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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2017

The fruit of 19 years: If at first you don't succeed, persist for 19 years!

That's what Mother always said. This morning, we learned why.

In this morning's New York Times, Peter Baker reports on the way the children are pretending or attempting to rethink the past. We plan to discuss their efforts next week.

Meanwhile, Baker wrote what's shown below. And it only took 19 years:

BAKER (11/16/17): Mr. Clinton’s behavior, proved or otherwise, has long been an uncomfortable subject for Democrats. Many chose to defend him for his White House trysts with Ms. Lewinsky because, despite the power differential between a president and a former intern, she was a willing partner. To this day, Ms. Lewinsky rejects the idea that she was a victim because of the affair; “any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath” when the political system took over, as she wrote in 2014.

After all these years, it has finally happened. Lewinsky was a former intern during those thrilling years!

For full fairness to Baker, see below. Meanwhile, we should make an important point:

Did some humans "defend" Bill Clinton for those "trysts?" Or did they perhaps distinguish those "trysts" from, let's say, violent acts of sexual assault?

In the world where the children play, such distinctions are hard to come by. Such distinctions are even more important when evaluating the (improbable) claims made by Gennifer Flowers, a favorite of pundits and press.

Much more on this topic next week. The children are at it again!

Full fairness: Baker has described the Lewinsky of those years as a "former intern" on two prior occasions, once in 2014, once in 2012. Neil Lewis even did so once, way back in 2004.

In a scan of the Washington Post, we found one such unambiguous reference. It appeared in 2008—in a letter to the editor!

A journalist could always go ahead and call her a "federal employee," of course. But dearest readers, use your heads! That would reduce the fun!

(Technically, Lewinsky was still an intern during tryst the first, but she'd already accepted a federal job. She had like a week to go before that employment started. During the vast bulk of this famous affair, into which the whole world stuck its long nose, she was a 22- to 24-year-old federal employee. She was an intern for roughly a week; she was never 21.)