I don’t know if Roger Ailes did all the stuff he was accused of doing. I do know that he didn’t make Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky carry on a sexual relationship under the roof of the White House and then lie about it.
But admitting that wouldn’t help Lewinsky get an editorial published in the New York Times. This did:
This is not another obituary for Roger Ailes, who died last week 10 months after being ousted at Fox News. It is, I hope, instead an obituary for the culture he purveyed — a culture that affected me profoundly and personally.
Just two years after Rupert Murdoch appointed Mr. Ailes to head the new cable news network, my relationship with President Bill Clinton became public. Mr. Ailes, a former Republican political operative, took the story of the affair and the trial that followed and made certain his anchors hammered it ceaselessly, 24 hours a day…
My family and I huddled at home, worried about my going to jail… Meantime, Mr. Ailes huddled with his employees at Fox News, dictating a lineup of talking heads to best exploit this personal and national tragedy.
Her editorial goes on like that. She was the victim of mean ol’ Roger Ailes, who exploited her “tragedy” for ratings. Poor Monica Lewinsky. Boo-hoo.
Lewinsky decries what she calls our “culture of shame and vitriol.” She says that Ailes is somehow a hypocrite because he made his name by exploiting a sex scandal while being accused of sexual harassment. But Ailes didn’t make her do what she did. Ailes didn’t make Bill Clinton lie about it under oath. I don’t blame her for resenting a lot of the things that people have said about her, myself included, but she’s not a helpless victim. She did what she did. The 42nd President of the United States did what he did. The two of them are responsible for their own actions.
Yet in an 839-word piece, Lewinsky mentions Bill Clinton just once. Her harshest words are reserved for the people who reported about his actions. Twenty years later, Monica Lewinsky is still blaming everybody except the one man who’s most responsible for her torment.
That’s love for ya.
Say, has the NYT’s preferred presidential candidate in 2016 commented on this editorial yet? I’m sure she’s read it.