Monica Lewinsky is a name that will live in infamy.
And she's made money off of it.
For those born in the intervening years, let me explain who Ms. Lewinsky is, or was. Between 1995 and 1997, Lewinsky was an early-20s intern at the White House and Pentagon who had several sexual encounters with Bill Clinton, who just happened to be the president of the United States. She blabbed about it later to a woman named Linda Tripp, who was an employee of the Pentagon. Tripp, it turns out, liked to record their conversations. I suppose one does that sort of thing in Washington, D.C.
Clinton's two terms in office involved a seemingly interminable volume of investigations into this allegation or that, all starting from a failed real estate deal in Arkansas referred to as Whitewater. As with a lot of politically driven probes, this one expanded into all sorts of allegations of wrongdoing that had nothing to do with real estate and everything to do with bringing down a president.
Tripp provided her recordings to a man named Kenneth Starr, who was an independent counsel charged with getting to the bottom of the Whitewater matter. Lewinsky had denied the affair with Clinton publicly. Starr began looking into perjury charges against Lewinsky, the president and others. Clinton famously protested "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Of course, he did, and later acknowledged the "inappropriate" relationship.
Lewinsky became infamous.
Why all this old history? Last week, Lewinski gave a speech at one of those TED talks that feature "ideas worth spreading." Now, 20 years after the start of her sexual encounters with a president, she's taken on the subject of public humiliation. It has to stop, she said.
Her point appeared to be that she was the first victim of the digital revolution.
"I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously," she told her audience. It was easy for people in that environment to forget she "had a soul." Back then, there wasn't a name for what she went through. Today, she said, it's called cyber-bullying.
And that's where she lost me.
Monica Lewinsky deserves credit for trying to reclaim her life, for insisting on a different ending to her story, as she suggested others sufferers of public humiliation should seek. She's understandably trying to rebuild her private and public reputation. And she's latching onto cyber-bullying as her cause.
A generation of Internet users have been taught in their schools about "zero tolerance" policies for online bullying, so in casting herself as a victim of it, Lewinsky can convince a lot of people of how wronged she was. She urged a cultural revolution that ends the marketplace of public humiliation the internet feeds.
She's right to campaign against such a culture. I'm just not sure I buy her as its poster child.
Lewinsky's humiliation emerged as a result of her own choices. She cannot play the victim in trying to repair her reputation.
Lewinsky argues against humiliation, but there are choices one makes that deserve a backlash.
She coveted another woman's husband. She engaged in an extramarital affair in the White House. She gambled and lost. At every step along the way, her choices invited scorn. It was at least her second go-round with extramarital affairs.
Lewinsky has now crafted a reformation effort that blames the world for her shame and, it seems, advocates for a shame-less society. If having sex with a married president feels right, she doesn't want it to be wrong.
Is Lewinsky some sort of villain? No. I'd reserve that classification for that underhanded Tripp. But Lewinsky has made money off her infamy, whether from a line of handbags or an endorsement deal with a weight-loss company. She's tried to make the most of it.
She's to be commended for stressing how the dark days of one's life do not have to define it from beginning to end. And she's survived it. That's something worthy of some respect.
But respect has to be earned, and public humiliation is usually earned as well. I don't want anyone to go through humiliation, but let's be realistic. Nobody can control public reaction. All one can control is his or her own actions. When Monica Lewinsky earned her badge of shame, she did it in a big, big way.
That's not society's fault.
Greg Harton is editorial page editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Commentary on 03/23/2015