I'll take first one strain of rebuke that runs through your argument. Here's a representative quote.
<<behavior that borders on rape (given the immense disparity in power between him and her)>>
Have you read at least the portion of the Starr report that touches on that claim?
Frankly, I think it's a very ideological position to take even without some detailed testimony by Lewinsky herself available. She was not child, she was a 22 year old woman. Even before the publishing of her testimony, all evidence pointed to her willing and enthusiastic involvement in the relationship. And it is hardly uncommon for young women to be attracted to much more powerful men. Should all such liaisons be disallowed, and if almost rape, declared illegal, no matter how much the woman in question wants the relationship? Just how much power differential is permissible, would you say? If the man has a graduate degree and the woman a mere undergraduate pigskin, is that a problem? How much salary difference would you say was O.K? And how many years age difference? Should Tony Randall go to jail as well? I suppose you would have favored impeachment of Justice William O. Douglass for the same sort of offense. Marrying much younger women. Not once, but three times.
In the case at hand, Lewinsky by her own testimony went on a concerted and most energetic flirting campaign for months before her opportunity finally came to get the President's attention, during the temporary staff reductions of the budget shutdown crisis. She clearly and determinedly pursued him at the beginning, and through the whole affair. Almost rape?
Isn't an adult woman free to make her own choices?
Doug
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