Why monica lewinsky

In , she reemerged into public view as an anti-bullying advocate, first with a well-received TED talk and then with the Vanity Fair article, in both, asking the country to reconsider its eagerness to shame her. That Intern. That Vixen. Many reacted with a surprising amount of remorse. And she was a kid, she was 21, Lewinsky had made a mistake, the consensus came to be, but that was no excuse for the way the world humiliated her.

As the Me Too movement took off in , the Monica Lewinsky story evolved once again, and Lewinsky became a symbol of how liberals got feminism wrong in The new line of thinking was that responsibility for the mistake had rested with Bill Clinton all along. He was the one who had all the power in his relationship with Lewinsky. He was the leader of the free world, and she was a year-old intern.

He was the one who had a responsibility not to pursue a relationship with her. The fact that he did anyway was an abuse of his power. Part of this more recent consensus is the idea that liberals and feminists got it wrong back in by rallying behind Clinton instead of publicly supporting Lewinsky, that they focused all their attention on the fact that Lewinsky said the affair was consensual rather than on the vast power disparity between Clinton and Lewinsky.

That has come to be the new conventional wisdom about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. However, if we revisit the reactions people had to Monica Lewinsky in , it becomes clear that few were actually ignoring that power disparity back then. It was central to the story being told about Monica Lewinsky, though the associations it carried were far different from those it carries today. The right-leaning Drudge Report was the outlet that broke the story of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. She had it coming.

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. I was 22, literally just out of college. And I think that the power differentials there are something that I couldn't ever fathom consequences at 22 that I understand obviously so differently at Renewed attention is being paid to the affair that Lewinsky, then a White House intern, had with Clinton, with the twists and turns of the scandal being dramatized in " Impeachment: American Crime Story ," a new FX series for which Lewinsky is a producer.

She told Tapper Tuesday that "we're seeing aspects of Bill that we haven't seen before. The former President has reflected about his relationship with Lewinsky over the years, including in comments in where he seemed to defend himself and suggest he didn't owe Lewinsky an apology, saying at the time: "No, I do not -- I have never talked to her.

But I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry. That's very different. The apology was public. Read More. Clinton later admitted that the defense was not his "finest moment" and said he felt "terrible" that the affair had defined Lewinsky's life. While she was on the phone, the president smiled at her.

Sometime later, during a lull in the calls, she raised the back of her jacket to allow a glimpse of her thong underwear, which rose over the waistband of her blue pants.

Sarah Paulson has regrets about playing Linda Tripp. She also told her aunt, Debra Finerman. In reality, Lewinsky did confide in several people other than Tripp — 10 in total, she told Walters. This group included girlfriends from college and high school. Several of these individuals would be called to testify. Meredith Blake is an entertainment reporter for the Los Angeles Times based out of New York City, where she primarily covers television.

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