It has been 20 whole years since a cursed relationship would find the light of day.
The speech of the former US President, Bill Clinton, and 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky, whose love affairs in the Oval Office were to live their own lives. An extremely subversive life, no doubt.
It was January 1998 when the first reports of the almighty planet's illegal relationship with the young trainee began to arrive. Clinton vehemently denied it until August of that year, when she was summoned to testify before a jury.
On 17 August 1998 he actually became the first in action President of the United States filed before a committee of inquiry. His deposition lasted more than 4 hours and was made via closed circuit television by the White House. What Clinton did in those days has now become a myth, as she continued to deny having sex with Lewinsky despite the oath she had taken and the press reports.
As the special prosecutor investigating the accusations, Kenneth Starr, remembers, the unthinkably tragic testimony of Clinton pushed him to accuse the president of forgery and obstruction of justice! Bill even continued to lie even when he learned that his DNA could be identified with that infamous sperm stain on the practitioner's blue dress.
Apparently to avoid the worst, that afternoon, after his deposition, he delivered a presidential speech in front of the people where he admitted on television that he had an "indecent relationship" with Monica and now regrets that he had deceived his wife and the American nation repeatedly denying it extramarital relationship.
The president apologized for what he described as "a critical mistake in my judgment and a personal failure, for which I am solely and fully responsible" and waited for things to end. And stop! Despite the fact that the scandal came and found him at the pinnacle of his popularity and the accusations were hurled against him from many quarters, he continued to perform his duties normally.
In the end, he would come out of this whole adventure unscathed, which was ultimately just a "stain" (inside and outside quotes) on a successful presidential course. Lewinsky, however, was another story. The 45-year-old stone of the scandal of another era was dragged by the media for a number of years, experienced bullying in her skin and saw her life magically change for the worse.
Her public humiliation seemed to have no end or limits. After mocking the relationship on the popular Saturday Night Live show, with the presenters resorting to a few sexist jokes against it, even serious newspapers, such as the New York Times, called without rotation "A silly, predatory White House practitioner who may have lied despite her oath in exchange for a job at Revlon."
Other newspapers went even further: the "Wall Street Journal" called her "little cock", the New York Post even more glamorous ("fat pepper"!), While Fox News even asked for his opinion whether Monica was an "ordinary girl" or a "young vagrant looking for cheap emotions". 54% of people chose the latter.
Many of them would later plead guilty years to the way they handled the matter. Today, two decades after the events and in the midst of the global debate about sexual harassment in the workplace, Lewinsky's story seems more relevant than ever.
Have morals changed or are we being bullied into believing that? On June 4, 2018, in an interview with NBC, Clinton, answering the question whether he owes an "apology" to Monica, in light of the #MeToo movement, said simply "no". Adding that he apologized publicly for the incident, although never to her personally for what happened after the scandal.
"But you did not apologize to her [Lewinsky]?" - @ craigmelvin
"I have not talked to her." –Bill Clinton
"Do you feel that you owe her an apology?" –Melvin
“No. I have never talked to her, but I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry. ” -Clinton pic.twitter.com/dVAb0OycIa
- TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 4, 2018
However, she no longer has any problem talking about the romance that such turmoil brought to her life. In another great article in "Vanity Fair" magazine on February 25, 2018, she confessed that the #MeToo movement made her rethink and redefine her relationship with Bill.
And shortly afterwards he ousted Republican Marco Rubio at Twitter for an article that the senator did not like, writing to him characteristically "blaming the trainee is so 1990"!
blaming the intern is so 1990's. ???? https://t.co/6CGPERpNqx
- Monica Lewinsky (@MonicaLewinsky) May 3, 2018
So let's see what the troubled Monica did after the outcry and how she managed the scandal in the next two decades…
Already in March 1999 in an interview with Lewinsky, the reporter Barbara Walters observed that Monica had been described by the press as "a jerk, a predator, a stone of scandal". She protested against the image portrayed by the media, saying "I am very loyal, I think I am smart; I think I have been described badly in the last year and certainly unjustly".
Later that year, author Andrew Morton published a book ("Monica's Story") based on her interviews, a short biography of her, which, however, encountered the same warlike press. The spirits were still sharp.
But as the scandal faded and she was discreetly kept away from the flashes of publicity, people forgot about her. What did he do; According to an interview with New York Magazine, Lewinsky moved to New York and set up a small bag company. Saying that it was very difficult for her to find a job: "People just did not run to hire me".
Trying to escape the evil, in 2005 he found her in London doing a master's degree in social psychology at the famous university London School of Economics. As she told Time magazine in 2009, she did it to avoid further public exposure.
And while everyone had lost track of her, Monica came back stronger on May 28, 2014 with a fiery article in the magazine "Vanity Fair", describing in detail her life after the presidential romance and her public humiliation. Titled "Shame and Survival", she revealed that returning from London with a heavy piece of paper in her hands, they continued to reject her on the basis of her past.
Inspiration to fight for life he said he found in a tragic event that took place in September 2010, when a Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from a bridge when his roommate in the dormitory uploaded a video on the internet showing him having sex with a man.
She characteristically wrote that the unjust loss of the young man gave a new meaning to her own sufferings, realizing that her sufferings could act as a survival guide for every person who is bullied out there.
"I would never be so impudent to liken my own story to that of Tyler Clementi. "In the end, my own public humiliation was the result of my relationship with a world-famous figure, it was the result of my own bad choices," he writes cautiously.
And so she found what she needed to do with her life…
After describing herself as "the first non-public figure to see her identity and reputation torn apart by viral nature of the internet ", Monica is now an active figure against cyberbullying. Her big moment came here in March 2015, when she gave a fiery speech at the TED Talk show against cyberbullying and everyone stood up at the end to applaud her.
Since June of that year, she is a strategic member of the serious anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution, has launched her own initiative against cyber bullying and has taken part in countless information campaigns. And it continues to be just as dynamic and combative…
Already from her shocking article in 2014 and despite the fact that she reiterated that her relationship with Clinton was consensual, Monica complained that even at the height of the scandal she had never received support from anyone. Not even from feminist organizations. Perhaps it was his fault that most and most well-known people were tied to Clinton's presidential chariot.
In the years that followed, however, many feminists who had kept their mouths shut in 1998 apologized for their stance. Even comedians and TV stars said they were disappointed with how they handled the issue. THE David Letterman, for example, he said in 2014 that he feels bad about "my relentless jokes about the unfortunate woman".
Especially since the end of 2017, when the movement against sexual harassment and exploitation #MeToo broke out, many people remembered Monica, not perhaps as a victim of sexual exploitation in the traditional sense, but certainly as a victim of unprecedented bullying for a consensual relationship .
Feelings had changed now. Characteristic here was the article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kathleen Parker, who wrote in November 2017 in the "Washington Post" that the mistake for the illegal relationship was borne by Clinton and not Lewinsky.
In October of the same year, she tweeted the hashtag #MeToo, which millions of people have used to claim to have been sexually exploited. No one asked her exactly what she meant.
#MeToo https://t.co/VWssdltU3n
- Monica Lewinsky (@MonicaLewinsky) October 16, 2017
"Now, at 44," writes in February 2018 in "Vanity Fair", "I am just beginning to understand the implications of the huge power difference between a president and a White House incumbent. "I am beginning to understand that in such a situation, the idea of consensus must be called into question."
Her last blow was in 2019, when in an interview she gave to John Oliver and his show on HBO, she wondered what would be different if the scandal concerning her broke out today, in the age of social media where not only the media has a voice…