My must read of the day is "Clinton Scandal of 90s Resurfaces With Papers," in the New York Times:
It has been more than sixteen years since the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. The 22-year-old White House intern is now a low-profile 40-year-old. The once-embattled President Bill Clinton has assumed a postpresidential role as global philanthropist and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is now a former senator, a former secretary of state, and a potential 2016 presidential candidate.
And yet, it seems difficult these days to escape the scandal that rocked the late 1990s and led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment. […]
The [Washington Free Beacon] papers also underscore the tensions contained in Mrs. Clinton’s reaction to her husband’s infidelities. As first lady, she was viewed broadly as a champion of women’s equality, but, according to the Blair papers, she did not see her husband’s behavior toward Ms. Lewinsky as exploitation.
Mrs. Clinton called Ms. Lewinsky a "narcissistic loony toon," according to a 1998 conversation Ms. Blair recalled. "HRC insists, no matter what people say, it was gross inappropriate behavior but it was consensual (was not a power relationship) and was not sex within real meaning" of the word, Ms. Blair wrote.
Every time I turn on the television I hear some coverage of the Free Beacon’s "Hillary Papers." What surprises me is not that people are discussing the article, but what they’re discussing from it. More often than not the focus appears to be on what Clinton called Monica Lewinsky.
This morning, I turned on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" to hear Mika Brzezinski discuss the article by contending, "It’s also insulting to kind of – this should not be what defines her, this is about someone else that she was married to, you know what I mean?"
This is largely the same point the NYT makes as the bulk of the article focuses on Lewinsky and the "resurrection of Mr. Clinton’s indiscretions."
If you think this article was only about Clinton’s reaction to the Lewinsky scandal and her husband’s many affairs, you haven’t read the article or you didn’t read it well.
There is a lot in this article. Lewinsky is a relatively small detail when you look at the piece in its entirety. And people who are harping on what Clinton called Lewinsky, or on Hillary Clinton’s perception of Bill’s earlier affairs, in order to ask if the Free Beacon’s story is relevant, are providing abysmal analysis.