"Clinton’s feckless replies to questions about #MeToo revealed an unpreparedness that spoke volumes about why men have been able to abuse their power with relative impunity for generations..."

"... while the women around them have been asked to pay the price for them over and over and over again.... Consider that Lewinsky herself has been asked to answer for this relationship — and only this relationship — for two decades. Her name has been used as a synonym for fellatio by performers including Eminem and Beyoncé; in 2001, she was asked onstage, 'How does it feel to be America’s premier blow-job queen?'... But it’s not just the woman he had the extramarital relationship with who’s been evaluated based on his bad acts; it’s also the one he had the marital relationship with. Hillary Clinton lost the support of many feminists who’d adored her when she decided to stand by her man. Others made it clear that they thought the choice was hers to make, but their support had its own dark underside, when pundits like the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd accused Hillary of leveraging sympathy as a wronged wife into a political career. From there, it was just a short leap to view Hillary Clinton’s pathbreaking achievements — as the first woman elected to the Senate from New York, and later as the first American woman to become a major-party nominee for the presidency — as fundamentally unearned, some sick lagniappe benefit of having been publicly hurt and humiliated."

From "Time's Up, Bill" by Rebecca Traister in New York Magazine.

Random observations:

1. There's that word "feckless" again. Last time we saw "feckless" it was Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt." But Traister didn't call Bill Clinton a feckless dick. She didn't even call him "feckless." She called his replies "feckless."

2. Key word in that sentence about Monica Lewinsky: "onstage." She wasn't walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant when someone had the nerve to challenge her to say how it feels "to be America’s premier blow-job queen." She'd put herself onstage. That's a choice, and the choice was only there for her to make because she had gotten famous for having sexual relations with that man, Mr. Clinton. What about all the other White House interns who did not get their hands on the fleshly lever of power? Where did they end up? What claim to fame do they have? Monica could have been another one of them. It's less giddy fun, and she chose a path and keep choosing to stay on it. Otherwise, why was she onstage?

3. As for "Hillary Clinton lost the support of many feminists," I'd say: not enough.

4. As for "she decided to stand by her man," let's not forget that when Hillary used that phrase, it was during the 1992 campaign and she said: "You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette." She had her well-thought out reasons for sticking with him. Also, that remark was in the context of Bill's adultery, not the sexualization of power in the workplace.

5. What's a lagniappe? Wikipedia quotes Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" (1883):

We picked up one excellent word—a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word—"lagniappe." They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish—so they said. [NOTE: It's actually Quechua.] We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant buys something in a shop—or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know—he finishes the operation by saying—"Give me something for lagniappe."

The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor — I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely.

When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans—and you say, "What, again?—no, I've had enough;" the other party says, "But just this one time more—this is for lagniappe." When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his "I beg pardon—no harm intended," into the briefer form of "Oh, that's for lagniappe."

6. Of course, I agree with Traister that Bill Clinton should be held accountable for his offenses against women, but I have been saying that for 20 years.