I never had good feelings about the current season of American Crime Story, that focuses on the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair. Because the sordid and ahistorical revisionism of the event has transformed a definitely improper and inexcusable, but still certifiably consensual affair between two adults, the younger of whom actively sought the affair and threw herself at the feet of the most powerful men on Earth (though he definitely had the responsibility and duty to refuse her and should’ve), into a story of an older predatory man taking advantage of and violating an innocent girl. The fact that Lewinsky herself, who has gone back on years of saying that the affair was consensual to help spearhead this revisionism, and is an executive producer of the season, also made me considerably wary.
Needless to say, it appears that much of what I feared has indeed come to pass, even if reviewers don’t think the season has any real heat to it: deadline.com/…
The fact that the show moves to cast Lewinsky as a total, practically virginal figure who just let herself be manipulated by everyone in her life, of Linda Tripp as an avenging angel moving to defend women when she committed a felony under Maryland law and sold out her friend just to supply Ken Starr with ammunition he didn’t deserve, and of Paula Jones’ easily debunked and thoroughly spurious lawsuit as necessary and her being whitewashed to the same extent as Tripp, is repulsive enough in and of itself. As is the way it moves to represent the Clintons as a real-life Frank and Claire Underwood, to support David Geffen’s incredibly ludicrous statement that “everyone in politics lies, but the degree these two lie is appalling and stunning.” (This from someone who basically is the epitome of dishonesty and has screwed over all his friends and artist signings, and creative partners like Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg to enrich himself shows he has no reason to throw stones.)
But the fact that the series apparently goes to claim all the same moments that have now been established as fact (Clinton and his team, especially Sidney Blumenthal, denounced Lewinsky and called her a stalker, Lewinsky was “patient zero” of cyberbullying, the SNL skits of her and Tripp were misogynistic and moments of Democrats and feminists giving Clinton a pass, Christopher Hitchens was a concerned figure doing his duty instead of a self-aggrandizing immoral blowhard who smeared a former friend, Clinton should’ve resigned or the Republicans should’ve used the actual sex rather than perjury as the bedrock of their impeachment case and called Clinton a sexual predator and it would’ve worked) is the worst part. The media in 1998 already took what really happened and distorted it into something unrecognizable; now the popular account in the public is ever more far removed from the truth.
Simply put, the Clinton Rules remain in effect forevermore. Democrats are already held to a ludicrously higher standard than Republicans; but if you’re Bill and Hillary Clinton, you are held to an even more ludicrous standard, a standard that even Obama and Biden have not been held to, but Al Gore was tantalizingly close.
We can’t let this calumny go unanswered.
Tuesday, Sep 21, 2021 · 6:20:47 PM +00:00 · Toxic34
Lewinsky continues to ramp up her revisionism. Saying she is not only “patient zero” of cyberbullying, but that she is now “patient zero” of cancel culture.
She has executive produced an upcoming HBO Max streaming documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame, meant to tackle online lynch mobs, but her involvement has completely tainted the project: www.rollingstone.com/…
Where does it end? Will Lewinsky ever realize she’s doing onto so many others what she claims was done to her?