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- [00:00]
Clara Jeffrey
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- [00:30]
Dan Savage
The following podcast contains explicit.
- [00:32]
Emily Bazelon
Language I just feel much more aware of abuses of power and while I think it's good to complicate it and kind of play around with it, I think she had so much less power than him.
- [00:45]
Wesley Morris
Oh, absolutely, yes.
- [00:46]
Host/Interviewer
That is, you do think she had less power?
- [00:47]
Wesley Morris
Oh, so much less structurally, yes.
- [00:50]
Dan Savage
You know, if the President of the United States wants a blowjob, who's supposed to suck his dick? Another President of the United States. He was. Jimmy Carter was supposed to drop by and give Clinton a blowjob.
- [01:02]
Host/Interviewer
Hey, Slow Burn listeners. This is the second of two podcast episodes featuring conversations from a series of live events that we put on at the end of season two. The previous episode of the podcast was concerned with this question of how inevitable the political turmoil of the 1990s was and how much of it was a function of chance. Today we're going to look at the power dynamics between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. You will hear from a bunch of interesting people on that issue, including sex columnist and podcast host Dan Savage and the New York Times Magazine's Emily Bazelon. But first, a conversation about someone we didn't get to spend much time on in slow Burn Season 2, Hillary Clinton. During our event in San Francisco, I talked to Clara Jeffrey, editor in chief of Mother Jones, about how the scandal affected Hillary Clinton and her role in the saga. Here is our conversation. So a couple days ago or maybe a couple weeks ago at this point, Hillary Clinton was on TV and she was asked this question about whether her husband had committed a abuse of power in his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and people got really upset with her. So I want to start by asking you whether you think it's fair or legitimate to hold against Hillary Clinton the things that Bill Clinton did.
- [02:21]
Clara Jeffrey
Let's start with the actual incident because she was asked, in hindsight, what would you say about this relationship that your husband had with Monica and was essentially applying the power differential between President of the United States and 22 year old unpaid intern? Isn't that terrible? And I think the thing that Strikes me about this remark isn't so much that she didn't, you know, decry her husband and say he's a terrible predator, and I wish we had never met. I mean, they. They've. They've made a compact. Maybe when they first fell in love, maybe along the way, they're in a kind of ride or die situation. Right. At this point, she's not gonna. She's not gonna do that. If she was gonna do that, she could have done it at any point along the way. But what struck me as really telling about that moment was that she didn't have a better answer. A more politically appropriate answer, one that I could imagine would be something like, obviously, many terrible choices were made. My husband made terrible choices. But I have always championed a woman's right to choose her own fate. And so there's a sort of line that she's had a little bit around this along the way where it's. I respect women's ability to make choices. In this case, about a sexual relationship with a much older, much more powerful man. I don't think it would have totally gotten her out of it, but I think that it was a case of bad staffing. It just seems like at this point, she should have a better answer.
- [03:59]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah. I had that same reaction when Bill Clinton was asked about it on his book tour for a children's novel he wrote. No mystery novel. Mystery novel he wrote with James Patterson for some reason. And it was the same thing. It's like, why don't you have a better answer by this point?
- [04:13]
Clara Jeffrey
Right. I mean, I have been, you know, when this happened, when I was about 30 years old. That was 21 years ago. I feel like I would have a better answer if I were either one of them at this point. And that answer obviously needs to evolve with the times and the sort of way we're viewing. Certainly the Lewinsky affair and, you know, Juanita Broderick and et cetera. But I still think that they. They could have a better, more empathetic answer or even just a better political answer. The fact that they don't, I think, goes to the central mystery of them as a couple. I guess that whatever binds these two people together, and I think, frankly, I think it's really reductive when people think it's just ambition or some sort of corporate decision to stay together. But whatever it is, they kind of can't let a flaw into that paradigm that they've built.
- [05:07]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah. Yeah. I guess my thing I wondered about is whether, like, it's a matter of staffing. Like there's no one around her to tell her what to say or whether they've tried and she just can't and he just can't.
- [05:19]
Clara Jeffrey
Exactly. I mean, I would. They've both had very smart people around them along the way, and I would imagine that the people have tried. That said, I don't think until the Access Hollywood tape and then Trump et al, bringing Bill Clinton's accusers to the debate, I don't really think that it had, like, it was more in the public dialogue, but not in the way that we view it now, and certainly not with the reflection of the last year and a half of the Me Too movement.
- [05:49]
Host/Interviewer
You were at Harper's, right, when the Clinton Lewinsky scandal broke and you've been covering the Clintons ever since, right?
- [05:57]
Clara Jeffrey
I mean, yes, yes.
- [05:59]
Host/Interviewer
Do you remember thinking about sort of Hillary Clinton's role in enabling him or covering for him during that scandal and in subsequent years?
- [06:09]
Clara Jeffrey
I think for me, I've always felt that it was unfair, even as I did sometimes do it myself, to put his transgressions and flaws on her to solve. They are in a marriage, they are in a political partnership. However, I felt that as the years went by, the opprobrium from that whole incident attached itself to Hillary and Bill somehow wiggled out of it. Like, true to Bill, you know, I think there were plenty of people on the right and the left, feminists and non feminists who were like, why doesn't she leave him? There were plenty of people that felt all along that in a really kind of disgusty way, I think that, like, she's just a creature of ambition, like she's only with him to, like, claw her way to power. And so all these sort of versions of Hillary attach to Hillary the real person. I also think her chief political flaw over the years has been that you talk about vis a vis the kind of Travelgate and the Rose Law Firm billing is that she always reacts by cocooning. I want to make it more private, give them less. And though this has never worked out for them, that continues to be her instinct. And yet I completely understand it because maybe vast right wing conspiracy is too great a stretch, but when people were credibly saying Bill Clinton was running a drug cartel in some Arkansas airfield and Hillary Clinton slept with Vince Foster and killed him, or maybe she was having an affair with Janet Reno. There's crazy stuff.
- [07:46]
Host/Interviewer
I think I knew about the Reno thing.
- [07:48]
Clara Jeffrey
Yeah, there was crazy stuff happening. And if you were at the end of that for 30 years, you would feel really defensive and hostile too. Too.
- [07:56]
Host/Interviewer
Do you think we can or should make sort of special allowances for her based on the fact that she's married to him, that this is a personal matter for her? That, like, if you, as you sort of alluded to earlier, like, she hasn't left him by now, then clearly, like her refusal to acknowledge or entertain the. The notion that he abused his power, that this is not political gesture, but rather just like completely sort of helpless personal reaction, and we shouldn't expect anything different from her.
- [08:30]
Clara Jeffrey
I would hesitate to say that anything that Hillary Clinton does is helpless. I think she's a very powerful and capable woman, whatever her political and other flaws may be. But my guess is that historians will look back on her as being this very weird transitional figure of American women in power. No woman was going to get to, you know, run the health care reform attempts the first time or be Secretary of state or really even get elected to the Senate for many years, unless you were the spouse of someone who died. You know, I mean, you just. These opportunities were not available to women. And to ground myself again in time, like, you know, I'm definitely at least a generation younger than Hillary. But from the beginning, I think for a lot of women my age and of different ages, you saw this constant attack on her for being too ambitious. You know, I mean, Linda Tripp said that you sort of alluded to, like, the reason she initially didn't like the Clinton she let Bill was this louche, libertine, and Hillary Clinton was his too ambitious wife, I think is how you put it. And these are just expressions that never get attached to powerful men. And so I think that it is part of her calculus that she knows that she's a transitional historic figure or wants to be, or both, and I think is sort of steering her ship as best she can with all the flaws that she has in a seriously flawed husband.
- [10:08]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah. How much do you think her husband's flaws and her husband's history, how much of a role do you think that played in undermining her in the 2016 election? Is it all his fault that she lost?
- [10:22]
Clara Jeffrey
I don't think it's all his fault. I think she has faults as a candidate. I'm not gonna rehash a 2016 election. God forbid we don't have eight hours. But I do think there are two key things a Once the specter of the Access Hollywood tape came up and he, Steve Bannon, which was deviously brilliant, persuaded them to bring Clinton's accusers, Bill Clinton's accusers to the debate that really neutered her in her ability to go after him the way that he deserved to be gone after. And there were certain other things. There were certain policies that were really Bill Clinton's policies that people would lash out at her at. And in a way, again, it's back to that. How do you. You can't really undermine your husband and his legacy, even as you might politically then and now, have a different position or want to separate yourself or see things differently in hindsight, or just be a political creature.
- [11:19]
Host/Interviewer
One of the things that has stayed with me since doing all the reporting for the show was a comment that Dick Morris made. He was a consultant for Bill Clinton after the 94 midterms and before that too. He said, look at all the scandals that happened in the first term. Travelgate, the billing records situation, Whitewater. It's all Hillary. That's what he said. He said it was all Hillary. And it was eye opening for me. Not necessarily because that's true, but because it gave me a window onto sort of the Hillary hatred that exists out there. And I didn't necessarily appreciate before this that there's Hillary hatred that is sort of separate from Clinton hatred.
- [11:58]
Clara Jeffrey
Oh, yeah.
- [11:58]
Host/Interviewer
I'm curious to hear what you think about why.
- [12:00]
Clara Jeffrey
I mean, Dick Morris himself is a world class sexist. Right. And just horrible. But, you know, I think that there is a particular kind of sexism that is attached to Hillary. I mean, you know, and there's sort of expressions that stick in my mind. I remember someone saying, you know, Hillary Clinton reminds you of your first wife, you know, nagging you to pick up the kids when you really want to be with your hot young new wife. And I was like, what the is that? You know, or, you know, the feminazi thing, like her looking the other way or whatever her position about Bill's affairs and sexuality was, it didn't even so much attached to him as much as it attached to her being Proto feminazi, maybe closeted lesbian, maybe this maybe. I mean, it was just so odd the way her sexuality became bound up for his failings, I think. And you know, and I think also there, there's a kind of generational sexism for men and maybe younger men, but on men on the left, really there, there's a certain strain of sexism on the left that's really shown its full flower, I think, when it comes to Hillary. And it's. I don't get it. But then, you know, again, I'm someone who would more identify with her so struggles to be a powerful woman when the routes to power were very unclear.
- [13:31]
Host/Interviewer
Do you think she was changed by going through, especially that first term, when all this sort of virulent opposition that they faced as an administration, but also she faced personally. Do you think it changed her? Do you think she's a different person now as a result of going through that? I don't know. Fire comes to mind. I don't know what that.
- [13:51]
Clara Jeffrey
The first term of Bill Clinton's administration. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, you didn't have the length to like, kind of go back to her career in Arkansas. But I mean, I think the attacks she got even as first lady there, like, you know, not pretty enough, you're not Southern enough. Like, what's with the chunky glasses?
- [14:08]
Host/Interviewer
Wrong haircut.
- [14:09]
Clara Jeffrey
Wrong haircut and all this. And so she tried.
- [14:11]
Host/Interviewer
Wrong last name, by the way.
- [14:12]
Clara Jeffrey
So, yeah, I think she was kind of, to some degree, battle hardened. And I don't mean that in like a harridan kind of way, but like, you know, along the way. But also, again, I think she was a sort of naturally private person by nature, and I think that made her natural instinct is kind of go inward. And one of the times I've always found Hillary Clinton to be the most touching is an interview somewhere along the campaign trail and someone was asking her, in comparison to her and her husband, she said, I know I'm not the natural politician that my husband or President Obama is. I know that. But I know that I will get in there and work really hard and study really hard and do the best job I can. And to me, that in part kind of spoke to a little bit more of the introvert becoming a policy wonk type figure. And also, again, the kind of roles that women of that generation, at least, were put into. You couldn't be a super flamboyant figure in the way that Bill Clinton was and hoped to gain that kind of office. You know, Hillary was the one who was on the COVID at life at 18 for her commencement speech. Bill Clinton, you know, kind of slept his way through Yale. I mean, he's brilliant, don't get me wrong. But, like, you know, he was not necessarily always the highest achiever, despite being a Rhodes scholar and all that. She wants to do her homework. And we are a political system that most often, certainly in the last few years, does not reward people that want to, like, sit down and do the work. So I always thought that was very telling about her.
- [15:50]
Host/Interviewer
Was there anything she could have said in response to this question that she got the other week just to kind of bring it full circle, Is there anything that she could have said, to use my metaphor from earlier, bring the temperature down around this hangover that we're all living through now over her scandals and his scandals?
- [16:05]
Clara Jeffrey
There's certainly no way to have answered that question that would have satisfied everybody.
- [16:09]
Host/Interviewer
That would have.
- [16:09]
Clara Jeffrey
Would be impossible. Like I said, I do think that there would have been a way to acknowledge that this was a situation that should have never happened, that there were personal failings of everybody involved. And then I think just as a politician, she kind of had to weasel her way to kind of where she is. It's like my husband asked me to stand by him then, and I did. And I really hope that Ms. Lewinsky is not. Is turning out okay as she seems to be. Yeah, something like that, I think would be the best you could possibly do.
- [16:44]
Host/Interviewer
Clara, thanks for being here. Let's give a round of applause to Clara Jeffrey. All right. That was an interview with Clara Jeffrey from the Slow Burn live show in San Francisco. When we stopped in Portland, Oregon, we took the stage with Dan Savage, host of the podcast Savage Lovecast, and Andy Zeissler, a co founder of Bitch Media. The discussion centered on the public reaction to the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. I started by bringing Dan and Andy back to the 90s when they were just starting their careers. Do either of you guys have like, a particularly vivid memory from that period? Like something that you, you know, that you still think about when you close your eyes?
- [17:30]
Dan Savage
I do remember being home with my son dj, who was actually born here in Portland at ohsu when the impeachment proceedings were underway. And just thinking straight, people have got to get over themselves. They're never going to get over us faggots if they can't ever get over themselves. And just the sort of torture the country was putting itself through. Because in my view at the time, because of a fucking blowjob or two was insane.
- [18:03]
Host/Interviewer
It was more than two.
- [18:04]
Dan Savage
More than two, as I now know, having just listened to the show, because it was nine pack of blowjobs. Nine blowjobs. The Costco pack of blowjobs. And it just seemed the whole country was running off the rails because people did what people have been doing forever, which was they were socially monogamous, but not sexually monogamous to Clintons, apparently. And there was a right wing conspiracy to take out the Clintons, and Starr was a part of it. And they'd finally found something that they could hang their hat on. And it was Bill Clinton's erection.
- [18:43]
Host/Interviewer
Multipurpose instrument.
- [18:47]
Andy Zeisler
I remember. I mean, there's a lot of things that I remember really vividly. One was just getting, like, having to tell my mother to stop calling me to ask if I'd read the latest Maureen Dowd column. You know, at the time, third wave feminism was in the process of sort of divesting itself from all the stereotypes about second wave feminism and sex. You know, sort of like, we're not fusty, we like porn, we get down with this stuff. So there was a real focus on how do we decide who was really manipulated here. I think that the narrative in so many of these cases and definitely in this one was like, oh, poor Monica, what a dupe, you know, or like, she was really, like, victimized in this. And so I do remember having a lot of conversations about, like, that was.
- [19:36]
Host/Interviewer
Like the second wave read, right?
- [19:37]
Clara Jeffrey
Yes.
- [19:38]
Andy Zeisler
And so there was a way in which the narrative around feminism and Monica Lewinsky became that feminist, threw her under the bus. But it was really a lot more nuanced than that, certainly among third wave feminists and people who were trying to sort of figure out the sexual politics of something where there was such a dramatic power imbalance.
- [20:03]
Host/Interviewer
What was your. Andy, what was your read on Monica Lewinsky and sort of her, like, what happened to her in this? Or what did you. Did you see her as someone who had something happen to her, or was it something that she, you know, that you sort of gave her control over in your mind?
- [20:20]
Andy Zeisler
I can't speak to what happened between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, but certainly she was far more victimized by the media and by popular culture and by the independent counsel. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, no one cared about Monica Lewinsky's well being. She was cannon fodder. And that was really clear. And it was. I'm a year younger than Monica Lewinsky, so I felt it really acutely the idea that there's a point where you don't get to control your narrative. And I could not imagine how she must be feeling.
- [20:58]
Host/Interviewer
Dan, what about you? How did you read it?
- [21:01]
Dan Savage
Well, I thought the debate about the power differential was really fascinating. And reading Monica Lewinsky, her own comments in Vanity Fair, primarily about her evolving understanding of that power differential over the years, has been really interesting, but also kind of frustrating if you're always allowed to sort of revise decades old experiences. What is ever set or what is ever finished, what is ever done? But the whole power differential thing kind of blew my mind a little bit, because if the president of The United States wants a blowjob. Who's supposed to suck his dick? Another president of the United States, Jimmy Carter was supposed to drop but. And give Clinton a blowjob. Like, there are power differentials built into all of our relationships, and we're always negotiating with each other around power. And power and power differentials are sexy. And that's just something that people were really in denial about the whole time. Like, why would Clinton do this? It was such a risk. That's why he did it. It was such a risk. Why would she show him his thong? What was up? There's a power differential here. So it's a no go area sexually. And it's like, no, no, no. That's the go area for a lot of people. Sexually is where there is a power differential. People are so aroused by power differentials that in the absence of them, they will manufacture them, which is what BDSM and DS relationships negotiated sort of power exchange. Power differentials are all about power and risk and danger gets adrenaline pumping. It arouses us. It turns us on. And everybody was looking at the Clinton, Monica blowjob, the assignation, the affair, and pretending that they couldn't understand it, as if these forces weren't at play in their own sex life and in their own pants. And I guarantee that they were.
- [22:41]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah. Andy, you mentioned the sort of the media's treatment of Monica Lewinsky. We actually have a pretty fascinating clip. It's a interview that Andrew Morton, who is Monica Lewinsky's biographer, her official biographer, whom she spoke to at length for a book that he wrote about her that came out, I think, in early 99. And it's an interview with him between him and Katie Couric on the Today show. I think we'll just play a tiny little bit of it here. But she's an ordinary girl. She could be anybody's daughter, anybody's sister.
- [23:09]
Clara Jeffrey
And it could one day happen to you. Is she an ordinary predatory girl who set her sights on the President?
- [23:15]
Host/Interviewer
People are sort of gasping. Right. And I'm curious what you guys think has changed just quickly about that word, predator. Yeah, please.
- [23:23]
Dan Savage
When it comes to sex, we are all predators and prey. We can't pretend that we are just one or the other. That is an amorphous sort of fluid dynamic that sloshes around in all of our lives. There are times, and I'm using predator and prey with a consensual relationship sense. Not predator, prey in the sense of a sexual predator as we understand it. But in that sense. She was talking About a consensual relationship between two adults and describing their behaviors as predatory, as if that's damnable or problematic, as if it isn't perfectly normal.
- [23:59]
Andy Zeisler
We're not a sophisticated media culture even now. But back then, it was like she could either be a victim or a predator. There was no in between. There was no acknowledgement of.
- [24:09]
Dan Savage
And you had to take sides.
- [24:10]
Andy Zeisler
Yeah, there was no acknowledgement of the. You know, the nuance, the ways that power shifts and the gray ethical area, the fact that, you know, something doesn't have to be illegal to be ethically.
- [24:26]
Clara Jeffrey
Wrong, and the way power shifts.
- [24:29]
Dan Savage
She left the White House wearing that blue dress with the cum stain. She had a lot of power at that moment by possessing that dress, as Linda Tripp recognized. What was so fascinating about your interview with her, that the dress was hugely powerful, and she had to hold onto it and preserve it to protect herself, because it gave her this power over him.
- [24:47]
Host/Interviewer
Right.
- [24:47]
Dan Savage
Is it okay that I listened to your whole Linda Tripp episode and still hate Linda Tripp?
- [24:51]
Host/Interviewer
It's absolutely okay.
- [24:52]
Dan Savage
You worked really hard to humanize her.
- [24:54]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah, no, I mean, I wasn't trying to, like, make a statement in her defense necessarily, with that interview. I think people should take away from it what they will, but.
- [25:02]
Dan Savage
Because when you got to that point where you're like, oh, my God, I secretly recorded the woman who secretly recorded her friend, what am I gonna do? I was like, roll the tape.
- [25:10]
Host/Interviewer
Fuck her.
- [25:12]
Dan Savage
But then she came around.
- [25:14]
Host/Interviewer
I will confess here that the secret tape that is sitting in my drawer, there's not that much on it that's not in the actual interview that I did. So don't feel like you're missing out. It's all pretty much there. But I'm curious whether you guys think that, to go back to that phrase, predatory girl, are we more enlightened now or what?
- [25:33]
Andy Zeisler
I mean, you asked the question. I think you know the answer. I feel like maybe in some ways, perhaps, but in many ways, there is still that lack of nuance when we're talking about sex and power and gender, particularly in the context of a workplace. We are still really prone to flattening the way that power works, the way that you can be sexually harassed. And it's not necessarily quid pro quo. It's not necessarily like, give me a blowjob or you're fired. But there are ways that people manipulate power that are really hard to judge unless you've kind of been there.
- [26:23]
Dan Savage
How do you balance that with the way people are drawn to power and Aroused by power. Because to say to the powerful person, you may never act because you in just acting, maybe even unintentionally and without malice, abusing your power because the other person is succumbing to your power or in the thrall of your power, but the other person is drawn to your power and aroused by your power. Where do we go with that? Because there's always going to be power differentials in human relationships.
- [26:49]
Andy Zeisler
This is why I only work with women as a straight person.
- [26:55]
Host/Interviewer
I can't inverse the Mike Pence rule.
- [27:02]
Andy Zeisler
I think that's a fascinating thing about a lot of the conversations that have come up around me too, in also sort of talking in a sort of revisionist history way about Monica Lewinsky. That has to be part of the equation. But it's such a case by case basis in so many ways.
- [27:19]
Dan Savage
So have things changed as a result of this scandal? I guess so, in some ways for the worse. But we, you know, we're still. We still have fundamentalist religious conservatives running around. We still have this purity culture in evangelicism, evangelical communities, which is all targeted at women as the sole actors and agents of desire and the traps that men fall into and stigmatizes women's agency and their right to be sexual beings and to have wants and to be horny. So, yeah, in some ways there's been progress. In other ways there's been regress.
- [27:54]
Andy Zeisler
Yeah, and the word predatory comes into play here too, because there's a way in which we still talk about sexual harassment cases when it's a powerful man and a less powerful woman and the burden is still on her. Like, she must have wanted something from him. She must have known she could get something out of this. So I think there is very much still that equation. And we have a media that has really sanctioned that. Maureen Dowd essentially won a Pulitzer for slut shaming Monica Lewinsky. And so that's very much a thread that still runs through how we talk about this stuff.
- [28:33]
Host/Interviewer
Do you think feminism as it exists today? I mean, I realize it's not a monolith. Maybe this is not an answerable question, but what role do you think the scandal has had over the past 20 years as sort of a catalyst for however feminist thought has evolved in that in that time? Like, do you think it has been sort of gestating in some meaningful way? Like, is it.
- [28:56]
Dan Savage
Is.
- [28:57]
Host/Interviewer
Is the feminism we have today in any way rooted in a sort of cultural reaction to these events from 1998?
- [29:04]
Andy Zeisler
I think in a lot of ways, yes. Because, again, the sort of the way that the media controlled the narrative and took it out of Monica Lewinsky's hands. And so whatever agency she had in actually initiating this affair was completely stripped from her by a media culture that would say anything or do anything to sort of humiliate her. I think there's absolutely still that drive and that need to sort of humiliate women. And I think we saw that with the Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh. She's really talking about, you know, the laughter, the humiliation factor. And so I think that feminism has really grappled with how to talk about women as sexual agents and balance that with the way that the media and popular culture have really not evolved in those conversations.
- [30:13]
Host/Interviewer
As a last question here, I'm curious if you guys remember sort of the immediate aftermath of the scandal. So I guess I'm thinking of the period after Clinton's acquittal in the Senate. And maybe you might even want to think about the period after The, I guess, 2000 election, after Clinton sort of left the stage. Did it feel like the country was, like, hungover from this? Like, did it have a. Was there a lingering stench? Yeah, that's. I was trying to find a different.
- [30:43]
Andy Zeisler
Word, but a stain, a stench, a blue dress, creeping.
- [30:48]
Host/Interviewer
Yeah. Did it feel like people were continuing to process it, or did it sort of just.
- [30:53]
Dan Savage
I mean, people talk about Clinton fatigue, and Al Gore was certainly wanting to put some mileage between him and Clinton when he made Joe Lieberman a disastrous decision, and his first decision as a potential president, maybe even at his qualifying one, his VP pick, because Lieberman again, shadow over Clinton. But Hillary won her race for Senate, which meant that Clinton really wasn't going anywhere. And so, on the one hand, there was this Clinton fatigue, and everybody talked about it. It's almost like the media was trying to will that into being, like, putting the Clintons behind us. And the Clintons never let us put the Clintons behind us, but neither do we allow the Clintons to ever be behind us. So I don't think we were anywhere or got anywhere, if that makes any sense. I had some pot right before this show. It's not all going to make sense.
- [31:44]
Andy Zeisler
I mean, I do think the fact that there was already so much animosity toward Hillary and the way that the media dealt with a lot of how they filled in the narrative was to sort of pit them against each other.
- [31:56]
Dan Savage
There was a lot of shaming of Hillary, too. That didn't. That wasn't a part of the show because she Also did it all wrong. She was supposed to leave him. She was supposed to get a divorce. There was a narrative for the wrong woman and Hillary refused to play her part. And she actually did stand by her man, Tammy Wynette style, ironically enough, in the end. And she was shamed for that. Like, neither of these women could do anything right in the same way.
- [32:19]
Andy Zeisler
Right, Exactly. And it was such a switch from when Hillary first became first lady and everyone was like, she doesn't stand by her man enough. Like, she wants to work. Burn this witch. And so, yeah, it was like the media was always going to find an angle with which to make women the villain of this, the villains of this story.
- [32:41]
Host/Interviewer
My main, my main feeling right now is that I wish I had interview guys interviewed you guys for episode seven, the feminism episode. Thanks so much for being here, guys. Thank you so much. Let's give a round of applause. That was dan savage and andy zeissler. Finally, in New York City, I got to chat with Emily Bazelon and Wesley Morris. Emily is a reporter for the New York Times Magazine and co host of Slate's Political Gabfest. Wesley is the New York Times critic at large. They were also interested in discussing the power dynamics between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, though they took the conversation in very different directions. Wesley Morris kicked it off with a confession.
- [33:27]
Wesley Morris
I'm just going to be honest with you guys. I totally understood Monica Lewinsky. I have to believe that if I were her in that exact same job, I would have done everything she did. I would not have known about abuse of power. I would not have known about what he was responsible for not giving into as a, as an adult who I technically worked for. I would have done any. Everything she did and I would have told people I was doing that. No, I'm, I'm serious. And I mean, it would have been.
- [34:04]
Emily Bazelon
A Linda Tripp in your life too, probably.
- [34:07]
Wesley Morris
Yes. And I know exactly who Linda Tripp probably would have been.
- [34:13]
Emily Bazelon
So did that make you condemn him at the time? And is that how you feel about it now, if you're feeling shifted or not? Exactly.
- [34:21]
Wesley Morris
I, I'm intellectually embarrassed to say that. I, I have a very sort of out of body experience listening to the conversation around abuse of power. I understand morally what he was responsible to do as. I mean, as a manager.
- [34:41]
Host/Interviewer
Right.
- [34:43]
Wesley Morris
But I don't like the idea that people who knew her, Monica Lewinsky, talked about her as though she were like a little girl and therefore didn't have a say in things.
- [34:57]
Host/Interviewer
That was, of course, Linda Tripp's main line about her, she was like a child in a woman's body.
- [35:01]
Wesley Morris
Of the taking away of her agency by these maternalistic figures. And in the show, there are many of them. I mean, I know that it is an abuse of power, and I can see that. I just don't viscerally feel that when we talk about this. I do think that Bill Clinton is like his actual behavior and psychology are a problem, a deep problem. But in the absolute circumstances of that moment or the specific circumstances of that moment, I was Monica Lewinsky.
- [35:35]
Emily Bazelon
Right. And then it seems like in inhabiting Monica Lewinsky or saying that it was. There was more gray area here and that it was more ambiguous. And so maybe the problem for you with a term like abuse of power is that it makes it seem like he had all the power and she had none. And you would imagine that actually that is an exaggeration.
- [35:54]
Wesley Morris
She had power over him. I definitely think at the time, it was amazing that she. She seemed to have affected him. These were all things that I, as a younger person and people that I was talking to with the.
- [36:09]
Clara Jeffrey
The time.
- [36:10]
Wesley Morris
We're really kind of into.
- [36:12]
Host/Interviewer
You identified with her.
- [36:13]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:14]
Host/Interviewer
Are there things, Emily, that you feel like you are thinking about now or that, you know, now that you weren't thinking about then, that you feel you should have been or that you didn't?
- [36:24]
Emily Bazelon
You know, my main feeling about what was missing in the response to Lewinsky was the feminist blogosphere was missing that nobody had her back and that, you know, she was caricatured as this kind of blousy a word, like this sort of, you know, big hair, kind of mocked in the kind of femininity she had. And I don't think that even 10 years later, I hope that women wouldn't have put up with that, that there would have been a sense of like, wait a second. And there was some. You know, you did a great job in your episode of showing that there was a heterogeneous response among feminists. But, you know, because some really prominent feminists were clearly on Clinton's side and seemed to want to apologize for him. I think the main impression people had was that, you know, Lewinsky was a figure to be dismissed, like, not taken seriously. She was expendable. I remember feeling that way about the feminist response and being upset about it because it felt like mean girls to me, as well as hypocrisy. And I. Yeah, that felt. Feels to me like it was deeply absent from the conversation at the time. And I guess then the Other thing is, I just feel much more aware of abuses of power. And while I think it's good to complicate it and kind of play around with it, I think she had so much less power than him.
- [37:42]
Wesley Morris
Oh, absolutely, yes.
- [37:43]
Host/Interviewer
That is. You do think she had less power?
- [37:45]
Wesley Morris
Oh, so much structurally, yes.
- [37:47]
Host/Interviewer
But also not even just structurally. I mean, he could call her and she couldn't call him.
- [37:50]
Wesley Morris
Yes, that is. Well, welcome to affairs. Right, but that's actually what.
- [37:55]
Host/Interviewer
That's actually what Jennifer Bongartner, who I interviewed for the show, says said. I made this point to her. I was like, look, what, you know, what really stops me in my tracks is that she was so anguished during this affair, especially during the second, during the sort of latter part of the affair when he wasn't as interested and he was sort of keeping her at arm's length. She was like, I don't think she would dispute this. She was obsessed and she was.
- [38:14]
Wesley Morris
She was going crazy.
- [38:15]
Host/Interviewer
She was going crazy. And to me, like, the fact that he was able to call her, you know, to just to activate it whenever he wanted and she couldn't was the exact illustration of why people shouldn't do this. But then Jennifer Baumgartner said, but that's every adulterous affair. Like the person who's married, it's not because he was president, it's because he was married.
- [38:33]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. I just feel like the misfortune of the congruence of these events.
- [38:39]
Host/Interviewer
Which events?
- [38:41]
Wesley Morris
The, like, generic having of an affair between an older man and a younger woman.
- [38:46]
Emily Bazelon
And by the way, one of them is president.
- [38:48]
Wesley Morris
But, you know, what was interesting about that time was I was never aware of the triangulation of the problems.
- [38:55]
Dan Savage
Right.
- [38:56]
Wesley Morris
We know much more about Clinton as a sort of psychosexual figure now than we did at the time. Right. And so for better or worse? Well, no, for better. For better. Only for better. Like, I feel like you mean better.
- [39:10]
Emily Bazelon
That we know it all.
- [39:10]
Wesley Morris
Better that we know. It's funny, because I also think we didn't have the sort of cultural, conceptual language at the. In 1997 and 98 and 99 to really reckon with what was rumored to be going on with him. Juanita Broderick was an ambient thing that you. Like, she was lying. Like, all these women were lying. You know, that was how we talked about them.
- [39:38]
Emily Bazelon
Well, Juanita Broderick was a huge problem if you wanted to vote for Clinton again, because if you believed her and took her seriously, you could no longer do that. That as a feminist. And I Think that was why it was much easier to figure out ways to doubt her, just like, to pretend she wasn't part of the story because it was so uncomfortable to have to take her seriously.
- [39:59]
Host/Interviewer
How much of that inclination to find reasons to doubt someone like Juanita Broderick or to doubt Paula Jones or whoever, how much of that comes down to the fact that Clinton was the first Democratic president in what since 1981? So many years had gone by without one of our people in the White House? Like, were people just. Just scared to lose that? Like, how much of that was at work in the sort of inclination to give him the benefit of the doubt?
- [40:27]
Emily Bazelon
I think there was some of that, although it's kind of irrational, because then Al Gore would have become the president. It wasn't as if the Democrats were going to lose the White House. I think it also had to do with the discomfort of where the spotlight had begun. It became tribal in a way that, you know, the Mueller investigation is today. And I think Democrats were deeply suspicious of Ken Starr and unwilling to give an inch. And so the fact that we learned about all the sexual misconduct as a result of the Starr investigation tainted it and gave people a reason not to believe it or not to credit it, really. And that's a problem because then you're not independently evaluating the evidence. You're just looking at it as motivated in some way.
- [41:08]
Wesley Morris
I also think that another thing that was going on at that moment was it was at the end of the culture wars, basically. It was the nail in the. Because what happened, like this happened. Bush v. Gore happened, and then 9, 11 happened. This was where the culture wars inevitably had to wind up in the Oval Office. We didn't know it was the end at that point, but of course, I mean, it was the culmination of more than like, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15 years of real fights about sex and what was wrong with it and who could be said to have it and who could be shown having it, and who could go and watch people have it, who could sing about having it. And the idea that all of this sort of government regulation around sex and art was happening out outside the White House, the idea that it was suddenly in the Oval Office, happening literally in the Oval Office. It just. If you were a person who believed in a kind of sexual freedom or something, even remotely intellectually, this was like a metaphorical dream come true. It was like manna from the pleasure palace, you know.
- [42:28]
Emily Bazelon
Well, and it was supposed. If you read it all as an affair, then the framework, I remember over and over again at the time was like, well, if we were like the French, we would just be sophisticated and libertine and their prime ministers always have mistresses, and that's just part of the culture. And everyone is very adult about it and moves on. Whereas now I think the. The morality of liberals has settled into a different place given the pattern that we know that Clinton was perpetuating.
- [42:57]
Wesley Morris
Mm.
- [42:57]
Host/Interviewer
Emily, you mentioned Al Gore a second ago. You said, like, what's the worst that would have happened? Like, Al Gore would have been president for two years, and then he probably would have won reelection and maybe there wouldn't have been the Iraq war. Look at you.
- [43:11]
Wesley Morris
This doesn't sound so fun, so full of fantasies today.
- [43:16]
Host/Interviewer
But that clearly wasn't what people were imagining. Like when they imagined losing to Ken Starr.
- [43:22]
Dan Savage
What.
- [43:22]
Host/Interviewer
What was at stake? What do people think was at stake? And why did it incline them to forgive Clinton for any sin?
- [43:31]
Emily Bazelon
I mean, I think people felt like Ken Starr was part of a right wing, if not conspiracy, a right wing effort to oust the Clintons and that, you know, Clinton had been duly elected. I mean, all the things that people who are Trump supporters feel now about why impeachment. Impeachment is not something to be rushed into or even necessarily contemplated given the American Democratic structure. And we don't lightly toss our presidents in the middle of a term. And so it seemed out of proportion, I think, to the offense. And then Clinton was really popular. I mean, the economy was doing well. His kind of triangulation politically was succeeding in making the Democratic Party feel relevant in a way that it had hadn't in decades, given how unpopular Jimmy Carter was. So I think there was a sense that losing him was losing a whole future for the party. I'm not sure that is right. I mean, the alternate scenario you just played out now seems really great. But at the time, it did not.
- [44:32]
Host/Interviewer
Feel you would have solved global warming.
- [44:34]
Emily Bazelon
Yeah, at the time, it didn't feel that way.
- [44:37]
Host/Interviewer
Well, one thing I kept thinking about as I was doing the episodes that covered that.
- [44:40]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [44:40]
Host/Interviewer
Year after the scandal broke up to impeachment, and all these polls kept coming out showing that people were still behind Clinton. They didn't really care. I kept thinking about Trump supporters, and I was wondering, is that how they feel now? How do you think that tendency to give your guy the benefit of the doubt based on whatever, whether it's his policies or his personality or just the circumstances. To what extent is that happening with Trump supporters now?
- [45:08]
Emily Bazelon
I mean, I don't like. I don't want to speak for them. But I do think it is really important for liberals to keep in mind right now, when some of us are mystified about how Trump supporters are sticking with him, that when you want someone to succeed, you're going to try really hard to give that person the leeway to continue to remain in office and doing what they're doing. And if you like the results of the public policies, you're going to be much more willing to look away from the personal flaws and to figure, you know, like, he's an instrument of. Of the people who. The party that supports him, of this structure that's behind him. And, you know, as long as the economy is doing really well and he's cutting, taxes are low and the judges are getting through, you know, imagine if you. Those were all things you supported. You would be reluctant to. To give them up. And the fact that Trump seems to have taken over the Republican Party and rebranded it and created people who are loyal to him would make you all the less willing to just be like, it'll be fine if Mike Pence is president. It'll be the same thing, just like, with fewer upsetting statements and tweets along the way.
- [46:23]
Wesley Morris
As far as, you know, I mean, I don't know. It's a great question. You know, the thing that I go back to in moments like this is the OJ Verdict, which is the only time I've been complicit in actual cultural, historical insanity.
- [46:40]
Emily Bazelon
Because you at the time didn't think O.J. did it or, sorry, ma', am. He just needed unbelievably untracted a little.
- [46:50]
Wesley Morris
Dear friend, we all knew he did it.
- [46:55]
Host/Interviewer
Okay. Okay.
- [46:58]
Emily Bazelon
I always go for the good faith explanation first. Mistakenly, it didn't matter.
- [47:04]
Wesley Morris
It's the story that we. That we all, that America now understands to be true about Black people in O.J.
- [47:10]
Host/Interviewer
Right.
- [47:11]
Wesley Morris
The route to a kind of palliative justice happened to run through this awful murder trial. And because of incompetence from the other side, from the prosecution, from the COP and the lapd and because Johnnie Cochran was a legal genius. Yep. We were allowed to tell ourselves a story about a kind of innocence. Right. And I watched that verdict in a room full of people who just wanted to know what the verdict was going to be. And when the verdict was announced, the room kind of split in half. It was like something opened up in the floor and the white people went over here and the black people went over here.
- [47:55]
Clara Jeffrey
Yeah.
- [47:56]
Wesley Morris
And it was one of the grimmest moments of my life because I Did I literally. Well, not literally, because it's a figurative chasm, but, like, how to. How to step over the chasm and get out of the room was just. Nobody knew how to do it. So sympathy for whatever this moment is in terms of supporting Donald Trump, I don't have, like, I used to also be a Kanye fan. You know what I mean? And it's getting a little tough artistically. Yeah. I'm kind of still there.
- [48:26]
Host/Interviewer
But.
- [48:26]
Wesley Morris
But. But it. I understand the insanity. Right. And I understand it's. I won't even call it really insanity, because as a. Like, with the OJ Verdict, you were standing with the awareness that a wrong had been being committed for hundreds of years. And this seemed to be like, the one time, the one time in the experiences of many people in my life, in other people's lives, where the justice system seemed to work. And the opposite is sort of true in this scenario where there's, like, an endangerment happening, and this is a person who seems to be standing with you in your cultural endangerment. If you're a white person supporting Donald Trump, I don't know why we have to pretend that isn't a story you have to tell about the support.
- [49:14]
Dan Savage
Right.
- [49:15]
Wesley Morris
It becomes.
- [49:16]
Emily Bazelon
We don't, on this stage, have to pretend.
- [49:17]
Wesley Morris
No, I mean, I think that to the extent that there's a white person who feels extinct or threatened by whatever else is going on in this country, it doesn't matter what that guy says. He's always going to represent. He's always going to. If his policies don't actually do it, he himself, at the rallies, on Twitter, on tv, is going to stand for and with you.
- [49:42]
Emily Bazelon
Right. And that's when people achieve demagogue status. Right. When you're willing to make any excuse for them because they're your person.
- [49:50]
Wesley Morris
But the interesting thing about Trump versus Clinton is do you guys feel that Clinton exploited or wielded or used his. The belief that we had in him, the way Trump. It makes him stronger and more impervious to every sort of moral or legal thing you can throw at him?
- [50:10]
Host/Interviewer
No, I don't know. That's not something I have. I can't point to anything that would say that would indicate. Yes, but I will say, and I promise, this is just me trying to neatly wrap up the segment, but OJ Is the one other example I can think of where someone was framed and was guilty at the same time. How about that?
- [50:32]
Clara Jeffrey
That's good.
- [50:33]
Emily Bazelon
I like that. Well done.
- [50:34]
Host/Interviewer
Let's give a round of applause to Emily Bazelon and Wesley Morris. All right, that's our show. Thanks for listening. This episode of Slow Burn is produced by Andrew Parsons with editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Roth. Our researcher is Madeline Kaplan, and our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at chipsny. Our tour was executive produced and organized by Faith Smith and Kirsten Holtz. Big, big, big thanks to them. That's our show.
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Clara Jeffrey
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Andy Zeisler
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