No. 97 – May 15, 2014 – Do You Remember Monica Lewinsky?

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Vanity Fair will publish an article by Monica Lewinsky in it's June issue. Ripples of commentary have already begun on the now 40 year old woman who earned a Master of Science degree in December of 2006.

For the last eight years Monica has tried to keep her name out of the news. Today, she is again useful to the Clintons and their corporate sponsors.

While the source of her notoriety titillated, consider why her emergence matters one way or another. It doesn't, you know. This is hype, orchestrated to impact the 2016 election.

Lewinsky was persuaded to write the essay for Vanity Fair because her life has been on hold. Every job she has gotten pivoted on the events from July, 1995, when she was turning 22, to the failure to impeach Bill Clinton by Congress on February 12, 1999.

The Washington Post touts her return as a positive for Hillary Clinton's run for the White House. This surge of media attention focuses on Hillary as a secondary victim. It distracts us from what should, finally, be asked about the Clintons. They did well for themselves. Today Monica is still defined by the words, “cigar,” and “blue dress.”

Some of these questions are:

Why was Hillary ever positioned as a victim? We learned early on she had assisted in cover-ups of Bill's womanizing from the time he entered politics. Hillary showed no concern for the damage done to the women involved. Political advantage trumped telling the truth, the impact on victims, and accountability, for Hillary.

When the trial ended in Congress the Clintons were drained of money. Yet by 2004 they were doing well, entering the embrace of the 1%. The Clintons had become intimates of Bush Co., and were not speaking out against a war which had originated in another set of carefully orchestrated lies by Bush and his NeoCon cadre. What else was happening while these relationships were forming?

What might we have learned if we had demanded accountability when Bush jovially looked under his desk for WMD? What if Saddam had not been hurried into the silence of death?

Following the money and connections always answers questions far more revealing of secrets than are sexual dalliances.

The answers are there. Don't let Monica be used as a tool of distraction. Forget those nine incidents of sexual dalliance and demand answers to real questions.