Clinton/Lewinsky, revisited (#21)
A look at one of the biggest scandals in American politics shows a different story, 23 years later.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
This dude is lying! That’s what a lot of folks were probably thinking when ex-POTUS Bill Clinton first uttered those unfortunate words that rang around the world. The line, declared in front of millions of viewers glued to their TV screens in 1998, was the president’s response to his alleged affair with a 20-something White House intern named Monica Lewinsky — a name totally unknown before, now synonymous with scandal and adultery in the American lexicon.
In the decades since the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal has spawned countless retellings. The latest is FX/Hulu’s new show Impeachment: An American Crime Story. But the team behind the show’s production reflects society’s shifting attitudes when it comes to the treatment of women, and how that has influenced the way we interpret one of the most famous presidential scandals in recent memory.
Older millennials like myself, who were kids during the Clinton era, will remember very little about the actual details of the scandal without the aid of Google, except for the fact that Lewinsky was possibly the most hated woman in the country at the time. While the philandering president had to go through a half-baked impeachment as a result (he was impeached by the Republican-controlled House, but not by the Senate), he largely came out of the ordeal unscathed. Lewinsky bore most of the negative press spurred by the scandal, as did Clinton’s humiliated wife Hilary.
Lewinsky became an easy target after the affair came out, never mind that it came out because of her friend Linda Tripp, a much older woman and a White House veteran with her own vendetta, who divulged Lewinsky’s affair with POTUS to federal investigators — and, of course, a book publisher. It didn’t help that the incredibly long report from the investigation led by Kenneth Starr, who was hungry to find something on Clinton, detailed all of her sexual encounters with Clinton and was released to the public.
Overnight, Lewinsky became the young bimbo who slept with the president. She was the butt of relentless jokes on late-night TV — to a point that David Letterman later said he regretted his part in her public shaming — and was subjected to a barrage of harassment on the then-still new internet. But it wasn’t just old stale men with microphones contributing to her brutal humiliation — many women ostracized Lewinsky, too, using misogynist language of the slut-shaming variety. She opened up about it decades later, telling the Guardian she felt let down by high-profile feminists:
“I think it’s fair to say that whatever mistakes I made, I was hung out to dry by a lot of people — by a lot of the feminists who had loud voices. I wish it had been handled differently. It was very scary and very confusing to be a young woman thrust on to the world stage and not belonging to any group.
My peers and I didn’t really get what was going on as kids, but most understood Lewinsky was supposed to be a bad lady; a she-devil that seduced the president, even though in reality she was just a 21-year-old intern when the affair started (Clinton, by contrast, was 49 and one of the most powerful men in the world).
Looking back at the scandal two decades later, after the #MeToo movement and with the mainstreaming of critical feminism, things don’t read the same. This is not to say that Lewinsky is without fault — she was, after all, a legal adult who had an affair with someone else’s husband. But the idea that a person as powerful as POTUS would not have overwhelming influence over a young lowly intern is rightfully being reexamined in the public discourse. Lewinsky herself is just coming to terms with her own ingrained biases about her relationship with Clinton, writing in Vanity Fair:
Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern. I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)
The public is picking up on its unfairness, which often impacts women more so than men, especially when it comes to topics like women’s versus men’s sexuality. The Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, for instance, saw public smears mostly hurled toward the women in the saga — the mistress (Lewinsky) and the missus (Hilary) and even the messenger (Tripp), instead of the married man caught with his pants down (Clinton).
In the end, Clinton got to keep being president and stayed popular. He later became a sought-after fundraiser and consistently ranks among the most popular presidents in history (he’s so well-liked, in fact, Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Sanders, who is running to be Arkansas governor just like her daddy, Mike Huckabee, put Clinton in her new campaign ad). Meanwhile, Lewinsky, who was labeled a “caged dog with her 24-year-old libido” among other nasty things, spent the next decade in self-imposed exile, unable to land a traditional job due to her “history,” and was at times suicidal (she’s now doing much better as an anti-bullying advocate and making bank through media appearances).
Would Lewinsky be subjected to the extreme public shaming she endured in the 90s if the affair had happened today — a post-#MeToo era, but well past the advent of social media, a known propellant of public shaming? It’s hard to say. But the fact that Lewinsky has become a growing presence in the media sans hate shows the winds are changing. She’s even been given the opportunity to highlight her POV of the saga as a producer on the new Impeachment series, underlining just how much public attitudes have changed since ‘98.
But Lewinsky isn’t the only woman to endure public humiliation because of Bill Clinton. Before he set foot in the White House, Clinton was already a notorious philanderer, an issue that came up on the campaign trail repeatedly. In 1992, Gennifer Flowers came forward about her affair with Clinton — then governor of Arkansas — claiming they’d been involved in a 12-year relationship. Just like with Lewinsky, Clinton denied Flowers’s claims. When Flowers released tape recordings of her phone conversations with Clinton, his team claimed they were somehow doctored (in the ‘98 Starr deposition that led to the uncovering of his relationship with Lewinsky, Clinton admitted to a “sexual encounter” with Flowers, saying it was just the one time lol).
While Clinton’s affairs with Flowers and Lewinsky were consensual, multiple women have also publicly accused Clinton of sexual wrongdoing — Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick (who alleged Clinton raped her when he was Attorney General of Arkansas), and Paula Jones. Lewinsky has now been given the microphone to tell her side of the story, but the other women have not been afforded the same grace and largely remain dismissed as cases of “he said, she said.”
It is likely in part because their accounts have been coopted by Republicans looking to drag Democrats through the dirt. But it could also be something deeper: is it that people can’t swallow the idea of Clinton as a serial assaulter, ala Andrew Cuomo? Do people think the disgraced intern is more deserving of public acceptance because she was “a kid” at the time, while the rest were grown women who should’ve known how to protect themselves (which is a ridiculous assertion)? It’s all worth considering as we rethink our ideals of who gets cast as a villain and who gets the benefit of the doubt, especially in the hot messy world of politics and the court of public opinion.
EXTRA, EXTRA — NEWSOM PULLED A ‘WALKER’!
As I was finishing up this newsletter, the projections for California’s recall election came out so thought I should let you know what’s up! According to ABC News’s projection around midnight (with 62% of expected vote reporting in), Gov. Gavin Newsom has won the recall election with 5.3 million or 67% of Californians voting NO to ousting the incumbent. By comparison, only 2.6 million (33%) voted YES to the recall. This makes Newsom the second governor in U.S. history to survive a recall vote, alongside Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. NBC and the Associated Press have also called it for Newsom.
Evidently, the Golden State remains a blue stronghold! Now, the question remains: will the rejected recall be enough to deter a heavy challenge by Republicans in Newsom’s bid for reelection next year? We’ll have to wait and see.
WHEN DIAMONDS *AREN’T* A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND
Queen Bey and her king landed in some hot water following her new ad campaign with the iconic jeweler Tiffany & Co., in which the multi-hyphen artist wore the company’s stunning Tiffany Diamond, a 287.42-carat yellow-colored rough stone as she sings the famous Breakfast at Tiffany’s tune “Moon River.”
According to the company, the diamond was mined from the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa in 1877 before it was bought by Tiffany’s founder, Charles Lewis Tiffany for $18,000 (the gem is now valued at $30 million). Beyonce is only the fourth woman in history to wear the diamond, and the first Black woman to do so. But the shiny rock’s roots in colonialism and, very likely, the exploitation of Black African workers did not sit well with some fans.
As Susanne Ramírez de Arellano explained in her op-ed for NBC News, Africa’s diamond trade has a bloody history, a fact that gave rise to the term “blood diamond,” defined by the United Nations as “a gem mined in a war zone and used by militias and warlords to finance their operations.”
Although there’s no way to determine for certain whether this was the case for the Tiffany Diamond, questions of human rights violations are still concerns within the Kimberley diamond pipeline. As de Arellano points out, Beyonce’s association with a precious gem that was likely sourced on the back of exploited African labor and landed in the U.S. through the western system of colonialism contradicts the singer’s work to uplift both African culture and the Black American experience in recent years.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, who is Ghanaian American, described the partnership as a terrible calculation, writing:
“Tiffany may be trying to rebrand, but it has badly misjudged the ethos of the moment. Its campaign doesn’t celebrate Black liberation — it elevates a painful symbol of colonialism… Black liberation cannot come from the same institutions that engorged themselves for decades on exploited Black labor.”
Beyonce is allegedly furious at her team for not doing their homework about issues that could potentially arise from her association with the Tiffany Diamond. But the partnership seems to still be in full swing regardless, and the diamond jeweler has since announced its pledge of $2 million in scholarship funding for students in the arts at historically Black colleges, in partnership with the power couple’s philanthropic foundations.
Do you think Beyonce made a boo-boo with this Tiffany’s partnership? Did her mama, Tina, miss the point when she argued that her daughter’s critics probably never check where they buy their diamonds, too? Share your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post or reply to this email!
TWEET OF THE WEEK
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
🔥 It’s official: K-pop group BTS is now recognized as special envoys of South Korea. President Moon Jae-in presented them with their special diplomatic passports in an official ceremony this week. | The Korea Herald
🔥 It looks like the U.S. and China finally agree on something after the two countries brokered an agreement to block the Myanmar junta’s recognition at the United Nations, in a blow to the country’s military regime. | Foreign Policy
🔥 Canadian PM Justin Trudeau called for a snap election last month, a decision that hasn’t been popular with the public. Here’s what happened in the only English-language debate among candidates ahead of the September 20 vote. | Guardian
🔥 NY lawmakers paid a visit to Rikers Island to inspect the incarceration facility after 10 detainees were reported dead so far this year, including several suicides. Here’s what they found. | The City
🔥 The DOJ filed a lawsuit against Texas over its near-total abortion ban, which deputizes private citizens to enforce the law and enables them to sue someone who has an abortion. | The 19th
🔥 Elizabeth Holmes, the blonde, black-turtlenecked founder of Theranos is now on trial for fraud — while pregnant. If convicted, she could face 20 years in prison. Follow her case in the new podcast Bad Blood: The Final Chapter here.
🖊️ This weekend was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Here’s my review of Some Kids Left Behind, the memoir of student survivor-turned-healthcare advocate Lila Nordstrom on the struggle to fight for a survivor community largely left out of the conversation. | Village Voice
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Thanks for keeping up with The P Word!
Stay peachy,
Natasha