Episode Details

Probably every society goes through revisionist history. Usually this happens gradually, over time, as stories become myths which become legends. Truth or fiction, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Even now, stories are being retold to serve various agendas. The story of the election in 2020 has become a dark and witchy fairy tale on the left and a religious persecution story on the right. Each side clings to the myth that helps them sleep better at night. Yes, there are monsters roaming the countryside but it’s okay because we have MSNBC to protect us. Trump didn’t really lose the election because superhumans do not lose. Trump is an omnipotent force two ways it seems. Devil or Diety. Take your pick. The truth is much less complicated but it is risky to abandon the myths because the myths define us.

There probably isn’t a single event that can’t be told a different way, or from a different perspective. I often think about that one Quaker back in Salem who spent a year in jail to make sure the story of mass hysteria and hangings was told. The horrors of Salem are so much bigger and so much more terrifying that the kitschy way Salem is remembered as witch hats and broomsticks is misleading.

These are stories of children being forced to condemn their parents as witches. Poor women and their babies dying in prison. A man being crushed to death because he would not confess. Hangings that were applauded by the townspeople in the town square. Fear does strange things to us humans. Collective fear is unmanageable.

The Monica Lewinsky myth is being retold because in the post Me Too era even the die-hard Democrats have turned on the withering charmer. He isn’t now an echo of JFK whose romps with women were part of his legend at a time when men were applauded for their James Bond-like sexual allure. I remember being at a party in the 90s and making the joke about the Lewinsky scandal, “when they were handing out b*******s in the Oval Office where was I?” It wasn’t much of a joke. But people did laugh. I suspect every single person at that dinner party now believes Clinton Me Too’d Monica. Or Monica Me Too’d Clinton.

We women who lived through these eras remember full well what things were like, and even as far back as the 1970s when it was not uncommon for 12 and 13 year-olds to lose their virginity and brag about it. Molestation was everywhere, hidden from view or barely noticed or addressed. Adulthood was cool, childhood wasn’t. Not until the 1990s. Then those of us who grew up in the careless 70s began to notice that it was all bad, hardly any of it good. No seatbelts, smoking at 10, smoking pot, watching porno, rated-R movies. The parents who protected their kids tended to be Conservatives who still went to Church on Sundays. But kids of the Left? We were raised like weeds. Some of us made it, some didn’t. Then in the 90s we all watched Oprah and went to therapy. Then we figured out that everything was bad. We vowed to raise our kids better.

Monica was a kid of the 70s too who grew up in the 90s to think it was cool to chase a married guy with seismic charisma. She famously flashed him her thong to show interest. And back then, wearing a thong was kind of risque. Not like now when everyone wears them. Poor Monica thought he was in love with her and that he would treat her well. She didn’t realize that when she became a problem she’d be tossed in the garbage. And trust me, as someone who knows all too well what it’s like to get in the way of a man who is using you as a side piece, that doesn’t feel good.

To her credit, Monica doesn’t entirely blame “Predator Bill” for the affair. But she does tell a big lie in the casting. Beanie Feldstein is no Monica Lewinsky. They want it to look like Bill Clinton cornered a wallflower who isn’t used to male attention, and while that might have been how Monica saw herself, that isn’t how the world saw her then or now. She was vivacious and pinup-like