MONICA LEWINSKY : A SURVIVOR WHO IS MOVING FORWARD and STILL EVOLVING

This month is dedicated to  MONICA LEWINSKY - A Survivor Who Is Moving Forward and Still Evolving.

In March 2012 I dedicated a month to Monica with my introductory post title GET OFF THE BACK OF MONICA LEWINSKY - Why Not Blame President Bill Clinton? I elected Monica to MISTRESS MANIFESTO here because it just was never fair that she took the brunt of the revelation that she had an affair with the President William Jefferson Clinton and she has suffered criticism and blame for years since. She was never a Mistress, and she isn't the first woman to have an affair with a married man, but is one of the few who became part of history - 20th Century history - because of it.

Some of the issues for all of us that come up with the scandal that hurt her, beginning when she was just twenty-four years old, include women's sexuality, power-over (an authority figure with responsibilities taking advantage of an underling), and the betrayal of a "friend" (Linda Tripp) pretending to have our best interest in mind - and pretending to be a person who one can confide in - and have that information used against us.

It is now 2025, Monica is much older (51ish) and wiser than when she was an intelligent college girl who was hired to be a White House Intern, and who had the possibility of a dazzling future career ahead of her. She has had to find her way through one obstacle after another. Monica is still evolving.  

MONICA SAMILLE LEWINSKY

1974- Present

Note: The photo of Monica is from her government ID photo by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, taken in May 1997, originally from US DOD. This image is a work of the U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the pubic domain in the United States.

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BLAZE (THE FILM) MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

The film came out in 1989.  It does not feel dated.

Based on Blaze's autobiography, which she wrote with a co author, the film goes quickly through the stripper's life, beginning with her goodbye to her mother in rural West Virginia.  Her mother's advice was never trust a man who says "You can trust me." She says there are few men as good as her daddy.  She warns her daughter about boys.

Blaze's early dream is to be a country music singer. Far from home, she works at a donut shop until a customer grooms her to be a stripper. He is not honest, but convinces her that the audience is full of military men who may loose their lives in Korea. Can't she give them what they want - a strip - for America?  She defines herself as a dancer, not a stripper.

Blaze quickly becomes a star, traveling the circuit. Implied is that she has earned her independence. When Governor Earl Long of Louisiana shows up to see her perform in New Orleans, she asks him if she can trust him. He says "No you can't" and their romance is sparked. This is a man that Blaze can relate to.

Actor Paul Newman portrays the Governor as a wily older man who is sure he wants to keep his political office even if doing so requires unconventional ways. There's a bit of "only in Louisiana." Politically there's a situation in which the press and the voters want to know how he's going to deal with racism.  Black leaders say they need jobs, good jobs. He manages to do that by shaming an administrator at a segregated hospital.  Blaze retains her "down home" sensibilities.  Earl Long keeps his boots on - an old coot he is. There are some silly-funny sex scenes

When confronted by his political cronies about being involved with a stripper Long denies it, just as he does when confronted with IRS tax problems.  Blaze Starr is depicted stripping with one of Long's campaign buttons in her garter.  He wins the election but has had serious health problems for some time and dies, just after he lies and says she can trust him that he will marry her.

This film was based on the autobiography by Blaze Starr and co-author Huey Perry. 

Blaze was a production consultant and had a bit part in the film.

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  Film Review 

All Rights reserved including Internet and International Rights

ABOUT GOVERNER EARL KEMP LONG A FAN OF BURLESQUE : BEING WITH BLAZE HURT HIS MARRIAGE BUT NOT THEIR CAREERS

Excerpts page 210 on  Stage Door Johnnies and Governor Earl Kemp Long....

Tee Tee Red, another dancer, about him:

One of the more flamboyant of the Johnnies was Louisiana's Governor Earl Long.

Like Blaze, Tee Tee Red met Governor Earl Long when she was working New Orleans. 'Blaze and I were in competition with him.  They called him the crazy governor,' she said  He would drive down the street in his limousine, throwing hundred dollar bills out the window.  He also regularly passed out food to the poor. "He didn't care what people said.  He was a lot of fun. He'd throw his money around. He could do whatever he wanted. He would buy the club out if he wanted to.  He'd order champagne for everybody," Tee Tee said.

The forty-fifth Governor of Louisiana was colorful, charismatic, and a compelling speaker. Because of his erratic behavior - he blatantly flaunted his many dalliances with strippers - his wife Blanche had him committed to a state hospital.  (Hell hath no fury like a wife publicly humiliated.) However, there was no law that said he couldn't run the state from a mental hospital suffering from dementia. He endured strokes and heart attacks that contributed to his declining mental health. He was iracible and unkempt, erratic in speech. In 1959 he famously said on the floor of the State Legislature: "I'm not nuts.  If I'm nuts, I've been nuts all my life.  Thank ya, and God bless ya."

Page 210

Governor Long was a regular at the Sho Bar.  He would see Blaze until he died in 1960 of a heart attack. Blaze refused money he had left for her in his will...

Also from the film, based on Blaze Starr's memoir:

Blaze was shown going in front of the voters as Earl went for reelection.

The governor was almost abducted to be taken to Mandeville State Hospital. the state mental hospital. She loyally went there to see him.  When accused of letting his involvement with Blaze hurt his career, he said no, it was his progressive ideas.

The couple are shown living together. Though married, he asked Blaze to marry him.  However, he died soon after he had won the election.

FIND YOUR SENATORS and READ ABOUT JOHN F. KENNEDY's BOOK PROFILES IN COURAGE

SENATE GOV (UNITED STATES) FIND SENATOR/ PROFILES IN COURAGE

John F. Kennedy is possibly the most popular president, other than Abraham Lincoln.  Yet this compartmentalized and complicated man had an unconventional private life due to his womanizing. His widow, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who went on to marry Aristotle Onassis, is esteemed as a most popular first lady.

 Published in 1956, written while the Senator was recovering from back surgery,  Profiles in Courage was Kennedy's second book. His first, Why England Slept, was his Harvard graduation thesis. This link has a summation of the book, chapter by chapter.

JOHN EDWARDS and RIELLE HUNTER and BUNNY MELLON

Back in 2008 the John Edwards- Rielle Hunter affair was the end of his candidacy for President of the United States.  Meryl Gordon's book on Bunny Mellon dedicates much of Part 17, Chapter 25 begins the details of Bunny's involvement in helping candidate Edwards hide his mistress Rielle who was pregnant with his child, from the American public through donations that clearly went beyond the campaign limits, though Bunny claimed not to know what happened to the money to a point or that this candidate who she loved and felt could be the next John F. Kennedy, had a mistress. 

Probably the reason Bunny remained unpunished was that she was 95 years old when she was so sure that Edwards would be the next president - and should be - since she was a patriotic liberal Democrat - and deserved the money for "personal expenses"  and a couple years closer to 100 when the game was over. Andrew Young was so willing to do anything to help his candidate win that after the 2006 meeting of Rielle and John that began their affair, he collaborated with a scheme to funnel money to Edwards. Young eventually even claimed to be the father of Rielle's child.

Edward's wife Elizabeth battled breast cancer at the time and as a result she got all the sympathy.  How could Edwards have an affair when his faithful wife she fought for her life?

Edwards hired Rielle to produce campaign videos for him and continued to pop up to see him on the campaign trail. 

The way around the campaign donations limit was, according to Gordon's book, sneaky fun for Bunny.  She was paying the living expenses for Rielle, thus keeping her so Edwards would not have to, by sending checks that were supposed to be for the purchase of antiques and furniture to one person who then routed the money to Young and to Young's wife's bank account.

The National Enquirer broke the story of the affair and then the "love child," and terminally ill Elizabeth separated from her husband.  Edwards only admitted the truth about his dual life after Andrew Young's book was ready to hit the shelves. In my opinion, he made a mess of things by continually lying to the public with his wife at his side, denying everything, though I can understand he at least didn't want to publically humiliate her.

Bunny's checks were monthly and for increasing amounts - $175,000,  $200,000 - and were not for the campaign itself.  Well, the FBI became involved.  Bunny said that she had no problem with a man having a mistress, nor did she think having a mistress would make a man less eligible for candidacy, but she thought a man should afford his mistress on his own.

Because Edwards and Bunny had become friends, frequently speaking on the phone, he and his daughter imagined they would be welcome to her funeral - but they were relegated to an overflow tent.


* Rielle Hunter is a self made woman who changed her name from Lisa Jo Druck and is said to have made the first pass at Edwards.

MARITA LORENZ - ONE WOMAN'S EXTRAORDINARY TALE OF LOVE AND ESPIONAGE FROM CASTRO TO KENNEDY : LOVE WON!

EXCERPTS

from page 49 upon being returned to New York after 8 months with Fidel.

"The enclosed world in which I was being nursed back to health (after the forced labor and delivery of a baby in Cuba) was designed to suck me into a bad dream where these red blooded, God-fearing, all American heroes had rescued me, a half dead, traumatized girl sent back from Cuba, from the clutches of Fidel Castro, Antichrist and butcher..."

from page 72 when she is in training to be a spy

"I was a woman desired by men, of special importance to my country.  And I was also a drugged girl who, between sleeping pills and stimulants, withdrew to play with a pet turtle, a pet cat, and a baby doll I had saved from my childhood... Not unstable by CIA standards or in the world of Cuban counterrevolutionaries...

from page 81 when she is back in Cuba to assassinate Fidel with poison pills...

"Fidel entered the room as though I had never left.  He paused only briefly, then hugged me, said he was exhausted, that he needed to sleep in order to give his talk that night.

"I want to know about the baby," I told him. "I want to know now."

He asked me if I came for him or to kill him.  I told him both.  But first I wanted to know about the baby.

"I know nothing," he frowned, looked concerned.  "I had no part of that."

I said, "You're going to get killed twice.  My father is going to kill you."  Then, loosing control, I began to cry.  "I want to know what happened, Fidel."

Fidel explained that he had given no order, that the doctor had not acted on his behalf.  He also said that the doctor had been executed for his actions.  Fidel became evasive about what happened to the baby.

"All boys born of Cuban fathers belong to Cuba," he told me.

MADELEINE DUNCAN BROWN : MISTRESS OF LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON: MISTRESS OF THE MONTH SEPTEMBER 2011

President Lyndon B. Johnson wasn't the charismatic character that John F. Kennedy was, but let's say this. All the "mistresses" that John F. Kennedy had were not mistresses, but affairs. MADELEINE DUNCAN BROWN

was a mistress and it wasn't until years later that she revealed some truths that were, if not outrageous, than difficult to take!

She was in Johnson's life for 21 years and had a son by him that he supported financially. Yes, she wrote a book about it. It's called "Texas In The Morning : THE LOVE STORY OF MADELEINE BROWN AND PRESIDENT LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON" which came out in 1997. In the book she claimed that Johnson was involved in the assassination of JFK. She told her truth before she died in 2002.

KARIN STANFORD SAYS JESSE'S MARRIAGE IS POLITICAL

KARIN STANFORD says they were in love with one another but accepted that their circumstances precluded a conventional relationship.

"He didn't make any promises," she says. "I didn't think we'd have a future together. I just thought it was something we were doing for the moment."

Stanford also says it did not bother her that Jackson was married. "From what I understood about Rev. Jackson's marriage was that it was basically a political marriage," she says.

Link to the ABC news article above.

PDF FILE OF WIFE ELIZABETH EDWARD'S WILL HUSBAND POLITICIAN JOHN IS LEFT OUT

Elizabeth Edward's, ex-wife of John Edwards, has lost her brave battle with cancer, and her personal estate is worth over a million dollars... Eleven days before she died, she signed this will which does not mention her estranged husband, but leaves all her worth to her children, with her oldest daughter as executor.

John Edwards probably has wealth of his own and it is fitting that Elizabeth leave what she has to her three children. Some news reports suggested though that Elizabeth had prevented John from marrying his mistress, with whom he has a 2 year old, Rielle Hunter, but that's stupid. A deceased person cannot prevent living people from marrying or a divorced spouse from marrying.

A person who lives in the public eye, especially if they are running for high office, has no privacy and in modern times it is very difficult to hide an extracurricular love/sex lifestyle.

Elizabeth was publically shamed by her husband and his mistress (something I do not agree with), though we are not sure really what happened first that lead to the public disclosure.

Perhaps this whole news story is privacy invasion and is beyond John Edwards and Reille Hunter not having class.

Missy