This version of the story is the one we are mostly thinking about when we suggest that American culture has moved past such outright vicious cruelty in the years since But there were other versions of the story floating around at the same time.
It also existed in , albeit as a minority view. It was, strikingly, a viewpoint held both by feminists on the left, where the opinion was politically unhelpful and hence unpopular, and by the conservative religious right, where the opinion was politically very useful indeed. I mean, and what her friends were saying at the time, and what her mother was saying.
Obviously there was available to objective observers evidence of how painful this was for her no matter what she was saying about how she was fine. In that viewpoint, Hirshman found an unlikely ally in conservative then-Sen.
John Ashcroft. Other feminists made similar cases. There had been no quid pro quo; Lewinsky had by her own account consented. Clinton also faced disapproval from women within his administration. Shalala was a former college president, she explained to Slow Burn in , and she used to fire people for doing more or less what Clinton had done to Lewinsky.
And it was just unacceptable, and everybody was being a bit of an apologist for him in the room and I just blew up. Yet in her later columns, Dowd would begin to criticize Lewinsky, too, in ways that show how this second narrative of the scandal could contain within it a cruel and vicious third narrative.
In June , six months after the story broke, Monica Lewinsky posed for a series of portraits in Vanity Fair , wearing red lipstick and designer gowns. What Dowd seemed to find pornographic and sickening about the photos was the way they played against her sense that Lewinsky was a victim and hence properly deserved to be in a state of humiliation. Shades of JonBenet Ramsey. This was the third narrative of the Monica Lewinsky story, and it functions as a synthesis of the first two.
Lewinsky was unquestionably taken advantage of, goes this version of the story, and Clinton was unquestionably in the wrong. But the fact that Lewinsky could be so easily manipulated proves that she was foolish and childlike. Her victimhood means that she deserves contempt and scorn. At times, this narrative is able to veil itself in apparent pity for Lewinsky. The same logic also emerged on the feminist left.
The many plaintiffs of the Clinton scandals are cast, or cast themselves, as girls. Faludi did not dispute, in this particular article, accounts that Lewinsky, Jones, and Broaddrick had been injured by Clinton. To be a victim of a sexual predator is, according to this narrative, to be worthy of humiliation. That idea lay in the fourth version of the Monica Lewinsky story.
In , when feminists like Hirshman made the claim that Clinton took advantage of Lewinsky, they were met with outrage from other feminists. In other words, we will have gone a long way back, baby.
Feminists should support Monica Lewinsky not as a victim of a rapacious man but as a young woman with a libido of her own. This fourth Monica Lewinsky narrative made the case that, regardless of any disparity in power between intern and president, Lewinsky was fully capable of making her own sexual choices.
But two decades later, that Observer roundtable and its lascivious glee at the delight of sex with the president are understandably remembered as a symbol of all the ways feminists failed Lewinsky. Shortly after discussing all the ways in which it would be a dream to sleep with the president, the panel turns to the question of what Lewinsky might do next. Nancy Friday, author of The Power of Beauty , has a constructive suggestion. After further debate as to whether Lewinsky spat or swallowed after oral sex, Jung comes to a conclusion.
The show sees a young airheaded actress audition to play Lewinsky in an upcoming prestige biopic. The double entendre of the conversation makes clear what the gleeful salaciousness of the Observer panel also revealed: how little distance there is between this celebratory feminist narrative and that original mainstream narrative that Lewinsky was nothing more than a slut who deserved to be humiliated. Lewinsky allowed herself to be treated badly by the president.
Goldberg admitted having such a discussion with Tripp, calling it a "Nancy Drew fantasy. In late November, Lewinsky mentioned to Tripp that she intended to have the dress, which she had been saving a souvenir, dry-cleaned for a family event. Tripp, anxious to preserve the dress to nail the President, discouraged her from doing so. When Lewinsky expressed skepticism that it would ever come to that, Tripp told her that the dress made her look "really fat" and she shouldn't wear it again in public.
In January , Tripp gave tapes of her phone calls with Lewinsky to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for immunity from prosecution. In one of the most famous lines in modern American history, in a live televised address, President Clinton stated:.
President Clinton was later impeached by the House of Representatives on the grounds that he had committed perjury and obstructed the course of justice. Although agreeing to testify to the Starr Commission granted Lewinsky immunity from prosecution, she immediately found herself in one of the biggest media and political storms in modern American history. Vilified by sections of the press, she agreed to an interview on ABC in , which was watched by over 70 million people — a record for any news show at the time.
Al Gore, who served as Vice President under Clinton and later ran for President in the election, blamed the impeachment scandal on his election loss. Despite trying to make a name for herself in a variety of careers, including as a businesswoman and TV presenter, Lewinsky struggled to escape press attention about her relationship with Clinton.
Over 20 years later, media scrutiny of Lewinsky remains intense. After pursuing further study in social psychology, Lewinsky spent most of a decade trying to avoid the press.
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