Feminist and Democratic strategist Susan Estrich wrote, “Lewinsky at least appears to have flirted her way to a job at Revlon and, when that disappeared, a $2 million modeling offer and the status of the most-sought after woman in the world. Not bad, some might say, for someone who can’t type.”
NOW’s president, Patricia Ireland, did issue a statement saying, “We want to state clearly our belief that it would be a misuse of power for any public official to have a sexual relationship with an employee or intern.” But that was after broad criticism of the group’s initial silence on the matter. Gloria Steinem wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that awkwardly tried to thread the needle, saying, “The power imbalance between them increased the index of suspicion, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ms. Lewinsky’s will was violated; quite the contrary.”
If Kathleen Willey, who had accused Clinton of sexual assault, was telling the truth about his behavior towards her, Steinem wrote, “[Willey] pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.” That is a depressingly low bar for a man who both holds disproportionate power and who was supposed to be on feminists’ sides.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/monica-lewinsky-betrayal
Of Bill Clinton, she writes, “Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat to protect his powerful position.”
At the time, White House staffers were anonymously among the chief Lewinsky slut-shamers.
Lewinsky’s job at Revlon was a payoff to lie under oath in the Paula Jones case.
The business model may have been there in OTHER hush-ups of the Clinton administration.