Drudge, Al Gore…Bob Livingston, Betty Currie, Bill Richardson, and many more, all boarded the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky Ethics Train Wreck, and all have more or less recovered from the trauma. All except Monica, who was perhaps the most sympathetic of all.
The train is gone, but for Monica Lewinsky, the wreck remains.
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Graphic: ABC News
Ethics Alarms 
I guess I’m a mean bitch but I don’t have very much sympathy for ML.
22 is old enough to know better than to mess with a married man, at the very least.
She made her bed, so to speak.
Wait till Hilary’s elected. This train has not yet begun to crash.
Well, patch of carpet…
I do. Stupid stuff we do at 22– and I bet there isn’t an adult over that age who hasn’t done stupid stuff they regretted– shouldn’t ruin the rest of your life.
One quibble with your post and it’s about your comment, “She has no husband, children or serious romantic relationship.” Some women don’t want any of those things.
But most women want to be paid more than 78 percent of what men are paid.
I should have added that she does, according to her friends.
OK
Oh, is that why she was slobbering on the knob of a married guy?
I guess we never really stop learning, do we?
Wow, that was a harsh. Yet I’m unclear as to what you think she was learning – she wants a family/relationship or to be paid more?
Pretty funny.. On NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me a few months ago, they had a guest who was a Washington correspondent back in the Monica scandal. He actually went on a blind date with her after it happened and before the story broke.
He said that she was kind of nervous and looking to leave the DC area, but didn’t say why…LOL.. Looks like that didn’t work out either.
The guy was Jake Trapper http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/14334/i-dated-monica-lewinsky
Twenty-two; WHAT does anyone really know about life at twenty-two? You’re basically an overgrown teenager. Three years out of your teens. Maybe college educated, but we know how that works out for millions of “move back home after college” Gen Xers and now Gen Y. Twenty-two is when you are just beginning to learn who you are. You don’t come close to really knowing anything, until thirty. Millions still struggle in the thirties. This delayed adulthood is a direct result of lies fed to my generation and Gen Y. The lie about having it all. You can, but not all at once, especially women. The feminist lie that told women to be like men with our sexuality. So millions enter sexual relationships with no hope of marriage or children. Women are left with the aftermath. Monica thought she loved Bill Clinton. Bill knew he was exploiting Monica. Discarded like so much trash. She should use her economic background to start a business educating and empowering women. Become a public speaker.
Good idea, but you think the Clintons and all their enablers and hangers on would allow Monica Lewinsky to become a public speaker to educate and empower women? You think NOW would allow that? Lanny Davis would be resurrected in a heart beat to go on CNN and MSNBC to annihilate her. Terry McAuliffe would be on NBC gutting her. Bill Maher would be doing entire shows about her. Even Al Franken would go after her on the Senate floor.
You sort of touched on what kills me about the whole Monica thing. Her life was ruined when it was just starting out, and the other person involved– who more than arguably did far worse than she did– has skated along for years and is lauded by “their team” and considered an elder statesman. It’s not right.
“Arguably”? I’d love to hear that “argument.”
It’s the “Eve, the evil temptress, made me do it” argument. Which, weirdly enough, seems to be the tack NOW has taken all along.
Yeah, you reminded me of the ostensibly feminist (or, at least, sensitized-by-feminism) Clinton staffers who referred to “bimbo eruptions.”
Sometimes, I think that the left’s greatest resentment of the right for its hypocrisy is that those on the right dare to be so competitive about it.
Didn’t ML leave for D.C. with the intention of earning her “presidential kneepads”?
Good God. Everyone does stupid things at one time or another. I wholeheartedly agree that it shouldn’t follow her around for the rest of her life. Of course she knew he was married; BILL should’ve known that HE was married. Plus, at 9 encounters, it was hardly an affair, it was a fling. She didn’t even have sex with that creep, thank the Lord. But she’s never gotten over Clinton because the stupid media’s never let her.
There’s tons of mistresses who’ve had flings they’ve gotten over 5 minutes later because the dude was a jackass. That’s who Clinton was: a jackass who turned the blame over to the woman. How unfair and stupid of him to do! She didn’t ruin his rep, Clinton did that just fine to himself. HE’S the one who shouldn’t have been offering himself up for sex to cute young interns. Shame on Clinton taking advantage of a girl like that, then getting away Scott-free while while she’s got to pick up the pieces of the mess HE made to her life.
She can’t be excused from her bahavior now, at 40. There comes a time when even the most ill-parented and exploited ex-kid has to take responsibility for herself and acknowledge the hard reality of her past.
She WAS ill-parented, too. I’ll never forget how her father’s first reaction to the breaking news of her “affair” with Clinton was, “I hope this doesn’t hurt the president’s re-election chances”. I think the reaction of most fathers in his situation would have been a bit different!
But children have to grow up. Monica Lewinsky needed to find within herself the moral courage to tell the truth about what happened and take responsibility for herself as is appropriate as part of it. She’s had the opportunity to do so as a needed public service. Instead (and in Hollywood tradition) she’s chosen to cheaply exploit herself even further.
She’s her own worst enemy, whether she realizes it or not. Likely, she either doesn’t or lacks the character to admit it to herself, much less to others. That, however, doesn’t excuse her two main exploiters when she was young; Bill and Daddy Dearest. Nor does it in any way vindicate the political operatives who scapegoated her in order to protect the predatory president.