A question of trust?

American Crime Story (Season 3; E1-10)

Impeachment (2021)

Many wise men, including Socrates and Valluvar, have noted, in the wealth of knowledge they imparted to the world, that leaders not only need to communicate skilfully, display empathy, garner support, and have a clear vision for their strategies, but also need to display moral integrity.

Of late, it seems the last part is superfluous. In this day and age, the end result determines everything. The path towards achieving this goal, it seems, does not matter. Governments, they say, are separate from personal life. What someone does for recreation after hours remains, as the name says, private. Infidelity, which purists would argue is a form of untrustworthiness, betrayal, and a breach of promise, does not matter as long as the nation's economic prosperity remains unwavering. Trying to right the wrong through the slippery mace of Law is deceptively fraught with biases and the sentiments of the day. The system merely maintains the Law; it does not offer justice to either victims or perpetrators. The only beneficiaries from all this hullabaloo are lawyers.

This miniseries discusses the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton White House fiasco. It highlights how this event specifically affected four ladies dragged into the imbroglio.

The Lewinsky-Clinton scandal and the story of the stained blue dress with recorded telephone conversations captured the imagination of many when it hit the headlines in 1997. Unfortunately, because of the ongoing investigations and the flurry of information from various news channels trying to hit the airwaves with 'Breaking News', the audience was left confused and inundated with so much unnecessary information that never saw the light of day. So, a compilation like this sheds light on what may have happened, providing a bird's-eye view of the situation. Unfortunately, it could be just one person's version of what transpired. After all, Lewinsky is credited as its producer.

Lewinsky is portrayed as an emotionally immature 22-year-old girl born with a silver spoon but a broken family who is helplessly lured by a predatory President when she is interning in the West Wing of the White House in 1995.

After finishing her internship, she was transferred, maybe against her wishes, to the Department of Defence (DoD). At the DoD, she befriended Linda Tripp. Tripp was transferred from the West Wing, too, after the change of administration (from Bush to Clinton) and the demise of her boss. Actually, her overbearing and bossy attitude got transferred to DoD.

Monica started sharing the stories of her liaisons with the President with Linda. Linda, at that time, was quite sore with the White House for being shoved out of the West Wing and was hellbent on exposing some of the wrongdoings that had happened there during her tenure. Her publisher, however, told her that her story did not excite the public. Upon hearing Monica's tall stories with the President, Linda was advised to tape the telephone conversations, which she did. In total, there were 20 hours of Monica's taped conversations with Linda.

Just about that time, in 1994, an Arkansas State employee, Paula Jones, accused Clinton of sexual misconduct when he was the Governor of Arkansas. The story of the tape somehow came to the knowledge of Jones' lawyer. The innocuous court case initiated by a nobody soon took a cataclysmic turn. The independent counsel appointed to investigate Clinton's Whitewater real estate scandal soon expanded to cover Lewinsky's case. The FBI, after getting wind of the Tripp-Lewinsky audio tapes, soon moved in to charge the President with perjury and later impeachment. The tapes later proved that Clinton's famous words, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky", were lies.

Another nitpicking line from Clinton's grand jury testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky is "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is".

Paula Jones is portrayed as a simpleton, an insecure woman manipulated by her lawyer and her husband. Even though Paula was content with the $70,000 payoff promised to Clinton, she was hoodwinked into pursuing it further, hoping for a bigger payoff and an apology. Sadly, nothing like that happened. She later divorced her husband and led a quiet life. Her insecurity pushed her to have plastic surgery. To make ends meet, she posed nude in Penthouse and even took part in a celebrity boxing match in 2002.

Linda Tripp, a discontented civil servant full of herself, considered her transfer to the DoD a demotion, even though she was drawing a higher salary. Perhaps, to hit back at the White House for ditching her, she began compiling facts about Clinton's escapades. At the end of these, throught the impeachment trials and thereafter, she was easily the most hated person in the US.

Hilary Clinton, the woman scorned amid this whole affair, was in limbo about how to react throughout the drama. Her ratings as a politician actually escalated. It later paved the way for her presidential candidacy.

Lewinsky became the butt of jokes in many late-night comedy shows. She disappeared from public view for a decade and returned from the UK to the US, rebranding herself as a crusader against online harassment and cyberbullying.

Nobody actually knows why the people involved in the saga did what they did. Was it to carve out money from the deep-pocketed who did not mind disposing of a little spare change? Did they pursue the matter because it was a responsible thing to do, not wanting to mar the august post of a leader of a sovereign nation? Did they crave their time in the spotlight and the grandiosity placed upon them? Whatever their true intent may have been, the final beneficiaries were the lawyer who laughed all the way to the bank. Not to forget the media, who made mountains out of molehills with their hourly breaking-news segments, churning out the same garbage every so often.

We are left with this question. Society has put certain sanctions on human behaviour. A person in power is expected to maintain these man-made mores. Can we trust a leader who breaks the trust of fidelity to safeguard many of the country's deep secrets? Can we trust him to put the citizens' priority above anything else? Is a private affair quite distinct from holding office?

Bill Clinton had to go through the impeachment trials but came out smelling of roses. The trials ended with the House of Representatives finding Clinton guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. Still, the Senate acquitted him after failing to get the mandatory two-thirds majority vote to convict. He completed his second term and remains a million-dollar-demanding speaker at high-brow society. His Clinton Foundation is still active, doing what it does best.

Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!

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