Monica Lewinsky has reemerged to claim the spotlight. She gave a speech the other day about being the “patient zero” of Internet-driven attacks on one’s reputation. In describing her experience, she began:

Sixteen years ago, fresh out of college, a 22-year-old intern in the White House — and more than averagely romantic – I fell in love with my boss in a 22-year-old sort of a way. It happens. But my boss was the President of the United States. That probably happens less often.

Hearing the audio clips and reading the transcript, I think she’s correct, but doesn’t go far enough. In any organization outside government, when a 22-year-old intern falls in love with her boss, the boss knows he cannot have a romantic or sexual relationship with her. The relationship would not be coequal. In any organization outside government, the power differential would be assumed to be exploitative. In any organization outside government, the boss would know that revelation of such a relationship would cost him his job.

I’ll recap some history for the millenials. President Clinton was sued in 1994 by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, for sexual harassment. In her suit, Ms. Jones claimed that after she refused then-Gov. Clinton’s request for sexual favors, she was denied promotions and her career suffered. In contrast, there were reports of a former White House intern who had engaged in a sexual relationship with President Clinton and was then given direct assistance in landing a plum job.

Clinton first argued that a sitting president could not be sued; SCOTUS rejected that argument with respect to matters outside the president’s official duties, so the suit proceeded. As the case progressed over the next four years, information trickled out, much of it tawdry: Lewinsky was the former intern; her friend Linda Tripp had secret tapes of Lewinsky discussing the relationship; Lewinsky had saved a “little blue dress” and refused to wash it because it was stained with Clinton’s “DNA”; President Clinton had subsequently perjured himself, lying under oath that no relationship with Ms. Lewinsky had existed, and was accused of manipulating witnesses.

The tawdriness was exacerbated by Clinton’s shameless manipulation of the media, from the photos of the Clintons going to church, to the televised fingerpointing denials, to the attack dogs he unleashed to eviscerate the reputations of anyone who stood in his way; most notably, prosecutor Kenneth Starr. The perjury charge was the most substantially documented of the many scandals Starr was tasked with investigating, so he used it as the basis for his impeachment recommendation. Paula Jones eventually settled her suit in 1998 for $850,000, after Clinton was impeached but the Senate — in a bizarre trial in which it refused to review any evidence — declined to convict.

In her speech, Ms. Lewinsky lamented the her experience as the target of media attacks too:

During this period, I gradually came to realize that there were two Monica Lewinskys. Yes, the world was big enough for two of us. There was me. And there was public Monica Lewinsky, a somewhat curious character constructed by political factions and the media, constructed with a little fact and a lot of fiction….

What does it actually feel like? What does it really feel like to watch yourself – or your name and likeness—to be ripped apart online?

Some of you may know this yourself. It feels like a punch in the gut. As if a stranger walked up to you on the street and punched you hard and sharp in the gut.

For me, that was every day in 1998. There was a rotation of worsening name calling and descriptions of me. I would go online, read in a paper or see on TV people referring to me as: tramp, slut, whore, tart, bimbo, floozy, even spy.

I feel much sympathy for Lewinsky, and was moved by her description. What she overlooked in her speech, however, was the agency of President Clinton. The prosecutors were keeping her information confidential. It was the president — and his cutthroat defenders — who leaked and planted information in the media to discredit her. They could not afford for the country to understand that Clinton was an irresponsible lout. So they had to make the public believe instead that she was obsessed.

There is a straight line from Monica’s experience to the Obama scandals. Before Watergate, the media sought out juicy stories on both parties (though they looked the other way when the scandals were personal). After Watergate, the media adopted a new narrative: Republicans are bad guys with scandals to be discovered, Democrats are the good guys who need to be defended, and reporters are the heroes who shape events.

As the first post-Watergate president dogged by personal scandal, Clinton presented a challenge to this narrative. So the media went into overdrive to ensure that the public would not hear of the scandals or — when that became impossible — to”contextualize” information so the public would not draw the undesired conclusions. Everything from the Whitewater deal, to the Travel Office firings, to the disappearing (and reappearing) Rose Law Firm billing records, to the misuse of FBI files, to the inexplicable hiring of bar bouncer Craig Livingstone, to the myriad campaign finance irregularities was swept under the rug. And when the president was sued for quid pro quo sexual harassment, with incontrovertible evidence, and the president then perjured himself — a scandal that the public could understand easily without the media’s help — the media helped turn it into a story about an obsessive girl’s crush.

Today, the media is similarly in the pocket of a Democratic president. Once again, the media is remarkably uncurious about numerous meaty scandals. Once again, the lies go unchallenged so as to preserve the narrative. Once again, the little people are taken advantage of by the powerful. At least Monica can be grateful that she — unlike Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty, and Brian Terry — is still with us 17 years later to tell her side of the story.
Image Credit: Featureflash / Shutterstock.com