I Did Not Have Sexual Relations with That Woman

"'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,' wrote poet William Wordsworth, 'But to be young was very Heaven!' No one will ever say that about Monicagate. (Slate tried to name the scandal 'Flytrap,' but the label didn't stick.) It was a bummer for all concerned, from its tawdry beginning as an item of Internet gossip to its ambivalent end when Clinton, having become the first president since Andrew Johnson to be impeached by the House, was acquitted by a Senate reluctant to flatter Clinton's infractions by calling them high crimes or misdemeanors."

Timothy Noah in Slate looks back to les événements of 1998 and the public emergence of Monica Lewinsky.