Bill Clinton Was NOT the Victim in the Monica Lewinsky Adultery Scandal (but Neither Was She)

Let me go ahead and get the right people enraged, from the start.

If you are a devoted Democrat, who remembers the Clinton years with fondness, but who has also used Donald Trump’s multiple adulteries and atrocious, misogynistic tendencies as a reason to attack the man, you are hyper-partisan and a hypocrite. Fix your life!

With that out of the way, let’s talk about former President Bill Clinton’s near-hysterical breakdown on the Today Show, when asked if he owed his former intern, Monica Lewinsky an apology, given the new awareness of sexual misconduct that has come through the #MeToo movement.

Lewinsky recently wrote an op-ed, in which she revealed that she has been diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from all the media madness that followed the revelation of her affair with then-President Clinton.

She also wrote that the #MeToo movement “changed her views” of sexual harassment.

Well, that’s convenient.

She went on to explain her victimhood at the hands of a lecherous boss, 27 years her senior.

In the Vanity Fair entry, she opines:

“Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.”

He took advantage of her youth and eagerness to be close to who she referred to as “the most powerful man in the world, at the pinnacle of his career.”

It was her first job out of college. At the time, she was 22 years old, and the president was 49 years old. He could have been her father, easily.

The idea, however, that someone over the age of consent, and who was once very willing could wait several decades later and say, “Hey, you know what? I changed my mind!” is ludicrous.

We’ve got leftwing advocates pushing to give 16 year olds voting rights and making them the tools for their gun-grabbing aspirations. Let’s not play the game where we act like a 22 year old woman isn’t capable of realizing right from wrong.

Does that get Clinton off the hook?

No way.

He wasn’t just her boss, but he was a married man. All the obligation to do the right thing was with him.

In defending his decision to stay in office after the affair (along with everything else he was charged with) was made public, the normally affable cad became defiant.

“A lot of the facts have been conveniently omitted to make the story work, I think partly because they’re frustrated that they got all these serious allegations against the current occupant of the Oval Office and his voters don’t seem to care,” Clinton said, pointing to a series of sexual misconduct allegations against current President Donald Trump, who has denied them. “I think I did the right thing. I defended the Constitution.”

Yeah. Whataboutism doesn’t make Trump look sane. It’s not helping you, either, Bill.

Asked if he owed Lewinsky an apology, President Clinton told NBC’s Craig Melvin, “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.”

I’d say that’s the right thing to do. The last thing he should have done was try to talk to her, personally. There should have been no contact after his misdeeds were made public.

The apology was given in 1998, while attending the National Prayer Breakfast.

“I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine — first and most important, my family, also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people.”

That was his apology, and it’s up to all those who were named to decide if they accept that apology, or not.

In the Today Show interview, he pointed out what he apparently felt was an acceptance of that apology.

As for his affair with Lewinksy, Clinton told NBC, “this was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me.”

Indeed, I remember a lot of the talk on the right was regarding the moral decline of a nation that could simply disregard the man’s adulteries.

That’s the same right that seems accepting of Trump’s adulteries today, by the way.

I think the long break in between, with 8 years of President George W. Bush, a good man with an obviously loving and happy wife, followed by another 8 years of President Obama and no apparent marital betrayals may have made those same accusers of Bill Clinton forget where they once stood on adultery. I’m not sure. Otherwise, we’d have to call them hypocrites, as well, wouldn’t we?

There are no victims in this scenario. What Bill Clinton did was wrong. Monica Lewinsky, starry-eyed as she may have been at 22 years old, was still an adult. She was college-educated, and she knew her boss was a married man.

If what she’s feeling is actual regret, that’s a good thing. It shows she has the capability to admit when she’s wrong.

If she’s playing the victim card, in order to jump on the #MeToo bandwagon, however, she’s way late for that.

She was not a victim. She was a volunteer.

The #MeToo movement was way overdue, and it has served a needed purpose. The danger now is in those who would co-opt the movement for personal gain. We need a bit of commonsense injected into it, pronto.

Wow. Bill Clinton having a meltdown on the Today show when asked if he had apologized to Monica Lewinsky pic.twitter.com/PQ4WrXU1ez

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) June 4, 2018