Ann Althouse, the blogger Madison liberals love to hate, linked to a Washington Post article that bemoaned the lack of a man for Monica Lewinsky. The author, Richard Cohen, complains that Lewinsky is "a victim of publicity, and her life has been a trial -- enough to floor almost anyone". Personally, I think Lewinsky is a victim of her own bad decisions.

To her credit, she's emerged from the tawdriness of her Clinton-era antics and just recently graduated with a Master's degree from the London School of Economics. Good for her. She's risen above her past, but I hardly think there's anything wrong with men who don't want to get attached to her (side note - does anyone even know for sure that Lewinsky is unattached?). As Cohen himself says:

She is a branded woman, not an adulterer but something even worse -- a girl toy, a trivial thing, a punch line. Yet she did what so many women at that age would do. She seduced (or so she thought) an older man. She fantasized that he would leave his wife for her. Here was her crime: She was a girl besotted. It happens even to Republicans.

Do that many young women really seduce older married men? Or do older married men just wish they could get seduced by a younger woman? I think it's the latter and I frankly resent someone trying to excuse Lewinsky's behavior by pretending it's commonplace.

It sounds like Lewinsky has grown up, but would you want to take her home to meet your parents? Would you want to explain to your children why Mommy is (in)famous? Cohen calls for a man "brave enough, strong enough, admirable enough to take her as his wife". Why is loving Lewinsky brave & admirable? Monica Lewinsky doesn't need some strong, brave man, she just needs someone who loves her enough to take her for himself, flaws and all. Let's not put her on a pedestal in order to make the whole scandal sound better. Her hypothetical potential husband is no better than any other man. He's just another fool in love.