‘All About Monica’--Lessons From a Morality Play

Now we know that Monica, like Paula, already knows how to work the media. Posing in the glow of a Malibu sunset for Vanity Fair as “Hard Copy” film crews hovered overhead, she was hardly the vision of an innocent young woman caught in the middle of a political tug of war between an overzealous prosecutor and her maligned former mentor.

Yet since “Lewinskygate” began in January, most political observers have tended to cast Monica Lewinsky as a victim in an abuse-of-power play. A very womanly 24-year-old, Lewinsky is still referred to as a “21-year-old girl” who fell prey to an insatiable commander in chief, a man 30 years her senior. She might as well have been a pigtailed adolescent skipping into the Oval Office to sell candy for a school field trip.

Since 1992, conservatives have pummeled Bill Clinton on everything from stonewalling investigations to cavorting with unsavory friends of Asian tycoon James Riady. And now, after an embarrassing silence, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republicans have pointed out that the matter of Monica has hastened the moral rot that had already eaten away at much of the prestige and authority of the office of the presidency. Fine point--but it takes two to tango, so why such precious little discussion of Lewinsky’s own role in this morality play? (Hint: Describing her as a brazen adulteress doesn’t help her credibility if she becomes a witness for the prosecution.)

Liberals also have backed themselves into a corner. In the first days of the scandal, anonymous White House staffers were describing Lewinsky as a borderline stalker who strutted around the West Wing in low-cut blouses and thigh-high skirts. Yet these comments were not grounded in moral outrage, they were merely used to paint the president as the victim. Now that Lewinsky is at least temporarily being a good girl, the White House velociraptors have retracted their claws.

Perhaps the most hypocritical of all when it comes to assessing the effect of Lewinsky-like behavior in the workplace are feminists. After years of contending that sex between underling and boss is per se nonconsensual, they now wave off any alarm. Said Betty Friedan: “Whether it’s a fantasy, a setup or true, I simply don’t care.” Still other women have failed to confront Lewinsky’s blameworthiness by rationalizing that she was impressionable and young, and if Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t out there grandstanding about a vast, single-women conspiracy against marriage, why should we?

Lewinsky was an adult--a young adult, yes, but still old enough to know not to pay off-hours, closed-door visits to a married man who happens to be your boss, not to give sexually explicit books to him, not to trade affidavits for jobs, not to urge a friend to cover it all up by perjuring herself. Old enough to know that she is every married woman’s worst nightmare.

What probably happened between Lewinsky and Clinton happens hundreds, if not thousands, of times every day in offices across America. For every married man in corporate America--especially those with an aftershave of money and power--chances are there is a young, ambitious and seductive woman who, undeterred by the social ostracism of yesterday, is more than willing to come when he calls.

While women’s professional opportunities are ever-expanding, so are their chances of facing divorce. Women in their 20s like Lewinsky are flooding the work force in record numbers. Good news for them. But bad news for married women in their 40s or 50s who are traded in or cheated on. Sure, a lot of men may be prone to be unfaithful, but what happened to female self-control? Women had real girl power when they didn’t tolerate men flouting marital vows or women treating married men as fair game.

None of this is to say that all office romances should be frowned upon or discouraged. Given how much time Americans spend on the job today, work is a natural place for men and women to meet, fall in love and marry. But this obviously was not that sort of romantic scenario. A Black Dog T-shirt is hardly a solitaire from Tiffany’s. Women cannot expect equal opportunity in the workplace if they fail to speak out against behavior--male or female--that undermines real job performance and office morale.

Whether or not she is sanctioned, if the taped account of her sexcapades with the president is true, Lewinsky will have publicly demeaned the Clintons’ marriage and trampled on the cause of women in the workplace by writing “sexual favors” into her job description. Think how the new crop of White House interns must feel when they pass street vendors selling T-shirts proclaiming: “‘White House Interns Apply Here,” with an arrow pointing southward.

Women who have claimed to have had sex with Clinton have not only not been shunned, they have enjoyed a boost in social status. Gennifer Flowers kissed and told and landed a book deal. After former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen admitted a fling with then-Governor Clinton, acting jobs suddenly opened up. As for Lewinsky, she’s been popping up everywhere: at fancy steak houses, NBA games, even sipping cocktails in the presence of Bill Safire and Larry King.

Whether at the White House or in a small town hardware store, marital infidelity in the workplace is everyone’s business for what it does to both the institution of the family and morale and equity at the office. Married men who seek on-the-job sex from subordinates will think twice when the social price is too high to pay or when the supply of willing women dries up. It is in the interest of all women, married and unmarried, to enforce the embargo. Maybe then there will once again be a bipartisan consensus that being unfaithful is very uncool.