Who lured Monica Lewinsky out of her 10-year silence?

Corollary: Why was Lewinsky silent?

Theory #1 has to be: Monica and Monica acting alone as a free and independent woman in the modern world. She had her notoriety, which she attempted to leverage in various ways, and then she saw the limits of that approach and went low-profile, and now she believes she has a way to reconstruct her image (as a victim of internet humiliation, like Tyler Clementi, except that she resisted the impulse to respond to humiliation by jumping off a bridge, and she has gamely tried one thing after another from presidential "mistress" to Jenny Craig spokeslady to London School of Economics social psychologist — what a story of courage and survival in the face of adversity!)

But what are the other theories? Yesterday, as we were driving home from the dog park, I asked Meade the question in this post title, and his immediate response was: Hillary Clinton. You think the Clintons are using Monica Lewinsky, bending her to their will? Did they procure her 10-year silence too? Meade's thinking was: The Monica story is there, ready to spring forth, so inoculate yourself. Time it right where you want it.

I might not have blogged that conversation, but it came to mind when I read this Ruth Marcus column in The Washington Post this morning: "Monica Lewinsky does Hillary Clinton a big favor." Now, Marcus is all: "Monica Lewinsky may not have intended it this way, but she just did Hillary Clinton a big favor." Marcus isn't taking the next step: If it's a big favor to Hillary, then the Clintons procured the favor. That would be pure speculation, but given the questions — Who lured Monica Lewinsky out of her 10-year silence? and Why was Lewinsky silent for 10 years?— speculation should naturally involve analysis of who stands to benefit.

If it's in Hillary's interest to bring back the Monica story, wouldn't the Clintons have done that in 2008? As Marcus observes, the difference is that Rand Paul — a presumptive candidate in 2016 — "has already raised the question of whether Democrats in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, should consort with a 'sexual predator' like Bill Clinton." And Lewinsky's new presentation stresses that she was a consenting adult, that her victimhood came as she "was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position" — whatever that means — and "It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress." We're victimizing her if we remember her in the only form we would ever have known about her. So: Conversation over! Unless you're an abuser. Rand.

So that's Theory #2: Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Theory #3 — which was my original answer to my own question — is someone in the Democratic Party who wants to prompt Hillary to announce she's not going to run. Push her back. Scare the prospective grandmother out of the impending ugliness so the donor money can flow to somebody else. I can see the self-interest this other Democrat might have, but not how this person would get to Lewinsky.

Theory #4: Somebody on the GOP side. Who? Why? How?

Theory #5: Vanity Fair saw the money in a cover story on Monica Lewinsky. Obviously, we're all looking at Vanity  Fair this week, so they'd have been right to see self-interest in this. And it's also easy to see how they got to Lewinsky. It's a direct arrangement: They paid her to write her story.

Who lured Monica Lewinsky out of her 10-year silence?
	Monica lured herself.
	The Clintons.
	Some Democrat.
	Somebody on the GOP side.
	Vanity Fair.
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"I can’t find it in me to remand him to state prison that houses people convicted of offenses such as murder, armed robbery and rape."

"I don’t believe that that fits this case. I believe that he has to be punished, and he will be."

Says Judge Glenn Berman, as he sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail for spying on his roommate Tyler Clementi (who shortly thereafter killed himself).

[The judge] argued that the legislature intended prison terms to be attached to bias crimes that were “assaultive or violent in nature,” not invasion of privacy. 

“I also know his age,” Judge Berman added, calling it a mitigating factor. 

“I believe justice compels me to deviate from the guidelines,” he said.

Trayvon Martin and Tyler Clementi... and the notion of "hate crimes."

Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the NYT, explains "Why Liberals Should Hate ‘Hate Crime Legislation.'"

There is nothing novel about the law taking into account a criminal’s state of mind; one of the prerequisites for a conviction under common law is “mens rea” — a guilty mind, malice aforethought, criminal intent. The law also recognizes gradations of guilty purpose. A premeditated killing is more punishable than one committed in the heat of the moment, which is worse than a killing that results from negligence. New York law compounds the punishment if you kill someone to prevent him from being a witness.

The distinction [law-and-philosophy prof Heidi M.] Hurd makes — convincingly, I think — is that when you penalize intent you are punishing matters of choice. One can choose not to pull the trigger, not to throw the rock, not to steal the purse.

How did the jury find Dharun Ravi guilty of "bias intimidation"?

Ravi had spied on his Rutgers College roommate, Tyler Clementi, who proceeded to jump off the George Washington Bridge:

“It was pretty hard to think about Tyler, because he wasn’t present to give his thoughts,” said Kashad Leverett, 20, of South Amboy, N.J., after he and 11 other jurors delivered a guilty verdict on all charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, on Friday. “But in the evidence that was provided, it showed that he believed he was being intimidated because of his sexual orientation.”...

Clementi believed. But how does that reflect on Ravi?

The bias intimidation charges were the most difficult to agree upon, jurors said. And what tipped the scales there, they said, was that Mr. Ravi had discussed spying on Mr. Clementi not just once, but repeatedly, even inviting his online friends to watch Mr. Clementi and the other man in a second encounter.

That, said Ms. Audet, is what elevated the case from one of teenagers behaving cruelly and insensitively to a crime.

“To attempt a second time, is what changed my mind,” she said. “A reasonable person would have closed it and ended it there, not tweeted about it.”

Cruel and unreasonable, but why is it bias intimidation?

An important component of the bias intimidation charges was whether Mr. Clementi felt bullied. Jurors said he left ample evidence that he did: he complained to his resident assistant, he went online to request a room change, he saved screen shots of Mr. Ravi’s more offensive online posts, and he viewed his roommate’s Twitter feed 38 times in the two days before he killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

“We’ll never know exactly what he was feeling,” Ms. Audet said. “I can only assume.”

Obviously, Clementi could not be cross-examined.

Mr. Ravi’s lawyer pointed to apologetic texts that Mr. Ravi sent Mr. Clementi, in which he said he had no problem with homosexuality and even had a close friend who was gay....

Mr. Leverett, a student and Twitter user himself, was unmoved. “I can’t speak for everyone on the jury, but me, personally, I believe it was something where he realized what he did was wrong, and it was just too late to amend for what he did.”

Of the apology, Ms. Audet said: “My first impression was to believe what he said. Then, as we started reading stuff, we found things in there that I interpreted more as covering. The friend he claimed was a good friend in high school, that person was never presented as a defense witness. If that person had come forward and said, ‘Hey, we’ve been good friends, and he knows I’m gay and he doesn’t have a problem with it,’ that might have swayed me in the other direction.”

That sounds like Ravi was found guilty because he couldn't disprove a motivation that was inferred based on Clementi's subjective perception. And yet the defense was deprived of much of the evidence of Clementi's subjective state of mind. Emily Bazelon writes:

The suicide note he left behind, along with three Word documents with telltale names—“Gah.docx,” “sorry.docx,” and “Why is everything so painful.docx”—weren’t turned over to the defense or made public. (According to the judge, they weren’t directly relevant to the case against Ravi.)

Not directly relevant? But indirection, coming from Clementi, is what convicted Ravi.

In an earlier article, before the conviction, Bazelon wrote:

If I was on that jury..., I’d want to know what he has to say for himself all these months later. How should we think about the spying from his point of view? Ravi has said he was concerned about M.B.’s scruffy appearance because he’d left his iPad in his room. Maybe, but it’s pretty unconvincing that’s the entire explanation. He was clearly both freaked out and titillated by the idea that gay sex was going on in his bedroom. And if that’s an understandable reaction from an 18-year-old, I’d like to hear Ravi parse out why in his own words.

That sounds like a presumption of guilt, based on a failure of the defendant to testify. Do the liberal values about the rights of the accused evaporate when there's an opportunity to take a stand against homophobia?

Bazelon doesn't mention it, but the "scruffy" M.B. was a 32-year-old man. I could see being freaked out that a scruffy, much older man kept coming to your dorm room to have sex with your roommate, whether the sex was gay or straight. It wasn't just gay sex in the abstract, but a particular sexual situation, involving a specific person who really did not belong in Ravi's private space.

And what did that that specific person, M.B., have to do with the suicide, the suicide that inflamed the jury with pity? Shouldn't the jury have read the suicide note and “Gah.docx,” “sorry.docx,” and “Why is everything so painful.docx”? But the judge excluded that evidence.

Appeal.