[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]The Clinton Affair is a powerful account that weaves the cold, calculated, privilege of Clinton’s unrestrained sexual misconduct…[/perfectpullquote] In the post-apocalyptic months since Mrs. Clinton lost her bid to perch her sensible shoes upon the Resolute Desk, a revisiting of her husband’s most troubling time in office 20 years ago commences. In the new A&E documentary, The Clinton Affair, Monica Lewinsky shines a light on a shadowy past Bill and Hill would rather keep in the dark.
Two decades after Clinton’s House of Representative’s impeachment, and on the backside of the #MeToo movement, Lewinsky explains how an idealistic young college graduate became a victim of sexual assault by the leader of the free world.
For Democrats, it’s yet another chapter in the saga of the presidential couple that wouldn’t go away. For conservatives, well, they are still disgusted with the former “It” family that brought American morality and respectful decorum to a new low.
For Miss Lewinsky, it’s simply cathartic. As she penned in an essay for Vanity Fair, “Why did I choose to participate in this docuseries? One main reason: because I could.”
Monica Lewinsky
The Truth Will Set You Free
For three evenings, A&E dissected the events surrounding the very public reveal of Clinton’s abuses of power through sexual assault documented as early as the 1980s, when he was on the campaign trail for Arkansas governor.
Following the accusations of Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Willey, Lewinsky’s story was picked up as well and became the focal point. She had the most time invested and was in love with Bill, whereas the others were unwitting victims.
She admits to wanting the affair: “I blurted out, ‘You know I have a crush on you.’ He laughed, smiled and asked me if I wanted to go into the back office and I did.”
There was a lot of back office play after that encounter. So much so that the whispers escalated to rumors and Monica was relegated to a Pentagon job – until after the 1996 election when Clinton promised to bring her back to the White House.
He didn’t keep that promise, but he kept Lewinsky on call for his needs, via his personal secretary, Betty Currie. As Lewinsky explains:
“She brought me into the Oval Office and all three of us went into the back study, and she went into the dining room to hide there. Because the illusion to everyone else was that I was not alone with him. We moved to the bathroom and were more intimate. There was some attention paid on me and then I was reciprocating, where up until that point he had always stopped before completion on his part. I sort of stood up and said I wanted to move past that stage and so he finally said okay. So that finished and then I hugged him after, and he hugged me.”
No one bothered to tell Lewinsky of the DNA stain on her blue dress — which all bubbled up during Special Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into the business-dealings of the first family and let loose in a media frenzy upon the publication of Starr’s report.
Lewinsky, effectively gaslighted by the Clintons, Kenneth Starr, and the media, experienced fleeting thoughts of suicide. “I was mortified, I was afraid of what it was going to do to my family. I was still in love with Bill at the time. I felt really responsible.”
Clinton never again spoke with Lewinsky, and the docuseries brashly points out that his behavior is a trait – a modus operandi indicative of a sexual predator.
Gaslighting
The term “Gaslight” comes from a 1938 play – later made into a movie in 1944 – of the same name. A man staged events and situations so that his wife would question her sanity, perceptions, and reality.
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski
In today’s world, no other institution manipulates, misdirects, contradicts, and lies in the attempt to destabilize the victim and recraft a narrative than corporate media. In the 1990s, the press was engaged in protecting and promoting President Clinton.
Willey, Jones, Broaddrick, and Lewinsky were slut-shamed, mocked, vilified by the media, and in turn, the unforgiving and fawning Clinton public, in the protection of the president. Not the office – the man.
Salman Rushdie once observed, “Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.”
This docuseries grants power to those women who found themselves, tragically, in the Clinton orbit.
But The Clinton Affair is a powerful account that weaves the cold, calculated, privilege of Clinton’s unrestrained sexual misconduct, ranging from harassment to rape, into one dose of reality that some Democrats will find hard to swallow.
