Hypocrisy, Thy Name Was Kenneth Starr
May he rot in Hell with Jeffrey Epstein
One could say many things about Ken Starr, who shed his mortal coil on Tuesday at 76. Few of those things would be complimentary. He worked hard to ruin one life (Monica Lewinsky) in his zeal to bring down a sitting President (Bill Clinton) for getting a (consensual) blowjob in the White House. It wasn’t anything many Republicans hadn’t done with their interns, but Clinton was a Democrat that Republicans despised. And so they turned Starr loose on Clinton, and the moralizer-in-Chief outdid himself.
Interestingly enough, even though she was among the Americans with the greatest reasons to despise Starr, Monica Lewinsky was surprisingly charitable upon hearing of his death.
Yes, as despicable, underhanded, and hypocritical as Kenneth Starr was, I suspect there were those in his life loved him and now mourn his passing. I’m not among them, and I suspect Ms. Lewinsky isn’t, either.
Starr didn’t exactly have what one might refer to as a “fan club.”
Despite my usual resolve not to speak ill of the dead, there’s nothing good I can find to say about Kenneth Starr. The man was a Christian hypocrite who championed some truly f****d-up values and represented some evil and sick men. How you can twist someone like that into something lovable and defensible is beyond me.
While I’ve never actively wished for anyone’s death, I have on occasion read an obituary with great pleasure. Such is the case with Kenneth Starr. I’m an atheist, but I enjoy the scenario of Starr arriving at the Pearly Gates, only to be laughed out of Heaven and sent to Hell on an express elevator.
Starr may have portrayed himself as a good, Bible-believing, Conservative Christian. But, in reality, he was as corrupt and hypocritical as the day is long. He may have been a Conservative, but if he was a Christian, I’m Taylor Swift.
He was a moralizing hypocrite who was all for impeaching a Democratic President but balked at impeaching a Republican.
He is famous for his obsessive investigation of one case of sexual misconduct — but not for the allegations he failed to pursue with the rigor they deserved.
The life of this onetime pillar of the conservative legal establishment is evidence that age and time do not always confer wisdom and that it isn’t always pleasant to live in a world of one’s own creation.
Starr most famously served as the independent counsel appointed to investigate allegations about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s handling of their investment in a real estate development company gone bust. What started as a specific brief sprawled for years and began to look like an obsession….
In a memoir published in 2018, Starr tried to have it both ways. He wrote that he “deeply regret[s]” taking the probe down the Lewinsky path. But he still maintained, having had two decades to put his actions in perspective, that “there was no practical alternative to my doing so.” And he ultimately blames Lewinsky herself for what he and his colleagues put her through, writing: “In her fierce but misguided loyalty, Monica allowed herself to become a tragic figure.”
Kenneth Starr excelled at probing the personal lives of others and using his hypocritical morality as a yardstick. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so good at holding himself to that standard. As a result, his tenure as the President of Baylor University was an unqualified disaster because he was more concerned with the success of the men’s football and basketball programs than with protecting women on campus and in the Waco community.
He could suspend his morality when it devolved to his benefit or when it was the path of least resistance. For example, once it became clear that Baylor athletics had a rape problem, Starr tried to sweep it under the rug because of the bad publicity it could, and eventually did, create. Ultimately, his lack of decisive action to protect women cost him his job.
Interestingly enough, for someone who tried to bring down a President for having a consensual affair, Starr was eventually accused of having his own affair. Judi Hershman, an advisor to Starr’s Independent Counsel’s Office, claimed in 2021 that she and Starr had a consensual affair in 2009.
Do as I say, not as I do….
I admire Monica Lewinsky’s charity towards the man who actively sought to make her life a living Hell. I feel no such warmth towards a man whose hypocrisy and double standards were writ large for all to see. Though I’m an atheist, if there is something resembling Hell, I hope Kenneth Starr will be roasting slowly on a spit with Jeffrey Epstein for eternity. It’s the least he deserves.
