All grown up
by Tyler Jane Barley

Too many people in and around the Washington media (senators, congressmen, reporters, commentators, etc.) seem to be more concerned with the Clinton/Lewinsky age difference than the liaisons themselves. Or, more precisely, people fret over Monica Lewinsky's age. If I have to hear the phrase "21-year-old girl" or worse, "21-year-old young woman", I'm gonna go on a rampage. Get some Eddy Grant in my Walkman and just start shooting.

In every way, Monica Lewinsky was a fully-enfranchised citizen of this country when she and the President got a little busy. The last age-related legal hurdle people in the U.S. must clear is the drinking age. That passes at a person's 21st birthday. At the age of 18, every one of us is considered fit to vote. I think that once a person is a full citizen of the United States, then she is a full citizen. Last time I checked, there are no partial citizenships. There are no exceptions for extremely sheltered rich chicks with a fixation on the President.

In short, I knew the anti-Clinton people were playing politics and not expressing true moral outrage when the screams of anguish focused on Lewinsky's age, not the affair itself. If these folks were true moral bigots, then the complaints would have stopped at nookie outside of marriage. That's bad enough. But no, the sanctimonious ones hauled in the age issue. Age should not be an issue.

"What if it was your daughter?" was the question many fat old white guys asked. Well, what if it was? I remember my 21st year. I remember giving oral pleasure to more than one guy, and none of them happened to be the president. One was an assistant assistant D.A. (if he was telling me the truth, which I doubt), but that's about as far up the power chain as I got. In fact, there's something to be said for Lewinsky's ambition. She wanted the best, and she got the best. The hottest... .

As the boomers age, there is an increasing societal focus on "ageism". Discrimination against people because of their age. Usually older folks claim to be victimized by this ism, and for the most part, that's probably right. But I have to say that Lewinsky has been just as viciously vilified for her youth. If , say, Linda Tripp had been the other woman in question, the old guys would have gone, "Eeew, she's not even as pretty as his wife" and left it at that. But because Lewinsky is not without some charms, youth being the only one obvious to me, there's a lewdness to the sermonizing that is rather disquieting. As I watch Orrin Hatch, Trent Lott, Rick Santorum or Dan Burton talk about Hummergate, it looks like they themselves are playing out personal Lewinsky fantasies in their mind even as they demonize the President. Hatch in particular gets a really weird grin going sometimes as he waxes rhapsodic on matters Lewinsky, and I don't want to even think about what sort of weird Mormon undergarments he imagines Lewinsky inhabiting.

But all this consternation has come because she is a semi-hot young thang. Well, that and political opportunism, but we'll take hack politics as a given in these days of rancor and acrimony. If Henry Hyde can explain away an affair he had while in his 40s as a "youthful indiscretion", I don't see why Clinton can't make the same claim. The simple fact is that the President obviously hasn't lost sexual interest in vapid, breathy brunettes who tend to the chunky side. And if they're willing to serve themselves up to him, well, that's not his fault. It's his fault that he accepts the favors, but not that they were offered in the first place.

Perhaps what is disturbing many people is that so many young women (and older women, for that matter) have a sexual fixation on the president. I did have a boyfriend a couple years back who cultivated a special collection of Hillary Clinton clippings for some private moments, and Michael Moore devoted an entire chapter in his book Downsize This! to the merits of all things Hillary, but in general the public sexual frenzy has focused on the Bill side of the Clinton family. What can I say? I don't get too excited watching the guy on TV, but I did see him speak on the campaign trail and I even shook his hand. He does have an inexplicable personal magnetism.

And so what if Lewinsky was only 21? Strom Thurmond has married a succession of Miss South Carolinas, and many a politician on both sides of the fence has traded in the old "clunker" for a newer, sexier model. And many of these new women are in their twenties. Full citizens, I might remind you, able to make their own decisions about how to run their lives.

Criticize the president for going around on his wife. I don't approve of such behavior, myself. But quit beating the youth horse to death. I mean, we are the future. Even if every older generation hates to admit such a thing.

Tyler Jane Barley believes that sex involves the emission of some sort of bodily fluid, be it mucous, blood, sweat, semen or anything else. Any other definition is just plain silly.

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