April 17, 2016
I don't feel no-ways tarred.
Sorry, I'm just reacting to this Guardian piece: "Monica Lewinsky: ‘The shame sticks to you like tar.'"
A sticky substance that's hard to remove... and she's the one who kept the semen-encrusted dress. It could have been washed. That did not have to stick. Similarly, shame exists inside the person who feels it. It's a feeling arising from thoughts about what other people think of you, but those other people aren't emitting it and smearing it on you. They may have said things long ago that expressed some of what they thought of you, but the stickiness is generated by your own mind.
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62 comments:
The same aura of presidential power that made her blow the old guy made the leftovers into a relic. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Self-inflicted wound with assistance from an abusive authority figure and his wife.
Interesting question. Did Monica not clean the dress on purpose or was she just careless?
A guy I knew was a partner of her father who was a radiologist in California. He and her mother were divorced and the mother was pushing her to get famous in Washington. Probably a weird stage mother.
The dress was probably a souvenir, sort of like serial killer souvenirs.
“I don’t actually know why this whole story became about oral sex,” Lewinsky replies. “It was a mutual relationship.”
Because the Clintons wanted it to be about a "blow job" Monica. It was their political strategy and their enablers were only too happy to help them. Sorry you got in the way of their political ambition.
“Yes,” Lewinsky says. “I think it’s fair to say that whatever mistakes I made, I was hung out to dry by a lot of people – by a lot of the feminists who had loud voices. I wish it had been handled differently. It was very scary and very confusing to be a young woman thrust on to the world stage and not belonging to any group. I didn’t belong to anybody.”
Her problem is that these are the people she wants the most to accept her. Talk about your Stockholm syndrome...
In February 1998, the feminist writer Nancy Friday was asked by the New York Observer to speculate on Lewinsky’s future. “She can rent out her mouth,” she replied.
Us racist homophobes on the right were pointing this stuff out in the '90s. Now the left has finally caught up, sort of, in enlightenment:
She’s written that she thought it was stupid and wrong in the 1990s when most people blamed her for the affair with President Clinton, but also stupid and wrong in the 2010s when people got more enlightened and started retrospectively blaming him.
But remember people "reality has a liberal bias..." What fucking idiots!
She should have used a jar.
Girl with the Pony Tail on the Treadmill:
That was embarrassing.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
I mean, the guy tried to come on my face.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
How the fuck did he think I was good with that?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
What is it with guys now, wanting to come all over girls' faces?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
When did 'that' become a thing?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Dude, it was just a blow-job. I didn't even like you that much.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Now my new blouse is ruined.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Like I could take it to my Dry Cleaner.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
See this stain?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
It's jizz. Some guy jizzed all over me. Are you able to clean it?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
They probably clean jizz all the time.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Ew.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
I don't want my Dry Cleaner to become a Walk of Shame.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
It WAS a nice restaurant.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
And he drove a Lexus. Not an Audi, but...
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Maybe I could just have a towel ready next time.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
I am Laslo.
Lewinsky's not a sympathetic figure to me, but it's been a while since it all went down. I might be persuaded otherwise at this point, heh.
"Did Monica not clean the dress on purpose or was she just careless?"
She preserved it. As evidence... on the advice of Linda Tripp.
My fave Hill video.
I wonder if she billed THEM a half mill for that crap.
I can't look at her as anything other than a twenty two year old girl when it started. She was just a baby, fiveish years older than his own daughter. The poor thing didn't have a single friend in that city who cared about her as a person; she was used and manipulated by everyone around her.
Have we really all forgotten that any and all blame for this unfortunate episode lies with Ken Starr? That's what we should be focused on.
Hillary needs to get back in front of the American people and lay the blame where it really belongs, on Ken Starr and his partisan goon squad. That will completely clear the Clinton record on all issues, including cattle futures, Benghazi, e-mails and the Clinton Foundation.
Sometimes thoughtful, honest and open candidates like Hillary make politics more difficult than is necessary...
That affair was a big nothing--nine blowjobs over a couple years--for Clinton, but it derailed her entire life. She's been futzing around ever since trying to piece together a living, never marrying, no children, trying to find some kind of relevance. It's terribly sad.
It seems we still collectively despise the girl (who's noy a girl anymore).
Why?
"but it derailed her entire life."
It's like the old joke, "but you fuck one goat..."
She didn't wash the semen encrusted dress-that is fucked up.
I deteste cum. When I am doing a guy and he says he is about to cum I point his cock on the floor or a towel and immediately wash the cum.
I was going to do a guy, and we went to his home. He turned off the lights and his comforter looked like a Jackson Pollack painting, but instead of paint, it was all sorts of chizz streaks-disgusting! I screamed at him, Wash Your Comforter Bitch!
I left.
AA
Thanks. I forgot that.
Linda Tripp: Unsung hero.
AA:
Just now looked at link. Nine months from the sexual encounter until she got the advice from trip. Nine long months. A souvenir of the love child that could have been.
That love child could be voting for Bernie this year.
where angels fear to tread..she went there. I wish for her sake, she was never caught (she needn't have kept the blue dress). Affairs and cheating happen all the time. But it is a pretty big deal when it happens with the president of a country. She is at least honest about the her part in this whole deal that she pursued him initially. He should have had better judgment.
Tommy Duncan
Genius idea. Hire Ken Starr to prosecute Hillsry on the email/server issue.
Why didn't she assert her right to an attorney when the FBI escorted her into a room with hostile interrogators?
Big Mike
She was not being detained. She was not under arrest.
Look. Monica is a national hero and she should be on the $20 bill.
""Did Monica not clean the dress on purpose or was she just careless?"
She preserved it. As evidence... on the advice of Linda Tripp."
It was great advice since it derailed the Clinton plan to slime Ms. Lewinsky as a stalker.
Everyone who gets in the way of Clinton political ambitions ends up in some way tarred for life.
That is a lot of people and the Clintons are still going.
Now that I think about it the blue dress was probably the INSPIRATION for why Hillary had her own private server. No preserved evidence of her crimes.
Hillary's password: Monica
"It's a feeling arising from thoughts about what other people think of you, but those other people aren't emitting it and smearing it on you. They may have said things long ago that expressed some of what they thought of you, but the stickiness is generated by your own mind." WTF? "Those other people" were emitting and smearing all the way, trying to make it stick. Tim in Vermont quotes Nancy Friday; she wasn't the only one smearing. And of course a lot of it was done by your fellow feminists. Only now that the left is turning against the Clintons has it become useful to stop smearing Lewinsky and start using her harassment against them. But only now. Anyone standing in Progs' way must be shamed, aided and abetted from the sidelines by enablers who insist it's all in the shamee's mind.
She certainly showed poor judgement at 22. Star struck by being admired by the POTUS, not surprising at all.
But Clinton was supposed to be the adult in the room. He USED her and he, along with Hillary (it's a vast right wing conspiracy.... oh, she kept the dress) would have buried her as just another of the lying bimbos.
I'd buy her position as the anti bully expert if she'd cast a BIT more of that bullying on Slick Willy.
“Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.”
― Benedict XVI
There is blame to go all around.. a young foolish girl who acted on her crush (with the president of the USA); an even more careless President who thought he would not get caught and probably justified that when caught, people would say, oh it was just a BJ; a wife who could not influence her husband otherwise; an opposition party and their prosecutor (Starr, yuck!) who made it their prime business (instead of running the country) to go after this and cause a national crisis. There is shame on all actors. But Lewinsky paid the biggest price being young and powerless. All used her and took advantage of her for their own nefarious purpose.
counterfactual exercise:
Lewinsky's life now if Bill Clinton was a Republican.
She preserved it. As evidence... on the advice of Linda Tripp.
Why the disdain for the fact that evidence was preserved by Lewinsky? Must have been during a period of our history when evidence mattered.
Today's left-wing campus Courts-martial are requiring much less.
Tripp gave her good advice. When the story leaked she must have known that "the woman must be believed" standard was not going to be applied to Lewinsky.
Paddy O said...
Lewinsky's life now if Bill Clinton was a Republican.
If this were the case, Lewinsky would have enjoyed life-long victim status and held in high esteem by the feminists that vilify her. She would be complimented for preserving the evidence as the actions of a smart shrewd woman.
Why the disdain
Because, if I were her, I would have kept the whole thing a secret and not get caught. That would have been the smart thing to do. Isn't that the first rule of cheaters or aid to cheaters? Unless of course she was an aid to the opposition and they would have protected her and shielded her from ruin and that was not the case either.
They may have said things long ago that expressed some of what they thought of you, but the stickiness is generated by your own mind.
Bill's availability to stand on a podium, on Hillary's behalf, depends heavily on this concept to be mostly true.
Spoken like a true Clinton apologist. One of the most astonishing events in my life was watching Clinton leave office with such high approval ratings. Then the political rise of HRC based on pity for her. We are about to pay dearly for that if she is elected.
Holy shit. She kept the evidence in case the clintons decided she was a danger and needed to be smeared. Presciently. Cruel neutrality demands the lower orders smile and take it.
You should consider the stuff your enemies say.They are finely tuned to your hypocrisy, and can save you some big walk backs.
Thirty-six comments and no one's made the obvious joke? I certainly hope Hillary will feel and be "tarred" some day - and "feathered" too.
As has been pointed out, she had already kept it nine months before the designated Goldstein, Linda Tripp, told her to keep saving it, which saved her from the serious smear jobs unleashed on his other victims.
Lewinsky kept the dress as a souvenir -- silly little girl. Her mistake was talking to Tripp and not keeping it a secret for the next 20 some years and writing a book about it and making millions. It was Linda Tripp the ugly witch who forced it into being an evidence. If the affair was not caught, there would not have been any need for evidence.
I don't think she originally kept it as evidence. I remember reading at the time that her policy was to keep dirty clothes in her closet until she needed them to wear, and then wash or dry-clean them. That's the best way to do it if you're cheap, or lazy, or both, and easy to do if you live in some place like the Watergate where you can (I believe) get things washed or dry-cleaned with same-day service and (I imagine) delivered to your door. Maybe not so cheap, if you do it that way, come to think of it. So maybe she was just lazy, or not prone to long-term planning, or low self-esteem made being surrounded by dirty clothes seem like a good thing.
And that careless fucker BC thought he was like Kennedy and would not get caught or people would turn a blind eye. He underestimated the the right wing's penchant for sticking their nose into everybody's sex and other such personal business.
"She preserved it. As evidence... on the advice of Linda Tripp."
I think she might have told Tripp and got good advice. The nine months is evidence for the souvenir theory.
The Hillary troll blaming Starr is hilarious.
Almost as funny as the person who said on a TV news show this morning that the 1994 Crime Bill was passed because crime was very high then and now, crime is low and all those African American men are in prison. We have to fix that.
I guess I find the absence of logic amusing.
I want to second what Sebastian said. Ann's words are a pathetic attempt to smear Monica by portraying her as not mentally tough. You go through what she's gone through and then come back and talk to me about mental toughness.
I have a great deal of compassion for her because when this scandal erupted I was a young twenty something working in DC. I never met her nor did I run in her social circles but I casually knew people who did. It was a very sobering and maturing experience for all of us because there was a general consensus that "but for the grace of God there go I."
I was fortunate in that I worked for a person who was beyond reproach on such sexual matters. I'd always heard rumors about sexual shenanigans between Congress people and their staff but tended to discount them. I was naive. Looking back I see that a lot of us were young, idealistic people who thought that everyone was in it for the good of their country, even if at times we passionately disagreed on what that good was. What happened to Monica revealed to all of us--on both sides of the aisle--just how fragile our positions actually were. We were expendable and had always been expendable but had chosen to ignore that inconvenient truth because that wasn't the narrative we wanted to hear. Monica's situation put me on notice that I continued to ignore the truth at my own peril.
Even the simplest of God's creatures have an instinct for self preservation. Looking at how the Clintons (especially Hillary) treat women Bill has been with, even a young naive woman could see what might happen if it got out. The dress was insurance against the "she's a nut" attack that was sure to (pardon the pun) come.
Hey..someone actually characterized her as a woman, not a girl, at that time. I guess to many, Bill's power and age at the time and her gender should determine the level of responsibility she had.
But yes..clearly Bill was able to go forward without nearly as much err..stain on his character.
Giving nine blow jobs to some asshole predator that doesn't even know you're first name is hardly an affair.
Fucking degenerates man.
I'm a little surprised that a lefty winger here has not blamed Gingrich and Congress because it was during the "shutdown" that Clinton created by vetoing the appropriations bill that Monica was bringing him pizza in the White House and one thing led to another.
DC is a pretty dangerous place. Go there hoping to do good for your country and find yourself with your boss' dick in your mouth. I bet DC values Trump NY values. Here's a bit of that girl talk
On the tarred and feathered line---Hillary could always quote the old Abraham Lincoln story about the fellow who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. The "tarree" said that, "But for the honor of the thing, I'd prefer it had not happened."
I'm noways reluctant to help Hillary out--to either a place where the dominant styls is orange jumpsuits, or to a retirement home for broken down old windbags. Either one would work for me. Just not the Oval Office.
She was twenty-two! Oh Mistress of this most excellent salon, you surprise me with this post; it goes beyond cruel neutrality into cold judgment. Yes, shame is an internalized emotion, but in this case it is in reaction to real shaming behavior by others. How many of us could just sail right on with our lives; experiencing no shame, embarrassment, or serious setbacks, despite being dehumanized into a permanent national sexual joke?
The whole reason it was evidence, after all, blow jobs are not illegal, is that the predator was under investigation for sexual harassment of another victim. I don't get why that is hard to understand.
Same reason Juanita finally admitted she was raped, the threat of perjury.
There was at least one positive outcome to this affair -- feminists at the time were pushing the "power differential" regarding sexual activities, where a powerful man having sex with an underling was tantamount to rape. L'affaire Lewinsky ended that bullshit.
I wonder if Monica or the Guardian writer would stand in solidarity with Bristol Palin, or does this slut shaming stuff only refer to women with liberal credentials?........She was disproportionately punished for a trivial offense, but she tried to leverage that trivial offense into a high prestige job at the UN. She got more than she deserved but she also tried to take more than she deserved.........I don't think the Guardian would be writing a sympathetic article on her if she had taken the position that Bill and Hillary rather than Starr and Tripp had wronged her.
There was a young lady from Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
I am not Lazlo
Nor was meant to be
And the whole time she was convinced she knew waht was going on
Forget the last line far down the page. I did.
Comanche Voter said,"...I'm noways reluctant to help Hillary out--to either a place where the dominant styls is orange jumpsuits,..."
So we should turn her over to ISIS and see if she loses her head on the beach?
"It's a feeling arising from thoughts..." is a locution much worse (harmful) than meaning simply nothing* beyond rhetoric befitting a jingle, because of its verbal mechanism toward a goal of defining shame in this context of Lewisnki's "you" quoted whereby the long-standing status quo uses its hand of tradition to keep/assure powerful people can make up how human brains work without any need to make their understanding of the proper use clear, and therefore not prohibiting any chicken or egg static as Althouse is advocating for here. Just as us unpowerful can console ourselves that the lacking is (or at minimum contains within itself) our special Catholic reward.
A person who doesn't understand what virtue signaling is will have issues describing what Althouse described; I couldn't describe her concept any better as I couldn't think of it in the first place given my limited vocabulary and logic skills, and my critique which I believe is valuable in my own learning doesn't magically allow me the talent to move her concept forward/above.
I do know declaiming in this instance the feeling's follow the thoughts, or vice versa, isn't going to be provable without a great deal of complexity very few at this blog are equipped to understand even if the effort were applied attempting as such.
*conceptually as if "nothing" were a standard the, or indeed a, locution should aspire to surpassing, at worst, if deciding to voice an opinion or idea when silence might warrant greater and deeper arguments in your stoic favor presumed rather than removal of some amount of unspecified-gray doubt.
The key is feelings, and feelings change over time, even about ideas or concepts fixed in time as best as can be.
Many young folks are taught, and they believe it is both right to feel that way and to do so conspicuously in order to form a more better union, there are "good" folks and "bad" folks.
The GOP is bad because racist sexist homophobic bigots, opposite for the Left can be a simplistic template to understand.
But anyone wanting to know what's up should be ashamed of thinking and typing "hah I was looking for logic but you have none" as though that were accurate or relevant.
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/home-page/
Inexplicably, Hillary quoting the Bible make me sick to my stomach.
I like to think of "the affair Lewinsky" as a zen koan for the modern age, amenable to making oneself think really hard about the specifics of the case in order to obtain a broader understanding of the politics of the US.
And for 20 years, every time I've thought about it, every time I've read about, the more I've learned about it, the more times I've seen it discussed, from the first day the story broke on Drudge to today, the more I think Hillary is just about the worst person on earth to entrust with a position of power and responsibility, after Bill.
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