These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

The Lewinsky scandal indelibly left something else in its aftermath. It diminished liberalism. Liberals defended Clinton almost at all cost, depicting him as a victim. Steinem and other prominent feminists who had crusaded against Clarence Thomas as a perpetrator of sexual harassment waved aside Clinton’s dalliances, often with young women, including women in his employ, at some sizable cost to the cause of feminism. Thomas had at one point suggested he was being subjected to “a high-tech lynching.” Writing about the Lewinsky investigation in The New Yorker, Toni Morrison said that, “white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President”—he was so cool, so hip, so long-suffering—and compared the investigation to a lynching. “Serious as adultery is, it is not a national catastrophe,” Morrison said.175 Adultery is not a national catastrophe, but Bill Clinton was no more subjected to a lynching than was Clarence Thomas.