Cohen: 25 years later, Monica Lewinski is still talking

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On Jan. 21, 1998, The Washington Post reported that Bill Clinton, then the president of the United States, had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. The Republicans impeached Clinton and the media impeached Lewinsky, and neither has been the same since.

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Today we see the trial of William Jefferson Clinton as a manifestation of the scorched-earth politics of Newt Gingrich, who became speaker of the House of Representatives in 1995 with a mission to denounce, demonize and destroy.

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The affair and its aftermath gravely hurt Clinton. Despite a near-perfect “Goldilocks” economy, he was an inconsequential president of high intelligence and failed promise. He was a casualty of the Republican inquisition, fed by his flaws.

So was Lewinsky. But her public image has recovered over 25 years, while Clinton’s has worsened. Once called a hussy, a vixen and a stalker, she is now, in the #metoo era, a sympathetic figure. She welcomes her stature as a stylish, middle-aged champion of anti-cyberbullying.

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If she ever wanted to leave behind her past (she earned a degree in London in psychology), that’s no longer so. If Clinton had chosen to have an affair with his secretary, who would never have spilled, things might have been different. Instead, he chose Lewinsky — young, insecure and delusional.

She had to talk. She couldn’t help herself. Her confidante was Linda Tripp, a miserable conservative who recorded their telephone conversations and betrayed her.

What’s striking is that long after Clinton left office, Lewinsky couldn’t shake her past — or simply chose to exploit it. She might have changed her name and adopted a new identity. She might have disappeared into a monastery and taken a vow of silence. But in America, the world’s seat of celebrity, it was irresistible. Isn’t fame fabulous?

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In 1999, she sat for a highly publicized interview with Barbara Walters and designed a collection of handbags under her name. She became a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig Inc. and appeared in an HBO special, Monica in Black and White. Quiet for a decade, she re-emerged in 2014 in a television special on the National Geographic Channel. And since 2015, she has been talking widely about the ills of public shaming.

She produced a multi-part drama, Impeachment: An American Crime Story, in which she’s the central character. In Vanity Fair, she marks the 25th anniversary of the revelation of her affair with 25 things she’s learned, dispensing indispensable wisdom (“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re so f…ed” and “As the years pass, one’s taste in partners gets better.”)

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So, this is someone who doesn’t want to shut up. Yet it’s hard to resent Lewinsky, a good-hearted naïf who fell for the wrong guy and has never been able to find the right one; marriage and family elude her, she laments.

But Lewinsky is a child of the age of indiscretion, in which everyone “shares,” there is never “too much information,” and celebrity is currency. Monica always had to talk, and particularly now, she declares, “to reclaim my narrative.”

This is Prince Harry’s problem, too, on a higher level. He had to talk, even when he shouldn’t. Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan, says today she regrets the memoir she wrote about her family years ago. Late in his life, she apologized to her ailing father.

Today, Davis preaches the power of silence. She thinks silence gives you room, distance. “It lets you look at your experiences more completely, without the temptation to even the score.”

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She talks about truth, noting it is not a monolith. As we find out in life, there is often more than one truth, and speaking yours, however real to you, isn’t always wise. “Not everything needs to be shared, a truth that silence can teach,” says Davis.

Monica isn’t Harry, who is apparently looking to settle scores and make money. Lewinsky just likes the attention. Changing attitudes have made her experience appear different, society’s view less harsh. We are less judgmental.

Still, Monica Lewinsky remains a broken soul, unable to mend, unable to leave, unable to stop.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, a professor at Carleton University and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.