The Very Last Word On Monica

by Sara Robinson

Anybody who spends much time in bloggerland knows that once a right-winger gets ahold of a talking point, there's no getting them to ever let go again. (Those of us who grew up in Republican families fondly recall elders who were still holding forth on that Antichrist, FDR, well into the Reagan Administration.) They'll parrot the party line for decades, never varying the words or melody. Rush said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

So I shouldn't have been surprised, when, this very Thanksgiving morning (it's Canada -- they do turkey on the second Monday in October here), what should I find in my e-mail but a geezer on a list that I'm on invoking (wait for it) Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky as the argument-ending rebuttal that proves Democratic perfidy for all time and eternity.

You can hardly blame him. He's no doubt been slinging this one around for eight long years. It's great rhetorical ammo that's pretty much guaranteed to make progressives all tounge-tied and squirmy. After all these years, they've got the quick-draw reflex on this one honed to the point where they don't even have to fumble for the holster.

So it was with a certain amount of glee that I fired back on him. Huh-uh. Not this time. And not ever again. We are off that hook now, and it's the right wing's turn to squirm. Clinton? How very last millennium. That was eight years ago, dude. But what are you doing about your guy Foley, and all the Congressional leaders who protected him? Hmm? What family values were y'all defending there?

What's worse: a little oral sex between consenting adults, behind a closed office door -- or the pages of lurid e-mails in which a 52-year-old man invited multiple 16- and 17-year-old boys to describe their masturbatory habits and measure their penises (and broke actual federal laws in the process)? What's more embarassing: Clinton hugging Monica at a rally, or a drunken Foley howling outside the pages' dorm? Who's the biggest liar: Clinton saying "I did not have sex with that woman," or the half-dozen Congressmen who knew about this for years and denied it all to cover up the fact that they sat on their hands?

Nope. The Era of Monica is over, as of today. Our guy was stupid, but their guys were downright venal. And now we get the fun of reminding them of that every day until, by my calculations, about 2014.

After all, you just know they'd do the same for us.