The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton that followed are the first major news events to loom large in my memory.
I was too young to understand much. I didn't know what the president had done with his intern, why anyone cared about the blue dress, or how impeachment worked. And in retrospect, there were plenty of other big stories I could have more easily noticed: O.J. Simpson's trial, perhaps, or Waco, or maybe even the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it is this scandal which sticks out, and it isn't difficult to divine why. I grew up evangelical, and we were Very Upset.
These days it seems everyone is Very Upset all the time. Evangelicals are no exception, but, as has been endlessly observed over the last three years, white evangelicals overwhelmingly find themselves defending a scandalous president instead of deploring him. This week, that defense came to include an American Family Association (AFA) petition against National Review's David French for the crime of having a moral memory longer than that of a goldfish.
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