If you think the press is guilty of giving former President Bill Clinton a pass on his history of sexually abusing and exploiting women, you’re not alone. Monica Lewinsky is right there with you.
The woman at the center of the 1998 Clinton sex scandal accused the press this week of dereliction of duty, claiming in an essay in Vanity Fair that she had to wait nearly 20 years for reporters to ask the former president (somewhat) uncomfortable questions about the affair and his abuse of power.
“The debate over who gets to live in Victimville fascinates me, as a public person who has watched strangers discuss my own ‘victim’ status at length on social media,” she writes, recalling clearly that she was portrayed in 1998 as a star-struck seductress by players in both the Clinton White House and the press. “Do I wish I could erase my years in D.C. from memory, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind–style? Well, is the sky blue? But I can’t.”
“And in order to move forward in the life I have, I must take risks — both professional and emotional. (It’s a combustible combination.) An important part of moving forward is excavating, often painfully, what has gone before,” Lewinsky added, seeking to explain her decision to participate in the A&E docuseries The Clinton Affair. “When politicians are asked uncomfortable questions, they often duck and dodge by saying, That’s old news. It’s in the past. Yes. That’s exactly where we need to start to heal — with the past. But it’s not easy.”
Lewinsky then zeroes in on what has been a common complaint on the Right: that no matter what Bill Clinton admits to doing to women, or is alleged to have done, many in our supposedly serious and hard-hitting news media are eager to give him a pass or simply look the other way. It wasn’t until very recently — nearly two decades after the 1998 scandal first struck — that reporters began asking the former president difficult questions about the fact that he engaged in an extramarital relationship with a 25-year-old intern and that his White House sought later to portray her as the villain.
“For the first time in more than 15 years, Bill Clinton was being asked directly about what transpired,” Lewinsky writes. “If you want to know what power looks like, watch a man safely, even smugly, do interviews for decades, without ever worrying whether he will be asked the questions he doesn’t want to answer.”
That is as succinct a description of the press’ Bill Clinton problem as I’ve ever read.
Unfortunately, if you had hoped newsrooms would come away from her essay with a sense of remorse and a renewed commitment to holding the powerful to account, deeply regretting that they allowed a sexual predator to flourish and go unchallenged all these years, you are going to be sorely disappointed. For a great number of reporters, the key takeaway from the essay is the moment where Lewinsky writes, “[I]f I were to see Hillary Clinton in person today, I know that I would summon up whatever force I needed to again acknowledge to her — sincerely — how very sorry I am.”
As if on cue, the nation’s leading newsrooms went to work:
- Politico: Monica Lewinsky: I would apologize to Hillary Clinton again
- NBC News: Monica Lewinsky says she wants to personally apologize to Hillary Clinton for ‘how very sorry I am’
- New York Daily News: Monica Lewinsky says she’d apologize to Hillary Clinton if she saw her today
- Fox News: Monica Lewinsky says she would apologize to Hillary Clinton in person, explains why she participated in new doc
- People magazine: Monica Lewinsky Says She Wants to Apologize to Hillary Clinton Again — This Time in Person
Imagine reading an essay like the one in Vanity Fair, where the author describes the trauma of being scapegoated by powerful political operatives and their allies in the press, and coming away thinking the topline is that the author has offered to apologize to the woman who called her a “narcissistic loony toon.”
I’m pretty certain that’s not the most newsworthy item.
