New York Times columnist and marijuana aficionado Maureen Dowd reveals how Monica Lewinsky continues to be victim-shamed for her role in L'affaire Clinton:
PARIS — THE turquoise tranquillity of the Côte d’Azur was rocked a couple of times during the Cannes Lions Festival, the advertising world’s rosé-soaked answer to the Cannes Film Festival.
Al Gore snubbed Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky, who was giving a speech for Ogilvy & Mather about how she became "patient zero" in the cyberbullying epidemic, was slated to sit in a V.I.P. box with the former vice president, who got an award for being a good brand.
But her invite got yanked.
The snubbing, Dowd writes, was "a reminder that Gore's prissy attitude" toward the Lewinsky scandal, and his reluctance to feature Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in 2000, might have cost him the election.
Dowd also takes issue with the notion that Lewinsky was the first victim of "cyberbullying," as such.
Monica’s main bullies were not of the cyber variety. The Internet was just getting up and running. Her chief bullies were flesh and blood, a raffish president and feminist first lady who are now vying to be a feminist president and raffish first lad. They’re the ones who tried to paint her as a "narcissistic looney toon," as Hillary put it to her friend Diane Blair.
Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s Doberman and email correspondent, led the sliming of Monica as a fantasist and stalker. Hillary’s friends do not regard Monica as a victim, but a predator. They think she let herself in for trouble when she took up with a married president who was a magnet for right-wing bullies.
Blair's "looney toon" comments were first reported by the Free Beacon.
Bill Clinton was a featured speaker at the Cannes Liones Festival. It is not known whether the former president had any interaction with Lewinsky during the event. He did, however, manage to squeeze in a taxpayer-financed shopping spree at French luxury retailer Hermès, an outlet that is currently under fire from animal rights groups for torturing adorable creatures in the name of fashion.