We’ll catch a fox and put ’em in a box, and then we’ll (not) let him go.
One has to admire the skill, the viciousness with which the butchering was done, the high priestess sitting on her throne in New York, destroying a 20 year old barely legal woman in favor of the rich and the powerful man (with his woman standing right behind). And how the organic food eating, Afghanistan girl saving, elites loved it all. They gave her a bloody Pulitzer.
And then she gets to re-write history, to whitewash away her own sins. The cruelty is astonishing. How can a woman hurt another woman so much?
……………
In 1998, a week rarely went by where Lewinsky’s name did not appear in
Dowd’s column. When the scandal broke in January of that year, Dowd was
initially sympathetic to Lewinsky and damning of an administration that
rushed to smear her in a bid to cover its own ass.
It didn’t take long for Dowd
to buckle under the power of the Clinton narrative and join the pile-on
herself. By February, she was calling Lewinsky “a ditsy, predatory
White House intern who might have lied under oath for a job at Revlon”
and “the girl who was too tubby to be in the high school ‘in’ crowd.” At
first, Dowd attempted to pass this nastiness off as a sly, satirical
commentary on the caricature of Lewinsky that the Clinton administration
had painted in the press. But soon, the artifice disappeared, and Dowd
devoted her column to arguing that, come to think of it, Lewinsky was both nutty and slutty.
In May, Lewinsky was asked to submit a handwriting sample to the FBI,
and Dowd wrote a satirical column imagining the scene. “Her
stream-of-consciousness ramblings are on F.B.I. letterhead—in a girlish
scrawl, with loopy letters, little hearts and breathless punctuation,”
Dowd said. “Here’s what she wrote: Monica Clinton. Monica Lewinsky
Clinton. Monica Lewinsky Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Big Creep. (Frowny face.)
First Lady Monica. (Smiley face.) Menu for MY Italian State Dinner:
Spaghetti Carbonara. Tiramisu. Spumoni. Table placement: Me between
Leonardo DiCaprio & John Travolta. Also, cannoli.”
By June, no level of Lewinsky news was beneath Dowd’s scorn. She wrote that Lewinsky’s Vanity Fair
photo shoot had “shades of JonBenet Ramsey” and that “It appears that
there’s one thing Monica has immunity from: brains.” That same month,
Dowd happened to run into Lewinsky while both were dining at
Washington’s Bombay Club, so she transcribed the contents of Lewinsky’s
dinner plate (“veggie appetizers and chicken tandoori”) and claimed that
her presence at the White House–adjacent restaurant “suggested the
former intern was still trying to grab the President’s attention, like
some love-struck teen-ager, loitering outside Billy Clinton’s biology
class.”
Nearing the end of the summer, Dowd had tired of her characterization
of Lewinsky as a naïve Valley Girl and advanced her argument to claim
that Lewinsky was the real harasser. In August, Dowd compared Lewinsky
to Glenn Close’s bunny-stewing murderess in Fatal Attraction
and wrote that “Monica has at least one special talent: she is
relentless. It was the quality that got her noticed by Bill Clinton, and
it is the quality that will prevent him from ever escaping her.” The
occasion for this observation was Lewinsky’s agreement to appear in
front of a grand jury as requested—how tastelessly aggressive.
In
September, Dowd penned Lewinsky’s book proposal for her: “Preface:
Powerful men who are busy running things aren’t as hard to get as you
think. It’s really, really easy if you show a little gumption and a lot
of cleavage.” Later that month, she wrote, “It is Ms. Lewinsky who comes
across as the red-blooded predator, wailing to her girl friends that
the President wouldn’t go all the way.” And, “It is Mr. Clinton who
behaves more like a teen-age girl trying to protect her virginity. …
Ms. Lewinsky is the one who bristles with testosterone.”
In October, Dowd called Lewinsky a dingbat. Then, in November, she
decreed that Lewinsky’s 15 minutes were up. “Her commercial window of
opportunity is slamming shut,” Dowd wrote. “The nation, once glued to
the soap opera of Monica and Bill, has canceled the show. … Monica must
be in a panic to squeeze the last drop of profit from this sordid tale.”
Nevertheless, it was Dowd who kept writing about Lewinsky week after
week, capitalizing on her crazed bimbo character for the better part of
1999.
Fast-forward to 2006. Monica Lewinsky is laying low at the London
School of Economics, and Maureen Dowd, hard up for news fodder, writes a
think piece about how the term slut is wielded against women.
She reaches back into the Lewinsky file to lend some historical context:
“Republicans denigrated the prim law professor Anita Hill by painting
her, in David Brock’s memorable phrase, as ‘a little bit nutty and a
little bit slutty.’ Clinton defenders demonized Monica Lewinsky the same
way.” Huh. Is that what happened?
While Lewinsky expresses regret for her ill-fated
relationship with Clinton—and many Americans have come to realize
that Lewinsky got a raw deal—Dowd is not yet ready to assume
responsibility for her own role. On the occasion of Lewinsky’s
reappearance, Dowd has this to say: “It was like a Golden Oldie tour of a
band you didn’t want to hear in the first place.” What Dowd doesn’t
seem to get: She was the one beating the drum.
…………….
Link: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/monica_lewinsky_returns_how_maureen_dowd_caricatured_bill_clinton_s_mistress.html
…………
regards