Denial: Not Just a River in Egypt
![handle is hein.journals/cdozo22 and id is 925 raw text is: DENIAL: NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT
Gary Minda*
One of the most vivid memories of Bill Clinton's presidency
will be his television interview in which he denied ever having
sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. On national, prime-time
television, the President, looking directly in the camera's eye, said:
Listen to me. I want to have to say this only once. I never had
improper sexual relations with that woman. Never! Soon
thereafter, Hillary Clinton, also on prime-time television, stated
that her husband was innocent of the charges of sexual
misbehavior in the Oval Office and that he was the victim of a
vast right-wing conspiracy.' As we all know, President Clinton,
again on prime-time television, after learning of possible DNA
evidence on Monica's dress, recanted his previous statements and
admitted that he did have an improper sexual relation with that
woman (actually, that time he said her name, Monica
Lewinsky). The First Lady, retreating from the public eye,
remained silent after that faithful admission.
How shall we understand this most remarkable event in
American political history? Did the President and the First Lady
simply lie to the American people, hoping that they could fool
everyone with their statements of denial? Did the President really
believe that oral sex was something other than sex? Did Hillary
really believe that her husband was a faithful partner wrongly
maligned by the Republican Right? The answer to these and
many other questions involving the infamous Monica Lewinsky
story can be explained on the basis of Duncan Kennedy's theory of
psychological denial.1 As strange as it may seem, Kennedy's
theory of psychological denial would suggest that the President
and the First Lady were both lying and not lying. They knew that
what they were denying on prime-time television was untrue, and
yet at the very same time they believed in their hearts that what
they were saying was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.
* Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School. This Essay was financially supported by
Brooklyn Law School's Summer Research Stipend Program.
1 See DUNCAN KENNEDY, A CRITIQUE OF ADJUDICATION: FIN DE SILCLE 191-94
(1997) [hereinafter CRITIQUE].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cdozo22&div=35&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Denial: Not Just a River in Egypt
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