Bill Clinton says his affair helped his anxiety. Has he not non-apologised enough?
Back when Bill Clinton was in office, CBD oil wasn’t yet on the market. The president, therefore, it seems, took to some unusual methods to manage his anxiety. In a new Hulu docuseries about Hillary Clinton, the former president says his affair with 22-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky (he was 49 at the time) was “to manage his anxieties”.
Related: Hillary review – did the US presidential hopeful take the wrong road?
“It’s not like I thought, how can I think of possibly the most stupid thing I can do and do it?” explains Clinton in the film. He clarifies: “Here’s something that’ll take your mind off it for a while. Everybody’s life has pressures and disappointments, terrors, fears of whatever.”
I guess anything – even having an exploitative relationship with an intern 20 years your junior, lying to your family and the public about it, and dragging a young woman’s name through the dirt to protect oneself – can be justified if you classify it as self-care. After all, what was he supposed to do? Get therapy? Take anti-anxiety medication? He was only the most powerful man in the world!
I know what you’re thinking: haven’t we already been over this (for the past 20 years)? Isn’t the docuseries supposed to be about Hillary? Hasn’t Bill already non-apologized enough?
Has it really been too long since he last wrote a book about Lewinsky; or went on the news to talk about the affair; or was interviewed by a late-night TV host about it? Just two years ago, he was still maintaining that he did not owe Lewinsky a private apology. One has to wonder: why can’t the man let it go? Then again, how else ishe supposed to stay relevant?
Lewinsky, on the other hand, has moved on. This came at a price: she had to hide from the media, and was later forced into exploitative TV deals just to pay off her legal bills. Lewinsky was indeed so young, she would later write that she had “no established identity to which I could return”.
Eventually, she became a Vanity Fair writer, and a prominent activist and global ambassador against bullying. In her first essay for Vanity Fair she resolved: “No longer. It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress. And move forward.”
Clinton could, of course, let Lewinsky do that without rearing his head every few years to ensure her name is forever associated with the affair. But that might involve some self-awareness, and learning to shut up. And that is something he does not seem capable of.
