Libby Copeland of the
Washington Post, December 24, 2006:
Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond.
...
A revelation on this order suggests Lewinsky belongs to a fascinating subspecies, dumb-but-smart. Dumb-but-smart folks defy our low expectations. They appear dull or ditzy but possess unpredictable pockets of intelligence.
Ms. Copeland, go to Hell. Your paper defied my high expectations by not firing you for submitting this to your editor, let alone printing this.
I agree with Jessica Valenti of
Feministing about Monica Lewinsky's Master's Degree from the London School of Economics: well done, congratulations to Ms. Lewinsky and those who would take swipes at her now are being asinine. Valenti's language is a bit vulgar and rude, more vulgar than I would probably use here but appropriately rude. Copeland should be ashamed.
Let us cut through the B.S. on this. Approximately 100% of the non-sociopath human race has something in their past that causes them shame, guilt or humiliation. Maybe something they did, or got caught doing, or something they did not do but damn well should have. Of that group, what percentage should move on with their lives and do better? 50% 92% No, of course not: 100%, not approximately 100% but precisely 100%. If you owe amends, make them. If you did damage, fix it or make reasonable efforts to mitigate it. If you didn't hurt anybody and don't owe amends, but just feel like garbage about it, then discharge it the way that probation officers do when somebody breaks the rules seriously but it isn't worth busting the probationer: they "close the file as 'unsatisfactory'" and probation terminates, and the probationer and the probation agent both move on to other business. Granted, this is not always easy; I have struggled with this myself from mistakes I have made, not wanting to let the matter die when "closing the file" was the better path. But it is wiser to let a matter go when you cannot reasonably improve the situation. There is a moral principle: you need not perform what you, in fact, cannot perform. If you owe, you pay, but only to that person who is injured; ain't nobody else's business.
We get righteous about sex far more than we do about other morally complicated issues. Traditional morality condemns a great many actions other than sexual "sins": gossip, cruelty, cold-heartedness to people in need. Even if you take a less explicitly religious view, say the view of virtue as taught formally by some Greek philosophers or informally under the musings of Founding Father Ben Franklin, sexual improprieties are hardly the only area of possible moral weakness with which we must contend. While the human tendency to gossip really knows no firm bounds, it seems most willing to discuss sex over other issues.
What did Ms. Lewinsky do after the ordeal? She recovered some privacy, probably some dignity, moved on with her life and went to grad school abroad in a challenging program, where she earned a master's degree in social psychology. Did she make amends to any people she may have harmed? I don't know; I was not one of them if they exist, so I wouldn't know and am pleased not to know. Be damned if I have made enough efforts to provide justice to the people I have occasionally harmed. Did she "dope out" under the pressure and become a ward of the state or of her insurance company's rehab resources? No, or at least no such evidence exists.
Has she made it her life's work to profit from her prior circumstances? No. She interviewed with Barbara Walters some years back, but ABC does not pay for interviews. She did write a book in the aftermath of the affair, and did presumably receive large royalties from that book, but she moved on to start a business and get a graduate degree. [NOTE: Crablaw made corrective edits to this paragraph from an early version.]
She was never a moral scold to me, never interrupted my Sunday morning television pleasure (now rare) by scolding me for my multifaceted immorality and asking me for a donation to her religious ministry. She was neither a corrupt public official nor a conspirator with such public officials to bleed the public fisc.
The other point is that of the "bimbo" - the concept that a (currently or previously) sexually active woman is unworthy of respect for her intelligence. In her piece, Feministing's Valenti drills the point home, using some graphic language. Everybody alive today - leaving aside artificial insemination rarities - was conceived, ahem, the old fashioned way. Parthogenesis is not a feature of our species. But if you hold that being a sexual person or specifically a sexually active or interested woman is associated with low intelligence, well, you have just insulted the intelligence of all of your female ancestors, going back depending on your beliefs to Eve or the apes. You have just called them all "[reproducing] morons."
You really cannot insult one woman's intelligence for being a sexually active adult without insulting all women. Her choice in a partner - yeah, unwise in the extreme, immoral, neither the first nor the last intelligent woman or man to make an unwise sexual choice. Wisdom does not equal intelligence. Wisdom usually requires gray hair and scarring, though not always, and Lewinsky was quite young when the stories emerged, let alone occurred.
Nobody tried to strip Bill Clinton of the academic achievements he earned as a Rhodes Scholar in England due to his being an alleged "himbo"; no one should do so in effigy against Ms. Lewinsky's study in Britain (which, unlike Clinton's, actually resulted in an academic degree.)
There is a possibility that Ms. Lewinsky learned something through her ordeal about being decent to people who make serious personal mistakes. If Ms. Copeland is both intelligent and wise - i.e. "smart but smart" - perhaps she will contact Ms. Lewinsky, apologize for her nasty column and ask her what she learned about giving other people a second chance through her ordeal. If Ms. Copeland does that, I will apologize here for telling her to go to Hell. Even Ms. Copeland may deserve a second chance.
Labels: morality, rant, sex
