Monica Lewinsky

It's pathetic that instead of having moved on with her life, 2 decades later she still wants to publicly rehash a stale and tawdry affair that nobody except maybe Glen Beck thinks is relevant anymore. She's not burning the beret and dress, she's donning them again for whatever attention/mileage she can get in hopes that her and Bill's behavior will reflect badly on Hillary.

Did I say pathetic?

Oh yeah, I guess I did.

people have to make a living.

when you're taken advantage of in a boss/employee power dynamic, initially called a liar and then (once you're acknowledged as not a liar) slut-shamed mercilessly (often by self-styled progressives and feminists), i guess you define your marketability how you have to.

It's not just her.

CNN was stuck on this story for 20 minutes plus this morning. I wonder if Vanity Fair is getting a bump in circulation from it.

Tawdry tale=much airtime, so it seems.

Um her life was basically ruined by this, as William pointed out she was slut shamed into a villain while Bill Clinton - the man who was the actual cheater in the scenario, who was also the most powerful man in the world at the time - has been forgiven. Lewinsky's correction of Beyonce's lyrics are extremely telling: ""Thanks, Beyoncé, but if we're verbing, I think you meant 'Bill Clinton'd all on my gown,' not 'Monica Lewinsky'd.'" The fact that she was the verb and not the man who actually did it? Very typical of how people place the blame on the woman in such situations.

So yeah, I don't blame her for cashing in.

Gotta love the commenters in that website. It's like watching an Ayn Rand reality show.

Toothpaste said:

Um her life was basically ruined by this, as William pointed out she was slut shamed into a villain while Bill Clinton - the man who was the actual cheater in the scenario, who was also the most powerful man in the world at the time - has been forgiven.

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I didn't need to "forgive" either one of them because I never cared, but she's never done anything worthwhile to redeem herself in other people's eyes.

I never said she had to redeem herself, I just said the way they vilified her and quickly forgave Clinton is very telling. Also what did she do that was so evil that she needed redemption for? She was the other woman. That's it. She didn't sell state secrets, she didn't do anything horrible to Hillary. She had sex with a married man. She wasn't even cheating on anyone herself. (I'm not saying that she's all innocent, but it's hardly worth destroying a woman over, even if she never redeems herself)

Look I never much cared about this scandal and found the whole thing quite silly. But I do really hate how she was eviscerated by the media. And I do think that Beyonce lyric is a perfect little example of the way the public viewed the scandal at large.

Toothpaste said:

Um her life was basically ruined by this, as William pointed out she was slut shamed into a villain while Bill Clinton - the man who was the actual cheater in the scenario, who was also the most powerful man in the world at the time - has been forgiven.

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This is absolutely true. It is also unfortunately the way all discovered extramarital shenanigans are treated when made public. The woman is slut shamed, the man is forgiven for his falling prey to her wiles, the cuckolded wife is deemed either victim or shrew. The only difference I see in Monica's case is that she seems genuinely surprised it turned out this way.

20 years later this is relevant how? Oh, that's right. Hillary may run for president. Finally, Monica has a platform upon which to *not* talk about the blue dress.

Yawn.

Celia Cyanide said:

I didn't need to "forgive" either one of them because I never cared, but she's never done anything worthwhile to redeem herself in other people's eyes.

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Does she need to?

Were she to try and redeem herself in everyone else's eyes, I suppose she'd be busy for quite a long time. Placing the meter-reader of one's self worth in the hands of others sounds like a real fun time.

Toothpaste said:

I never said she had to redeem herself, I just said the way they vilified her and quickly forgave Clinton is very telling. Also what did she do that was so evil that she needed redemption for? She was the other woman. That's it. She didn't sell state secrets, she didn't do anything horrible to Hillary. She had sex with a married man. She wasn't even cheating on anyone herself. (I'm not saying that she's all innocent, but it's hardly worth destroying a woman over, even if she never redeems herself)

Look I never much cared about this scandal and found the whole thing quite silly. But I do really hate how she was eviscerated by the media. And I do think that Beyonce lyric is a perfect little example of the way the public viewed the scandal at large.

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Absolutely without sarcasm, I like what you're saying. I hope if anything comes of Monica's return to the spotlight, it will be that we finally begin to question the inherent unfairness of how women are routinely vilified in sex scandals.

Toothpaste said:

I never said she had to redeem herself, I just said the way they vilified her and quickly forgave Clinton is very telling.

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Telling of what? People who forgave Clinton generally thought he was a good president. She hasn't really done anything worthy of respect.

Celia Cyanide said:

Telling of what? People who forgave Clinton generally thought he was a good president. She hasn't really done anything worthy of respect.

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Nor anything any more worthy of disrespect than Bill Clinton did.

I write mostly memoir and personal essay and get paid (much less than her) for it. Sure, it's rarely tawdry and are rarely involves famous people, but it's my life and I share it (though with a smaller audience) so I can't fault someone else for doing so. I go back decades and rather than not being able to let go off whatever I'm writing about, for me, it's more that I can now write about it and see it as craft. Ms.

Lewinsky writes about "taking back [her] narrative" and I can understand that. I can give her the benefit of the doubt, at least until read the whole story (I don't subscribe), if I choose. And it is a choice, after all.

I find a few things of interest here. Very few.

1) That this is coming now, just as people are talking about Hillary running again for the WH. Interesting.

2) She says she was taken advantage of, but it was consenual. She wasn't a child. While I do think there was a tremendous amount of slut shaming, let's be honest. She knew what she was doing. If I recall, Clinton wasn't her first affair with a married man. True, she didn't take vows with Mrs. Clinton and therefore didn't break any. But that doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with having a relationship with a man you know is married. She owns that. And while it's disgusting some of the treatment she got from some of the same people who defended and forgave Bill Clinton, she was no innocent lamb either.

3) The last thing we need is to reopen the whole pointless debate that this began. Where I remember nearly everyone having their head up their ass no matter which side you took.

ladyleeona said:

Does she need to?

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I don't give a fuck, but I'm not here bitching about people not liking her.

Booker said:

It could be that it is not politically motivated even though Hillary bids for the 2016 presidency.

People like Tyler Clementi suffered (and suffer) a lot of humiliations and she wants to help and save them.

Purely ethical reasons.

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Yes it could be.

Right now, the "right" is putting forward that the "left" wanted this article in Vanity Fair to get this issue "out of the way" ahead of Hillary's presidential run.

So everyone is spinning it to suit their own narrative. It seems nothing has changed when it comes to Lewinsky.

I'm not sure I understand the correlation between shaming a gay teen caught kissing a male student and being outed on the web with having an affair with a married man. How does her story help the next Tyler Clementi? Tyler did nothing wrong.

What'd she do? She walked into the Oval Office of the White House of the United States and flashed her thong. Were she related to me, I'd be ashamed of that behaviour.

Having an assignation as a consensual adult is an entirely other thing. That, I couldn't care less.

The funniest thing I heard related to the resurrection of this story was some conservative on CNN yesterday opining on how perhaps it was engineered by the Dems to 'get the story over with' before 2016. Dude, it was over with before people voting for the first time in 2016 were born. Give it up.

Booker said:

It could be that it is not politically motivated even though Hillary bids for the 2016 presidency.

People like Tyler Clementi suffered (and suffer) a lot of humiliations and she wants to help and save them.

Purely ethical reasons.

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i would hesitate to call it "purely ethical."

all things clinton are relevant again, and it offers her a payday.

the clinton political machine crushed her and reduced her to a punchline that she can never outrun, so she is left to trade on her history and reputation, and it's clinton season again so she's lacing up her boots.

Vince524 said:

I find a few things of interest here. Very few.

1) That this is coming now, just as people are talking about Hillary running again for the WH. Interesting.

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What's your theory? That it's people for Hillary or against her using this?

2) She says she was taken advantage of, but it was consenual. She wasn't a child. While I do think there was a tremendous amount of slut shaming, let's be honest. She knew what she was doing. If I recall, Clinton wasn't her first affair with a married man. True, she didn't take vows with Mrs. Clinton and therefore didn't break any. But that doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with having a relationship with a man you know is married. She owns that. And while it's disgusting some of the treatment she got from some of the same people who defended and forgave Bill Clinton, she was no innocent lamb either.

3) The last thing we need is to reopen the whole pointless debate that this began. Where I remember nearly everyone having their head up their ass no matter which side you took.

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So, after you talk about how much slut-shaming there was, you say a few things that seem in the neighborhood of slut-shaming. And after you give your opinion, you say that the last thing we need is to have another pointless debate. But that's after you raised the points you did, which only encourage more discussion and debate.

I don't know, maybe that's why she wants her say. Because we've all had ours.