The year was 1998. Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” was on top of the pop charts. There was a lot of buzz surrounding the “X-Files” movie that was coming out that spring. I was a year out of school. I found myself sitting in front CNN. They were discussing awkward details of a Stained Blue Dress.
The dress belonged to a 25-year-old former White House intern. An independent prosecutor had taken an interest in the intern because it was believed that the then President of the United States, Bill Clinton, had convinced a good friend, Vernon Jordan, to give her a job in return for the intern, Monica Lewinsky, remaining quiet about a sexual relationship she had with the President.
I remember thinking to myself that the sordid details of this case, and specifically about the stained blue dress, can’t be right. This can’t be what the nation needs to spend all this time on. At the time the 24-hour news cycle was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. Fox News and MSNBC were both less than two years old and still were not the opinion-shaping powerhouses they are today. But that didn’t stop the news outlets, namely CNN, from devoting as much time as they could to whether Bill Clinton had sexual relations with that woman and whether he asked her to lie about it.
Over the last several weeks we’ve again been inundated with stories about the Clintons, specifically about allegations of impropriety at the Clinton Family Foundation. The Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic powerhouse founded by Bill Clinton in 2001, is under scrutiny for failing to disclose donations made to it by foreign governments as well as foreign donors with close ties to foreign governments. Specifically during the years between 2009 and 2013 when Hillary Clinton was head of State Department. The implication is that the absence of such disclosures makes it impossible to ascertain just how much influence was gained by these foreign actors over one of the most powerful American families, not to mention an acting Secretary of State.
But secrecy surrounding the Clinton Foundation’s donor lists is not what got me thinking back to those days in 1998. I’ve yet to see any evidence that the Clintons sold influence to foreign donors in exchange for donations. Indeed most people share that view. We’ve seen our share of Clinton scandals over the years. From Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky to Hillary Clinton’s private email server. And while there are legitimate questions raised by these revelations into Clintonland, the question I find myself asking most often is, do these scandals warrant the level of attention they garner by our media or are they mostly political sideshows diverting our attention from far more important topics?
Did Bill Clinton try to get Monica Lewinsky a job to keep her from revealing their improper relationship? Seems entirely plausible to me. Was there influence traded with Secretary Clinton’s State Department in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation? Not any more than was traded when Halliburton was awarded billions in no-bid government contracts while their former CEO was Vice-President. Did Hillary Clinton deliberately delete emails that could possibly have cast her and her state department in a negative light before the press got to them? Probably. But if you were subject to the level of scrutiny that the Clintons are subject to you would have done the same thing. And so would I.
What to do about the incessant coverage? The simplest thing to do is to switch the channel. Don’t click on that sensationalized headline. Refuse to like that Facebook post. You see, these stories have no news value. Their value depends entirely on who’s viewing them and their personal view of the Clintons. If you are supporters of theirs you see these stories as little more than witch hunts. If you are detractors you see each new scandal as yet another example of immoral, win-at-all-costs Clinton tactics that prove why they should not be trusted with public office.
No, what’s got me thinking about those days in 1998 is that after all these years obsession over the Clintons has not decreased a bit. In fact it has only increased. And it has made me realize that this is what it’s going to be like for the next year and a half while Hillary Clinton is running for President, and possibly for the next five and a half years should she win. We’re all going to be sitting in front of our TV sets, listening to the details of the next Clinton scandal, wondering if there is anything more important we should be talking about.
