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. Meredith Blake is an entertainment reporter for the Los Angeles Times based out of New York City, where she primarily covers television. A native of Bethlehem, Pa. Adult Swim Fest thrives by blurring the line between virtual and reality.
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Monica Seles is a former No. She is also an author and speaker, and competed on Dancing with the Stars in Linda Tripp was a former civil servant who worked at the Pentagon during the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal. Her secret recordings of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment in President Bill Clinton. Stephen Breyer is an associate justice for the U. Supreme Court, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton.
Kenneth W. Starr is an American lawyer best known for leading an independent investigation of the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals during President Bill Clinton's administration.
Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States, and the second to be impeached. You know, I think it's important to take responsibility for mistakes, and I've worked hard to work through those," she said. Social media companies 'need to do better'. Lewinsky, following years out of the public eye after becoming a figure of national fascination for her affair with Clinton, is now known as an activist against bullying and cyberbullying.
She told Tapper that social media companies "need to do better" as scrutiny builds over new revelations from a Facebook whistleblower, who suggested the social media giant has been aware its platforms are used to spread hate, violence and misinformation and has tried to hide that evidence.
And they need to do better," she said. Her comments follow reporting by the Wall Street Journal based on internal Facebook documents that show the company is aware of the "toxic" effects its platforms, especially Instagram, can have on young people.
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testified in the Senate on Tuesday that the company's leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won't do it "because they have put their astronomical profits" before people.
Facebook issued a statement following the hearing that sought to discredit Haugen. Asked about social media companies and the testimony from Haugen, Lewinsky, who also serves as an executive producer for the forthcoming HBO Max documentary " 15 Minutes of Shame ," which examines public shaming in the age of social media, said: "In part, what our doc is looking at is this online behavior that happens and women and people from marginalized communities are torn apart way more online.
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