The 1995 Blog Clinton, His Portrait, and the Persistent Shadow of Scandal

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The 1995 Blog Clinton, His Portrait, and the Persistent Shadow of Scandal The 1995 Blog Clinton, his portrait, and the persistent shadow of scandal The long reach of 1995 was reconfirmed the other day in the interview a portrait artist gave to a Philadelphia tabloid. The artist, Nelson Shanks, said in the interview that he slyly painted into his portrait of President Bill Clinton a shadowy reminder of Clinton’s sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. She was a 22-year-old White House intern when she began a relationship with Clinton in November 1995, an intermient affair that ultimately rocked the American government and give rise to the president’s impeachment in 1998. Shanks was quoted by the Philadelphia Daily News as saying Clinton probably is “probably the most famous liar of all time. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting.” Shanks added: “If you look at the left-hand side of it there’s a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. “It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.” The portrait — in which Clinton looks faintly like a pudgy Ted Koppel — was unveiled in 2006 at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Shanks’ comments about shadow underscore anew how unshakeable the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal has proven to be: Reminders of the affair keep returning to popular consciousness. Clinton portrait:A shadowy reminder of scandal Nearly 20 years since the affair began, and 16 years since Clinton was acquied by the U.S. Senate of two articles of impeachment, the scandal remains a maer of enduring, if low-level, fascination. As I write in my latest book, 1995: The Year the Future Began, it’s as if, somehow, there’s more to know about why Clinton took the risks he did in trysting with an intern 27 years his junior. In the past year or so, fresh reminders of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal have made their way into the news, including the disclosures in February 2014 that at the height of the scandal, Clinton’s wife, Hillary, privately referred to Lewinsky as “a narcissistic loony toon.” A couple of months later, Lewinsky broke a prolonged public silence and wrote in a first-person essay in Vanity Fair that she “deeply regret[s] what happened between me and President Clinton. At the time — at least from my point of view — it was an authentic connection, with emotional intimacy, frequent visits, plans made, phone calls and gifts exchanged. In my early 20s, I was too young to understand the real-life consequences, and too young to see that I would be sacrificed for political expediency. I would give anything to rewind the tape.” She further wrote: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.” That reference was to Clinton’s repeated denials of a relationship with Lewinsky. As the scandal broke in January 1998, he famously declared, wagging an index finger for emphasis, that he had never had sexual relations “with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” He also falsely told aides that Lewinsky was a stalker who had made sexual demands of him. In October 2014, Lewinsky gave her first public speech, at an Under 30 program in Philadelphia, a speech in which she recalled her affair with Clinton almost wistfully. She said she regreed it now, but that “at that time, it was my everything. “That, I guess you could say, was the golden bubble part for me; the nice part. The nasty part was that it became public,” with word that independent counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction in December 1998 — the first elected U.S. president to be so charged. He was acquied by the Senate in February 1999. And now, the sly remarks by Shanks offer another dimension as to how the scandal is remembered. “One can think of no other presidential portrait where the artist … thought the subject was such an incredible blackguard that he saw fit to add a telltale and eternal reminder of his subject’s presidential misadventure into the portrait,” Jeffrey Lord wrote recently for the American Spectator. “It is as if Richard Nixon were painted with the Watergate [complex] in the background ….” Lord’s point is a good one, even though Clinton survived the scandal in part because his conduct in concealing the dalliance with Lewinsky did not reach the depths of criminal behavior that characterized Nixon in Watergate. As I write in 1995 (which includes a chapter about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal): The president’s “falsehoods, evasions, and dishonest efforts to conceal his dalliance with Lewinsky scarcely rivaled the crimes of Watergate, a political scandal unique in the depths of wrongdoing it plumbed. “Clinton may have been a raffish, self-centered rogue who tortured the truth and recruited aides to do the same on his behalf. But he was no vindictive, score-seling crook oozing paranoia, as Nixon was.” Nevertheless, Clinton must be surprised by the persistent reminders of the Lewinsky affair, and by how the affair refuses to recede from collective memory, as did his other scandals and near-scandals. Who, for example, recalls much about the Whitewater real estate scandal which, for a time in the mid- 1990s, seemed to pose a pronounced threat to Clinton’s presidency? Clinton’s former business partners, James B. McDougal and his wife, Susan, were indicted in 1995 and convicted on fraud charges in 1996. But Whitewater left no lasting effects for Clinton. Unlike the Lewinsky scandal, with its inescapable shadow. WJC More from The 1995 Blog: The big gap in Monica Lewinsky’s speech Lewinsky’s speech was solid: But award-winning? Looking back to 1995, the year the future began ‘The Internet? Bah?’ Classic off-target essay appeared 20 years ago Recalling the quaint early struggles to describe the Web Hype and hoopla in a watershed year: Launching Windows 95 What did the ’90s mean? The ’90s deserve beer Why 1995? 48 comments on “Clinton, his portrait, and the persistent shadow of scandal” Pingback: ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ was best ended in 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Talking Internet history, and 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Saluting the unassuming wiki, 20 years after its launch | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Terror in the heartland: Oklahoma City, April 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Closing off Pennsylvania Ave.: 1995 and a psychology of fear | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Bob Dole, Hollywood, and ‘the mainstreaming of deviancy,’ 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Downed pilot eludes Serbs: When Americans took notice of Bosnia | The 1995 Blog Pingback: When Secret Service officers wore rubber gloves to greet gay officials | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Hinge moment at the O.J. ‘Trial of the Century’ | The 1995 Blog Pingback: The 1995 massacre at Srebrenica and its effects on U.S. policy | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Predator drone down — over Bosnia, 20 years ago | The 1995 Blog Pingback: When war in Bosnia reached the beginning of its end | The 1995 Blog Pingback: 20 years on: Remembering the senator who quit in disgrace | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Defying critics to publish the Unabomber ‘Manifesto’ | The 1995 Blog Pingback: When America stood still: The O.J. verdicts, 20 years on | The 1995 Blog Pingback: A memorable ‘first’ in 1995: Discovering the exoplanet | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Million Man March: Controversial rally in a watershed year | The 1995 Blog Pingback: The UN at 50: Palaver, pomposity, and the newspaper ‘lead’ of the year, 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Spoofing her majesty in the ‘Great Royal Phone Embarrassment’ of 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Downer doc: Richard Holbrooke recalled on HBO | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Closing government sows scandal: When Clinton met Monica | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Bosnian war ended at Dayton 20 years ago; U.S. ‘hubris bubble’ swelled soon after | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Looking back at a watershed year: 1995 in blog posts | The 1995 Blog Pingback: The crowded closing day of 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Beyond impeachment: The penalties Bill Clinton paid | The 1995 Blog Pingback: The 1995 ‘Trial of the Century’ is back: But so what? | The 1995 Blog Pingback: FX miniseries on 1995 O.J. case is crassly exploitative | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Ballyhoo over FX series leads to outsize claims about ’90s O.J. murder case | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Fascination with sideshow: O.J. miniseries mirrors the 1995 trial | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Beyond 1995: Accounting for the pop culture allure of the O.J. case | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Lewinsky affair, begun in 1995, hovers over presidential campaign 21 years later | The 1995 Blog Pingback: When the U.S. stood still: Awaiting the O.J. verdicts, October 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Colin Powell, three electoral votes, and what might have been | The 1995 Blog Pingback: The ’90s: With us still | The 1995 Blog Pingback: PBS doc on OKC bombing signals anew the significance of 1995 | The 1995 Blog Pingback: PBS doc on OKC bombing pushes hard on vague, distant connections | The 1995 Blog Pingback: The smears Lewinsky ignores | The 1995 Blog Pingback: Messaging, sequencing a puzzle as CNN launches ’90s series | The 1995 Blog Pingback: CNN series gives kitchen-sink treatment
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