Monica Lewinsky is back – and in her new piece in Vanity Fair, explaining her perspective on her affair with then-President Bill Clinton, she says a mouthful. Her piece covers everything from that blue dress to Hillary’s impact on her life, from Matt Drudge’s groundbreaking coverage to her inability to move beyond the Clinton years. Here, then, are the top 7 things you need to know about Monica’s big exposé:
She Regrets What Happened. Just in case she’s not clear: “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.” What she mostly regrets, as we’ll see, is getting caught.
She Wants to Move Beyond Her Big Blow-Up With Clinton. “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress,” she writes. Doing a long piece for Vanity Fair about the beret and the blue dress may be an odd way to do that, but hey – it is Monica Lewinsky we’re talking about here. She adds that moving beyond the Clinton years may finally allow her to find her own happy ending: “I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)”
It Was Consensual. As if we didn’t know that Monica willingly entered the Oval Office, she tells us once again: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship.” Feminists who had ignored the consensual nature of many office relationships will undoubtedly side with Monica on this one. After all, to otherwise would be to undercut Bill. And as former Time magazine correspondent Nina Burleigh said in 1998, “I’d be happy to give [Clinton oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”
Clinton and Co. Strong-Armed Lewinsky. Lewinsky states:
Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position… The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.
That, of course, is what Clinton’s opponents said at the time. The media ignored that perspective on behalf of its favorite politician.
She Doesn’t Like Hillary. She writes in response to Hillary Clinton reportedly calling her a “narcissistic loony toon:”
My first thought, as I was getting up to speed: If that’s the worst thing she said, I should be so lucky. Mrs. Clinton, I read, had supposedly confided to Blair that, in part, she blamed herself for her husband’s affair (by being emotionally neglectful) and seemed to forgive him. Although she regarded Bill as having engaged in ‘gross inappropriate behavior,’ the affair was, nonetheless, ‘consensual’ (was not a power relationship).
Yes, Hillary, it seems, is a nasty piece of work. That’s particularly true if Hillary actually sympathized with her hound dog husband, as her own letters suggest.
She Thinks Beyoncé Should Target Clinton. She’s certainly inarguable on this point, writing about Beyoncé’s lyrics in her song “Partition.” Beyoncé’s lyrics state: “Oh he so horny, yeah he want to f*** / He popped all my buttons, and he ripped my blouse / He Monica Lewinsky-ed all on my gown.” Monica’s response: “Thanks, Beyoncé, but if we’re verbing, I think you meant ‘Bill Clinton’d all on my gown,’ not ‘Monica Lewinsky’d.'”
She’s Had a Rough Time Since the 1990s. We all remember the weight loss ads, but Monica hasn’t had it easy since those days. She writes:
I was never ‘quite right’ for the position. In some cases, I was right for all the wrong reasons, as in ‘Of course, your job would require you to attend our events.’ And, of course, these would be events at which press would be in attendance.
She says she turned down $10 million in book deals because it “[felt] like the right thing to do.” As opposed to, say, performing oral sex on a married man in the Oval Office.
Lewinsky’s piece may be bad news for Bill, but it’s great news for Hillary – after all, it’s the “victimized Hillary” who parlayed sympathy into a Senate seat. Can she do the same once again with the presidency?
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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