Fred Barnes said on TV yesterday that we don’t need to be reminded of all the Clinton scandals and lies because, his implication was, they are still so vivid for many of us. But we should remember that the Clinton presidency started over fifteen years ago. That is, many young people in college today and ready to vote were children at that time. They certainly do need to be told of the whole Clinton legacy, no matter how tired some political junkies are of hearing about it. We certainly can’t count on our colleges to tell the story whole. For example, in the feminist history, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, the section on the Monica Lewinsky scandal dismissed the whole episode by saying that the sexual activity between Monica and Bill was voluntary — something that had never cut any ice with feminists before when it involved a superior/inferior working relationship — and that Ken Starr was a right-winger out to get Clinton.
No mention of all the women who were the involuntary recipients of Clinton’s attention, no mention of the feminist-inspired harassment legislation that Clinton himself had signed into law and that led to his lying under oath, and no mention of how differently the feminists had behaved in the Anita Hill episode of the early nineties, when they went into paroxysms of rage alternating with Victorian fainting fits about alleged bawdy talk in the workplace. And, while we’re at it, no mention of how Hillary Clinton and other feminists worked to discredit Kathleen Willey, who was groped by Bill Clinton as president when she came to him in need of a job.