“I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”
Monica Lewinsky has finally gotten some good advice from someone, somewhere. After years of relative silence on her part — aside from one poorly-received book in 1999 — Lewinsky is writing a piece in Vanity Fair that tells her side of the story.
With Hillary Clinton gearing up for a campaign that only the most ill-informed don’t know is coming, the story of the affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky is already being batted about again. Many feel that it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and her potential as a U.S. President. But politics is politics and nothing seems to be off-limits if it means keeping ones opponent out of the White House.
Senator Rand Paul, someone that is seen as a potential GOP candidate for President, spoke on Meet the Press, saying that Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky is appropriate to bring up in the context of a Hillary Clinton run.
“This isn’t having an affair,” Paul specified. “He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office.”
Lewinsky says that is not true.
“Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.”
Lewinsky even points out that Hillary saw the whole incident as something consensual.
“Although she regarded Bill as having engaged in ‘gross inappropriate behavior,’ the affair was, nonetheless, ‘consensual’ (was not a power relationship).”
Lewinsky knows that she will be raked over the coals during a Hillary campaign. No doubt she saw some of that during the 2008 Democratic primary, when Hillary eventually lost to Senator Barack Obama. Her phone will no doubt be ringing again, with news hounds wanting to talk to her about how relevant her affair with Bill Clinton should be in a Hillary run.
So Lewinsky is talking now.
“Perhaps by sharing my story, I reasoned, I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation. The question became: How do I find and give a purpose to my past?”
She talks about cyber-bullying and how kids are humiliated in front of a much wider audience than just a school playground. She sees herself as one of the first victims of such tactics.
“Thanks to the Drudge Report, I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet,” she ays, and adds that what she wants “is to get involved with efforts on behalf of victims of online humiliation and harassment and to start speaking on this topic in public forums.”
However you want to react to Monica Lewinsky, for the sake of intellectual honesty, remember she never asked for any of this.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) May 6, 2014
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