Customer Reviews

Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (Sexual Cultures)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a book of multiple essays written by various academics about the Clinton - Lewinsky imbroglio. It has an aura of the absurd for the non-academic... these folks take the discourse over this seemingly nonsensical moment in American history VERY seriously indeed. Linda Tripp, Ken Starr's pornography, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the Meaning of Monica are all explored in a pastiche of Freud, Foucault and Derrida. Most of the essays are both humorous and academic, and are therefore easy to digest for beleaguered graduate students and tenured types with tired eyes.

There is much liberal invective underlying most of the analyses, however, and much sadness over the passing of the progressive liberalism of the 1960s. Clinton's (Bill, that is) fundamental conservatism is ignored in place of the social meaning of his sexual behavior and the public's reaction to it. Interestingly, none of the essays analyze the obvious: the sexual entitlement mentality of Southern men or the bizarre reaction of mainstream feminists to the scandal: they vilified the women involved rather than the men, reaffirming their cooption by the "ruling classes" that feminists for years have claimed affected only conservative sociopaths like Phyllis Schlafly. The resolution of the impeachment is only briefly touched on ... sadly... since to me that was the most interesting part of the whole drama.

There is room, now that time has passed and a new era of social conservatism seems to have ushered in, for further analysis of what exactly the sexual discourse was during the Clinton years and the broader meaning of the impeachment. I would encourage this same group to follow up Our Monica Ourselves with another volume, eschewing, perhaps, the invective and embracing a more scholarly distance from the subject matter.