Media top headlines September 20
In media news today, a Slate journalist allegedly sent a draft of a story to Fusion GPS about a possible link between Trump and a Russian bank, media pundits get mocked for trying to make news out of ‘dud’ Capitol Hill rally, and the New York Times comes under fire for describing Iranian nuclear scientist as a ‘lover of poetry’
Readers informed the Sunday Times they were a little late to the game in their analysis of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal after the outlet tweeted that Clinton’s conduct with Lewinsky looks to have been exploitative in the wake of the MeToo movement.
Former President Clinton was impeached for perjury to a grand jury and obstruction in 1998 following his affair with Lewinsky, who as a 22-year-old intern when they had their first encounter in 1995. As the Sunday Times’ Martin Fletcher notes, Lewinsky initially said the affair was consensual, but as the years have passed she’s come to view her relationship with the president in a different light due to their age difference and power dynamic.
Clinton’s conduct toward Lewinsky appears to have been even more manipulative in the wake of the MeToo movement, the Times suggested, but critics blasted the newspaper for coming to such a realization decades later.
MONICA LEWINSKY RECALLS ‘LETHAL CHARM’ THAT LEFT HER ‘INTOXICATED’: ‘I WAS ENAMORED WITH HIM’
“With the rise of the #MeToo movement and the Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew scandals, Clinton’s conduct looks much more like that of an unscrupulous and powerful older man exploiting an infatuated junior employee for his own sexual gratification,” the Times wrote, with a link to its new report on the affair that rocked the political world in the late 1990s.
“What kind of silly nonsense is this?” Politico’s Ben White asked. “It was obviously exactly that at the time.”
“I was 18 and knew this, guys,” CNN contributor Mary Katharine Ham said.
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The infamous scandal is the center of attention once again with the airing of FX’s “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” on which Lewinsky serves as a producer. The new series focuses on Lewinsky, as well as two other women central to the scandal – Linda Tripp, her former friend who taped their conversations and exposed the affair, and Paula Jones, who sued Clinton for sexual harassment before the Lewinsky affair came to light.
Actress Beanie Feldstein, who portrays Lewinsky in the new series, predicted that viewers will better “understand” her story after watching the show.
“Monica was silenced in 1998 and 1999, because of her immunity deal with the Office of Independent Counsel,” Feldstein said. “She was literally not allowed to speak. So for someone whose story people think they understand, but really they only understand an SNL character, a late-night joke, a picture to be ripped apart, because of her weight or what she was wearing.”
“They don’t know the person, they don’t know the human that had to go through a very traumatic, overwhelming experience at 21 to 24 years old,” she added. “I really hope that people are exposed to her humanity in a different light by watching this show.”