This has been an odd week in the "same old story, the fight for love and glory." Powerful men and the staffers who love them. Or the inequality that is often built into the fairy tales and myths that we call real life. Or the romanticizing of inequality in our sexual relationships.
Roman Polanski, convicted rapist of a 13 year old, arrested after 30 years of living in Europe. David Letterman, witness for the prosecution, tells a grand jury that he had sex with his female staff members and a producer was attempting to extort $2 million from Letterman because inquiring minds want to know. MoDo in the New York Times manages to make this all about Bill Clinton and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
MoDo says the difference between Letterman and Clinton is that Clinton lied and Letterman told the truth. Only before a grand jury otherwise he could have continued those relationships while he continues to talk about President Clinton's extramarital affair and his sexuality ever chance he gets. At least he waits until the guest chair Clinton got out of two weeks ago had cooled before returning to his wink-wink sophomoric frat boy humor.
Did Letterman tell the truth to anyone before the lawyers got there? May be his wife knew since she used to work for him, too.
MoDo doesn't see that there was something else on the line for Mr. Clinton? Like the presidency verses a television show? Like a special prosecutor and an assistant district attorney? Ms. Lewinsky had denied an affair to the Paula Jones lawyers. But after her interrogation not in a grand jury room but in a hotel room she was ready to tell anyone that she had a relationship with Mr. Clinton. Did she already know that anyone who could harm her already heard it from her "friend" Linda Tripp. David Letterman or his girlfriends were not treated as journalist Martin McLaughlin wrote about Ms. Lewinsky's treatment at the hands of Kenneth Starr, an attorney and an officer of the court: ... Lewinsky was threatened with up to 27 years in prison.
Starr's deputies threatened not only Lewinsky, but also her mother, Marcia Lewis. During Lewinsky's 12-hour interrogation on January 16, 1998, after she had walked into the trap sprung by Linda Tripp, Lewinsky was told that her mother could face charges of obstruction of justice.
Lewinsky [gave] many details of this interrogation in her book, written for her by author Andrew Morton. One chapter, entitled "Terror in Room 1012," describes the events at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where she was held by nine armed men. Though terrified and shocked, and even at one point driven to thoughts of suicide--she considered throwing herself out of the tenth floor window--Lewinsky refused to carry out their instructions, repeatedly demanding that she be allowed to speak to her mother and a lawyer.
There are several details of that day's events, recounted in the book, which give telling evidence of the illegal coordination between the Starr investigation and the Paula Jones lawsuit that was at the heart of the destabilization campaign against the Clinton administration.
At one point FBI agents told her she could not call her lawyer, Francis Carter, because their case was "time sensitive." This was a clear reference to Clinton's deposition testimony in the Paula Jones lawsuit, which took place the following day. Starr's office wanted to make sure that Clinton went ahead with the deposition without advance warning from Lewinsky, so that he could be surprised with questions about their relations.
Clinton did eventually apologize to the nation, although not to Ms. MoDo personally, and he was impeached and not convicted. In other words consensual sex and lying about it before the president has had a chance to tell his wife and daughter does not rise to the level of impeachment and conviction. Having testimony given in a deposition that was thrown out of a civil law suit, which means it didn't happen in that civil law suit, did not mean that Mr. Clinton was unfit to be president. How hypocritical are we and Congress and Ms. MoDo and her office mate William Safir and the other members of "murders' row" at the Times and the rest of the press when we did not impeach and convict George W. Bush for sending young people to die in some Oedipal escapade in Iraq while telling us, looking somewhat stoned on national television that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction? Where were the cries for impeachment and conviction? Oh wait, he didn't have sex with anyone on his staff that we learned of on television!
Salon.com has a story in today's edition about how much of the scandals the press reported about the Clintons were simply made up and then printed.
As for Mr. Polanski; he feared prison because the judge had been acting oddly, telling people he had no intention of honoring the prosecution's deal with Polanski in exchange for the guilty plea. Mr. Polanski could have gone before the unjust judge and taken his punishment like a man, since he did admit he punished the young woman for being no more than a young woman under his supervision and in his camera view finder, giving her drugs and raping her vaginally and anally. And he could have appealed his unjust sentence from prison like everyone else in our system of due process and equal protection.
And speaking of protection, why would the young 13 year old's mother allow her to return to Polanski's in loco parentis care to have photos made for Vogue after she told her mother she didn't want to see him? Was she investigated for her role in making this nightmare possible? Why was she not there when these photos were taken? What woman would feed her daughter to a possible beast?
Must men behave so badly when issues of consent or no consent are in play? Does anyone ever really consent when the relationship is based on power and the absence of it? How can anyone ever truly waive their rights? Especially when we have to fight to get them? Mr. Starr knew Ms. Lewinsky had a right to an attorney. Mr. Clinton knew he was married and Ms. Lewinsky's employer, even while she consented to their relationship, it was a relationship based on unequal power. And Mr. Letterman had the power, and apparently did not act upon it, to fire any woman who did or didn't consent to sleep with him.
Michelle Robinson mentored Barack Obama when he joined their employer's law firm. They fell in love. Is there something so alluring about the relationship between mentor and mentee? Boss and employee, professor and student, doctor and patient, priest and parishioner. The rescuer and the rescued. The hunter and the hunted. Something about the power and the influence, the ability to wound and to praise that is built into our unequal, power oriented relationships? Are men and women ever really equal if men make more money than women and if women leave their husbands their income and standard of living, and that of their children, will never recover?
