Monica Lewinsky breaks silence on Clinton affair

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Washington (AFP) - Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky broke her silence Tuesday about her illicit 1990s affair with president Bill Clinton, saying she wants to reclaim the narrative of events that brought her global humiliation.

Lewinsky, now 40, was in her early twenties when she became the infamous blue dress and beret-wearing muse who engaged in sexual relations with the president and then endured a colossal backlash that nearly drove her to suicide.

After years of being turned away by potential employers and ridiculed online, she decided to write her version of events in this month's Vanity Fair magazine.

"It's time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress," Lewinsky wrote, in excerpts posted on the magazine's website.

"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."

She said her radio silence was so complete for nearly a decade that rumors swirled that the Clintons must have paid her off to keep her quiet.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," she wrote.

It is time to stop "tiptoeing around my past -- and other people's futures," she said, in a possible reference to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's expected White House run in 2016.

News of the Lewinsky affair broke in 1998 and became an all-consuming scandal that nearly brought down the Clinton presidency. He was impeached by the House of Representatives that December but was acquitted by the Senate.

While the Clintons moved on, Lewinsky became an American outcast, even as she came to regret one of the most famous political affairs in US history.

"Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship," she wrote.

"Any 'abuse' came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position," she added.

In the scandal's wake, Lewinsky said, she "turned down offers that would have earned me more than $10 million, because they didn’t feel like the right thing to do."

Instead she applied to various communications and marketing jobs, but the employers balked, claiming her "history" made her the wrong person for the job.

The anxiety made her suicidal at times, she admitted.

Her suffering "took on a different meaning" in 2010, following the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the gay Rutgers student who was shown on the Internet kissing another man.

As one of the first major figures to endure global online humiliation, Lewinsky said she wanted to work with victims of cyber-bullying and harassment.

"Perhaps by sharing my story... I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/monica-lewinsky-breaks-silence-clinton-affair-175124745.html

Edited May 6, 2014 by Porterhouse

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

Washington (AFP) - Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky broke her silence Tuesday about her illicit 1990s affair with president Bill Clinton, saying she wants to reclaim the narrative of events that brought her global humiliation.

"Any 'abuse' came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position," she added.

In the scandal's wake, Lewinsky said, she "turned down offers that would have earned me more than $10 million, because they didn’t feel like the right thing to do."

"Reclaim the narrative" - well she learned something from Clinton.

What is there to reclaim? She did what she did, he did what he did, there is nothing new in the basic facts. What is wrong is how the world looks at a situation like this... Maybe that's where she is heading...

She should have taken the ten mil.... Someone close to her should have told her it was the right thing to do.

Edited May 6, 2014 by OnMyWayID

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

sorry not swallowing it..

She turned down 10 Million LOL. Right OMG LIar Liar semen stain on fire

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

So does this mean that Bill can have a cigar when his grandchild is born?

Edited May 7, 2014 by Mr. Big Dog

[Janelle2002 3,865]

She should be lucky Hilary didn't break her but. Why try to become famous from sucking someone else's husband's #######? She was clearly a delusional psycho with a mission. To keep the dress with the stains was just disgusting. Was she that broke she couldn't afford to wash her clothes? Yuck

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

She should be lucky Hilary didn't break her but. Why try to become famous from sucking someone else's husband's #######? She was clearly a delusional psycho with a mission. To keep the dress with the stains was just disgusting. Was she that broke she couldn't afford to wash her clothes? Yuck

Seriously? Your blaming a 20-something for being seduced by one of the most powerful people on the planet? Not washing that dress turned the entire episode from a he-said / she-said to a oh-yes-he-did! It was the one smart move she did..

[Janelle2002 3,865]

Seriously? Your blaming a 20-something for being seduced by one of the most powerful people on the planet? Not washing that dress turned the entire episode from a he-said / she-said to a oh-yes-he-did! It was the one smart move she did..

Let me see if I can help you with your comment.

Seriously? Your blaming a 15 year old. Okay, understandable reaction.

Seriously? Your blaming a 20-something, not understandable.

20 is well over being able to use young and dumb for an excuse. She kept that dress because she is a creep and of course to black mail and embarrass one of the most powerful men on the planet. See this new twist. And what better way to do than wave that sweet, young booty in a perverted face.

Sorry,, she was old enough to know what she was doing.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I still find myself not caring.

[Janelle2002 3,865]

I still find myself not caring.

I'm going to join your wagon. The other one is going nowhere.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Let me see if I can help you with your comment.

Seriously? Your blaming a 15 year old. Okay, understandable reaction.

Seriously? Your blaming a 20-something, not understandable.

20 is well over being able to use young and dumb for an excuse. She kept that dress because she is a creep and of course to black mail and embarrass one of the most powerful men on the planet. See this new twist. And what better way to do than wave that sweet, young booty in a perverted face.

Sorry,, she was old enough to know what she was doing.

Wasn't it her friend, Linda Tripp, who told her to keep the dress? I agree that at 20 yrs. old, she was an adult making a consensual decision, but Bill's reputation as a skirt chaser was the real, unwashable stain on his presidency.

[spookyturtle 9,465]

Wasn't it her friend, Linda Tripp, who told her to keep the dress? I agree that at 20 yrs. old, she was an adult making a consensual decision, but Bill's reputation as a skirt chaser was the real, unwashable stain on his presidency.

True, the stain on the dress would have washed out.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Here's a good piece on Reagan, Bush Sr. and going after presidents who lie under oath.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Impeachment

Fine. Now let's go back and impeach Reagan and Bush.

By Michael Kinsley

OK, so it's not about sex. It's about lying under oath, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power. If the standards used to impeach President Clinton for those offenses were applied to his two Republican predecessors, Reagan and Bush, they would have been impeached too. The fact that they weren't owes less to any lack of evidence than to a sense of proportion and respect for the popular will--or call it cowardice, perhaps--in the opposition party (the Democrats), which then controlled Congress.

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The only time Ronald Reagan ever talked about Iran-Contra under oath was in a deposition for the criminal trial of his former National Security Adviser John Poindexter. The deposition was in 1990, after Reagan had left office. He claimed that there was not "one iota" of evidence that profits from the sale of arms to Iran had been diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras, that his aides hadn't lied to Congress about the affair, and so on. All this was demonstrably false. The only reason he might not be guilty of perjury is that his mind pretty clearly was going.

But the very fact that Reagan was never forced to testify under oath as president illustrates the double standard that has trapped Bill Clinton. If Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had operated like Kenneth Starr, he would have forced Reagan, while president, to repeat or renounce under oath his public lies about Iran-Contra, such as those in his first TV address on the subject, when he declared it "utterly false" that arms had been shipped to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages. This was as vivid as Clinton's televised finger-wagging "that woman" sound bite, and just as flatly untrue. Reagan had been at several meetings where the arms-for-hostages deal was discussed--and, indeed, where Cabinet members had warned him it was illegal and he'd said he didn't care. If Walsh had been Starr, Reagan would have faced the same excruciating dilemma as Clinton: admit to a spectacular public lie or lie again under oath.

Possibly Reagan was already gaga in 1986, while still president, though this is not an argument the Republicans now pursuing Clinton are likely to want to make (or were heard to make back in 1986). But even before he was officially declared to be losing it, Reagan benefited from a more general double standard about truth telling. Reagan and Clinton both are among the great bullshitters of American history, but somehow Reagan was always regarded as floating above the truth while Clinton is regarded as wallowing beneath it.

Walsh's final report concluded that Reagan "knowingly participated or at least acquiesced in" the Iran-Contra cover-up, which involved, among other things, Oliver North shredding thousands of documents that may well have implicated Reagan more deeply. Any Flytrap cover-up pales in comparison. (The nearest equivalent involves the mysterious appearance--not disappearance--of documents, none of which has turned out to be vital, in a White House closet.) Yet Walsh didn't bring charges against Reagan, or even depose him to squeeze out information or set him up for a perjury rap.

The case against George Bush--by the standards being applied to Bill Clinton--is even stronger. Bush claimed in the 1992 campaign that he'd given sworn testimony hundreds of times conceding that he knew all about the arms-for-hostages deal. In fact, when the story broke in 1986, Bush repeatedly claimed to have been "out of the loop." He knew we were selling arms to Iran--itself flatly illegal and spectacularly in conflict with the administration's public pronouncements--but, he claimed, he had no idea the deal involved paying ransom for hostages.

Specifically, Bush claimed not to have attended a January 1986 meeting at which Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger vehemently opposed trading for hostages. When White House logs indicated that Bush was at the meeting, he emended his story to say he hadn't caught the drift of Schultz's and Weinberger's objections. If only he'd known George and Cap were as bothered as he was, Bush said, he would have tried to stop the policy. This was his story until 1992, when Walsh released notes taken by Weinberger at the meeting, recording that "VP approves" of the policy Bush claimed to be both ignorant of and disturbed by.

As president in 1989-93, Bush did his best to thwart Walsh's investigation. He tightened up on the release of classified information. A diary he started keeping in 1986 somehow never materialized until after the 1992 election. And his last-minute pardon of Weinberger, Poindexter, and others, after he'd lost re-election, effectively thwarted Walsh's pursuit of Bush himself, among others. No "obstruction of justice" or "abuse of presidential power" in Flytrap comes close.

So why is Bill Clinton's presidency stamped forever with the shame of impeachment, and why does he face premature removal from office, when impeachment was never seriously considered for Bush and Reagan? Perhaps at this point Clinton's critics would like to revisit their insistence that it's not about sex. The only sensible distinction is that lies about some things matter more than others. Henry Hyde, for example, was quite eloquent back in the Iran-Contra era about how statesmanship and higher principles sometimes require presidents to lie and break the law.

Hyde and others would be tempted to say that lying to free American hostages and breaking the law to protect Latin America from communism are more justified than lies to hide a tawdry affair. I would be tempted to reply that lies and cover-ups intended to thwart the workings of democracy on an important public policy issue seem to me to be a lot worse than lies about an embarrassing personal mess. But perhaps we could agree that David Schippers, the House Judiciary Committee Counsel, was wrong in his self-righteous pronouncement "Lies are lies are lies."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/1998/12/lies_damned_lies_and_impeachment.2.html

Edited May 7, 2014 by Porterhouse

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Here's a good piece on Reagan, Bush Sr. and going after presidents who lie under oath.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/1998/12/lies_damned_lies_and_impeachment.2.html

Reagan and Bush did it , it's ok...

It's inbreed into you Liberals it's all you know

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Reagan and Bush did it , it's ok...

It's inbreed into you Liberals it's all you know

News flash. Everyone lies.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

This thread is gross. I was going to say good for her for trying to stop bullying and harassment. Her life is pretty much ruined as far as I can see, she is unemployable, probably unmarryable, and for what? For a mistake made in her early 20s? I bet a lot of people made mistakes then, even sexually inappropriate ones.

But here, we just get more of the bullying she is trying to stop. Let her live in peace.