I've been thinking about Monica Lewinsky lately.
I've gotten to know her a little bit. And I mean a VERY little bit.
Was at a friends birthday party months back. Someone said, "Hey, Jeffrey, this is Monica." I responded with a nod, then went back to my previous conversation until a full minute later when my mind went:
"Monica? Wait, Monica, Monica. That, Monica. Yes... that... Monica."
Over the course of that night I got to talk to her for probably seven minutes, then another two or three on a subsequent meeting. Smart. Funny. Empathetic. Interesting. All with the aura of "wrecked".
But (of course) just a person in every single way.
And a dozen times since these encounters, I've been doing something totally random when I've heard a voice my head whisper, "Monica deserved better."
Between 1995 and 1997 (when the Clinton/Lewinsky affair was going on), I had just moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. I was 26-28 and to say that my own romantic life was a mess would be a little like calling the Titanic "a boat accident".
Sleeping with people I worked with, check. Sleeping with people who were married, check. Seeing the "line" and knowing the "line", then taking a Carl Lewishesque leap OVER the "line"... check, check, check.
I was disoriented (new city) and lonely (a thousand times over) and unformed (still the case) and I'm quite certain had the brightest light in all the land shined on me... I would have basked in his/her glow, damn the propriety or the unimaginable consequences.
Meaning I (a five full years older than barely-drinking-age Ms. Lewinsky) made all the same mistakes and more and was saved from infamy only because I didn't get lucky(?) enough to have the President of The United States of America look longingly my direction.
So, I live with little to no stigma.
She... well, I can only imagine.
(Actually, I can MORE than imagine as I could see in her eyes, when I said, "Hey, I'm Jeffrey," the wheels turning as she played compliment to my inner soliloquy:
"Does he recognize me? Will he say anything? Will he be cruel?")
A thousand debates spring from the above... about the relationship between crime and punishment (Madoff)... about how the truly responsible (President Clinton) often get a platform to rehabilitate... about how those who profit most in the short run (the Republican Party) are always doomed to far surpass the original transgression (Vitter and Ensign and Sanford, oh my), but mostly I come back to where I started:
Monica Lewinsky deserved better.
She deserved to be able to make mistakes (like the rest of us) and to suffer the consequences in the anonymity of self-discovery.