I rarely write about a single episode in a series, and we have already reviewed the series earlier, but I am compelled to single out this mind-boggling episode as a game changer moment in television history that can be watched separately as a lesson in so many things. Male dominance gone unchecked. Corruption in government. Women destroying other women for their own ego. I'll stop now and get to the episode.
I’ve been watching “Impeachment: American Crime Story” on FX. My significant other commented that the first few episodes are centered around women gossiping and attacking one another, which is true, but it’s episode six that will slay you. If you have not yet begun watching the show, you can skip the first five episodes, which, while they cover the affair, mostly focus on Monica and Linda and fail to portray my gender in anything approaching a favorable light. In episode six, just prior to the feds picking up Monica, Linda Tripp heads down an escalator in a manner similar to the way Trump descended the escalator when he announced his candidacy for president: defiant, but unsure and a little afraid. Once they have Monica in custody, the feds surround her, abusing their power by using intimidation tactics that will make you gasp — gasp, I tell you. You will come away with a newfound understanding that the practice of filling American governmental departments almost entirely with white men, as has been done for centuries, is alive but not “well.” We learn that the name of the sting is Operation Prom Night. “Why that?” you ask. Because they are confident that they can get in and out in 30 minutes — meaning Monica will readily submit to their demands because she is a 24-year-old girl. It’s shocking, and it makes viewers wonder what the wives of these men think today as they watch that which they were not privy to all those years ago. Mistake boys. Big mistake. The episode served as an hour and a half of inner outrage growing in me over the way Monica was treated, how the public was duped in terms of the role she was to play in a conspiracy to take down a president. And, perhaps most egregious, the intimidating physicality of the men in that room with her. I believe they all belong in jail. Now. With Weinstein. The episode also wakes us up to what tends to happen when a governmental department is overwhelmingly loaded (did they really need 11 men in the room?) with mirror-images-of-themselves men, who in my opinion, showed limited intellectual prowess and zero curiosity about how things work outside of their own personal experiences. Oh, and guess what? Monica didn’t cave. She was terrified, but in the end, she stood her ground. She has reinvented her image since her Vanity Fair piece a few years ago, which begins with her account of an awkward encounter she had with Ken Starr at a restaurant on Christmas Eve 2017. I follow Monica on Twitter, and find her clever, funny, relevant, concise — all the things you’d want her to be. Her parents should be proud. Hell, I am proud that she and I share simply the trait of thick dark hair, for God’s sake! She is a hero in my book. And, she also made a mistake and behaved in a way no one wants to be remembered by sleeping with someone else's husband. Both things can be true my fellow females. This story is yet another in a long line of those that have opened my eyes recently to the truth about how my country works — the corruption and ineptitude that make up the United States of America’s governmental movers and shakers. It’s time to fix these issues. It’s so clear that diversity of race and gender is critical to the success of the American experiment of democracy, which has been abused and misused to the point of the possible destruction of us all.
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