Sir, - If Kevin Myers is paid a bonus based on the number of people he succeeds in offending, he must by now be unreasonably wealthy. What President Clinton did is fairly simple to understand. In his workplace, with a very junior member of staff, he indulged in extra-marital sex. The fact that his workplace is the Oval Office and is one of the most sacred places in all democracy has some bearing. But it is what he did next that is truly worrying.
He set up a war room to trash a woman, Paula Jones, who referred to his sexual history. He lied to an American court about the Oval Office escapades and as a result his denigration of Paula Jones was successful. He then set the war room an additional target, Monica Lewinsky. He dug up previous affairs she had engaged in and was prepared to go even further in that direction until the National Organisation of Women reined him in. His trashing included a public reference to her as "that woman". She was at various times described as unhinged, subject to fantasies and seriously immature. She was all but called a slut. He even went to the extent of claiming, before the Supreme Court, executive privilege, in order to prevent his staff giving any information which might detract from the trashing operation. And this woman never made any allegations against him and never publicly disclosed their Oval office adventures. Indeed, she herself lied for him.
When the most powerful man on earth sets about ruining your reputation, your personal dignity and your integrity, then I say something is wrong and that it is a legitimate matter of concern.
Perhaps The Irish Times is quite happy to employ such bullies and to tolerate such massive abuses of workplace power. But I doubt it. It seems to me that this trashing of the young Lewinsky has far more analogies with McCarthy, Stalin or the witches of Salem than any of those offensive references made by Kevin Myers to the special prosecutor, Kenneth Stark (An Irishman's Diary, September 2nd)
If it costs the world an American President to ram home the message that workplace harassment and abuse of workplace power is unacceptable, then so be it. In this instance the abuse was upon a quite extraordinary scale. Few could withstand such abuse. The saddest aspect of it all is that if Clinton had been honest about it back in January, his own reputation, dignity and integrity would have survived. It is now probably too late. - Yours, etc., John McGuiggan,
Punchestown,
Ballymore Eustace,
Co Kildare.