20 years ago today. History may note this as the beginning of the end of the U.S. as a first world nation

Web Posted: 01/17/98 21:32:02 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN X X X X X BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT 

Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN 

BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT 

**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** 

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States! 

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month. 

The young intern wrote long love letters to President Clinton, which she delivered through a delivery service. She was a frequent visitor at the White House after midnight, where she checked in the WAVE logs as visiting a secretary named Betty Curry, 57. 

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that tapes of intimate phone conversations exist. 

The relationship between the president and the young woman become strained when the president believed that the young woman was bragging about the affair to others. 

NEWSWEEK and Isikoff were planning to name the woman. Word of the story's impeding release caused blind chaos in media circles; TIME magazine spent Saturday scrambling for its own version of the story, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The NEW YORK POST on Sunday was set to front the young intern's affair, but was forced to fall back on the dated ABC NEWS Kathleen Willey break. 

The story was set to break just hours after President Clinton testified in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. 

Ironically, several years ago, it was Isikoff that found himself in a shouting match with editors who were refusing to publish even a portion of his meticulously researched investigative report that was to break Paula Jones. Isikoff worked for the WASHINGTON POST at the time, and left shortly after the incident to build them for the paper's sister magazine, NEWSWEEK. 

Michael Isikoff was not available for comment late Saturday. NEWSWEEK was on voice mail. 

The White House was busy checking the DRUDGE REPORT for details.


... And 1 year ago (and 3 days): History may note this as really and truly the end of the U.S. as a first world nation, and the beginning of the U.S. as a first-Twitter/Reality Show nation.


My point exactly. There would have never been a Trump as President without the start down the slippery slope with Clinton's antics.


You've got to be joking


There have always been Presidential "antics."  In the past, there was a gentlemens agreement not to report them or they were just unknown.    

 unicorn_and_rainbows said:

My point exactly. There would have never been a Trump as President without the start down the slippery slope with Clinton's antics.



There were. Which is why this event was so different and earth shattering. It was the moment that bad behavior and emerging new media collided like an asteroid hitting the earth killing off the dinosaurs. Things have never been as they were before after this event.


They just can't quit the Clintons. It's quite an obsession. Anything post 1992 can be blamed on one or the other. They're indispensable.


I have it on good account that the Clintons caused the asteroid. Just sayin'.


But did this propel us out of the 1st world?  Did we start living in huts and become one of those sh*thole places the president so eloquently referred to?  Maybe you mean something else.  Maybe you mean it was a signficant moment in the coarsening of public discourse blah blah bah.   The whole 1st world thing has me scratching my head. 

unicorn_and_rainbows said:

There were. Which is why this event was so different and earth shattering. It was the moment that bad behavior and emerging new media collided like an asteroid hitting the earth killing off the dinosaurs. Things have never been as they were before after this event.



This is the nuttiest post ever. I’m assuming the OP is a privileged sort who can’t think of any other momentous event that has indicated a downward spiral? Very strange.


It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you
The act you've known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band



Rome didn't fall in a day. It was a process.


Why do so many posters (myself included) seem to have screen names that are actually the opposite of who they are?




hoops said:

It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you
The act you've known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

There are, no doubt, classical music afficionados who see that as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization. 



unicorn_and_rainbows said:

Rome didn't fall in a day. It was a process.

As if this country were founded by pure and infallible beings. It's all Clinton's fault.


Trump ran as a Republican and won as a Republican because he embodies their true values. Stop pretending otherwise.


the OP ignores the much longer roots of the environment that produced Trump as POTUS.  It has been an effort that goes back at least to the 70s.  The creation and funding of think tanks and media outlets that have produced an infrastructure to create "alternative facts" has been a very long process.  Ultimately that process produced a base of tens of millions of people whose outrage at liberals and "elites" is the result of  creating an alternate reality.  Those millions and millions of people believe in such falsehoods as racism against whites is a problem, Mexican immigrants are pouring into the U.S., climate change is a hoax, coal jobs are coming back, etc., etc., etc.  That false reality created the climate that made it possible for a narcissistic con man to garner over 60 million votes.

if anything the Lewinsky affair was an anomaly on that road, in the sense that the underlying event actually happened.  Contrast that to the long list of phony scandals that have been created to tar Democrats -- the Foster "murder," Whitewater, "Travelgate," Benghazi, the IRS "scandal," and on and on.



dave23 said:


Trump ran as a Republican and won as a Republican because he embodies their true values. Stop pretending otherwise.

^this.  Times 100



dave23 said:


As if this country were founded by pure and infallible beings. It's all Clinton's fault.




My reading of the OP is that it's Newsweek's fault.



LOST said:



dave23 said:


As if this country were founded by pure and infallible beings. It's all Clinton's fault.

My reading of the OP is that it's Newsweek's fault.

I thought it was Drudge's fault


Actually, unicorn_and_rainbows is right.  I went back in my time machine, and after making some arrangements to prevent the most-famous-BJ from occurring, an alternate timeline is now parallel to this one, and it's so much better. You must come visit sometime. But no hanky-panky. It's verboten.



LOST said:



hoops said:

It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you
The act you've known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

There are, no doubt, classical music afficionados who see that as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization. 

Well, their late producer relied on orchestras for instrumentation on this and other albums. I think the important thing here is to turn this thread into a Beatles tribute thread...those lads from Liverpool; the Fab Four; the young mop tops. Woo hoo.


I blame the internet for all the problems in the world.  Probably the bigger impact on American politics was the Citizens-United ruling and certainly will have a more long term disastrous impact on this country.

and the problem with the Clinton/Lewinsky affair was the republican party became obsessed with the affair and still bring it up 20 years later as if there was nothing else more important.  Lots of Presidents had affairs and prior to Clinton everyone ignored.  And now the republican party embraces men who have had affairs, paid hush money (without a concern for where the money has come from) or is a blatant racist.  

Now we have spineless morons leading the senate and the house who have giant war chests.  they just gave away the store to large corporations and don't seem to be worried about getting re-elected because they know the wealthy donors will continue to fund them.  



Bill Clinton had an affair with a legal consenting adult, which led to massive tax breaks for the rich and medicaid cuts to the poor.  That makes PERFECT sense, why the hell didn't I make that connection before.

When the mega-rich end up living behind razor wire and have carjacking defense systems on their cars and the poor are desperately trying to survive just like they do in South Africa we'll all know it was because Bill Clinton didn't remember his wedding vows. For shame.


ml1 said:
 
dave23 said:

Trump ran as a Republican and won as a Republican because he embodies their true values. Stop pretending otherwise.
^this.  Times 100

Yup.

I will add that Bill Clinton is NOT responsible for how the GOP realized that the old racial and religious stereotypes and bigotry STILL could be a winning strategy in 2016.



sprout said:

But no hanky-panky. It's verboten.

So who would want to visit?



LOST said:

sprout said:

But no hanky-panky. It's verboten.

So who would want to visit?



Actually Clinton was going to do a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize or "reform" social security" and Medicare, but the Monica scandal stopped that in its tracks. Monica is an American hero!  We should all be grateful to Monica.  She saved Social Security and Medicare.  

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/05/29/the-pact-between-bill-clinton-and-newt-gingrich


Not only did it not fall in  day but its fall was not brought on by a single bad event but, like you say, a process.  History has deep, long term trends and cycles.   It's silly to say that the Lewinsky scandal, or the reporting of it, was the portentous "beginning of the end," as if everything was perfect the day before.  What about Vietnam?  Or our massive debt situation, that began under Reagan?  Or, if you are of a conservative bent, out of control unsustainable entitlement spending? Or, from the liberal end, unsustainable defense spending?  Or even the simple fact that the rest of the world started catching up to America with economic output and competition after the fairly short period of golden luck we had following WW2 when 1st world friends and foes alike were decimated and current powerhouses like China and India were not yet part of the modern economy.

     

unicorn_and_rainbows said:

Rome didn't fall in a day. It was a process.



hey, I could have written this post!

which makes this exactly right. cheese

ml1 said:

the OP ignores the much longer roots of the environment that produced Trump as POTUS.  It has been an effort that goes back at least to the 70s.  The creation and funding of think tanks and media outlets that have produced an infrastructure to create "alternative facts" has been a very long process.  Ultimately that process produced a base of tens of millions of people whose outrage at liberals and "elites" is the result of  creating an alternate reality.  Those millions and millions of people believe in such falsehoods as racism against whites is a problem, Mexican immigrants are pouring into the U.S., climate change is a hoax, coal jobs are coming back, etc., etc., etc.  That false reality created the climate that made it possible for a narcissistic con man to garner over 60 million votes.

if anything the Lewinsky affair was an anomaly on that road, in the sense that the underlying event actually happened.  Contrast that to the long list of phony scandals that have been created to tar Democrats -- the Foster "murder," Whitewater, "Travelgate," Benghazi, the IRS "scandal," and on and on.



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