For the past several years, we have been recalibrating Clinton’s legacy through micro historical trends. When Lewinsky re-emerged in 2014, she aligned herself in the causes of the moment, speaking out against bullying and shaming. When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, the accusers’ stories were again co-opted for political attack, by both the Trump campaign and Clinton supporters. An Emily’s List rep told BuzzFeed of Broaddrick: “Women know that this is an unfair attack on Hillary, and that’s why it continues to exist in this small corner of the right-wing media world.”
Today these stories are being re-evaluated in the context of the #MeToo movement. In an essay for Vanity Fair earlier this year, Lewinsky wrote that #MeToo had given her a “new lens” for seeing her own story: “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern.”
Lewinsky has always been cast as the central female character of Bill Clinton’s scandals, and while that has been hell for her, it has been rather convenient for him. Over two decades, it was easy to forget that the reporting on Clinton’s consensual affair with an intern arose out of an even more damning context: Jones’s harassment suit. (It was Lewinsky and Clinton denying their affair under oath in the Jones case that gave Starr the material to pounce.) Paula Jones spoke out against the most powerful man in the world, and when his lawyers argued that a sitting president couldn’t be subject to a civil suit, she took them all the way to the Supreme Court and won. In another world, she would be hailed as a feminist icon. But not in this world — not yet.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/arts/television/paula-jones-monica-lewinsky-bill-clinton.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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