We can count Monica Lewinsky as one of the people who is not sorry that the late Roger Ailes is dead. She has named in a New York Times op-ed the former Fox News Channel CEO as the author of all of her problems, which include being held up for ridicule and humiliation as a young intern back during the scandal to which she lent her name and her difficulty getting dates decades after the torrid affair that led to the president’s impeachment. In the history of people not taking responsibility for their actions, the article is breathtaking.
How Monica Lewinsky almost brought down a president
Back when the Cold War was a memory, and the War on Terror resided in the future, the government was locked in one of those shutdown confrontations when then-President Bill Clinton was tussling with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich over who was in charge. Monica Lewinsky, then a White House intern, decided that it might be amusing to seduce the president of the United States by flashing her thong covered posterior. Clinton, instead of having her fired, invited Lewinsky up to the Oval Office for some heavy petting and oral sex. That was Lewinsky’s first mistake.
Monica’s second mistake
Lewinsky’s second mistake was to boast about what was happening to her good friend Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded the conversations.
Thus evidence about the affair was available when it came to light during the discovery phase of the Paula Jones matter. However, Lewinsky and Clinton both denied that the affair ever took place. The matter might have remained there had it not been for Lewinsky’s third mistake.
The blue dress
Lewinsky kept, as a memento, a blue dress that had been anointed with President Clinton’s bodily essence.
When Ken Starr, the special prosecutor looking into Clinton’s various misdeeds, discovered the existence of the dress, he had it tested. Sure enough the dress and what it contained proved that the president of the United States had conducted a teenage-style romance with a girl young enough to be his daughter. And thus, a scandal was born.
Why is it Roger Ailes’ fault?
Ailes, as the CEO of an up and coming cable news network, knew a juicy story when he saw it. Of course, he had his people run with it. So did every other news organization at the time. Monica Lewinsky blaming Roger Ailes for her troubles is sort of like Richard Nixon blaming Ben Bradlee, chief editor of the Washington Post, for Watergate. Lewinsky has only herself to blame. At the very least, the scandal she helped to cause was more amusing than most stories in the 21st Century.
