Monica Lewinsky, Speaking at a Conference on the Perils of the Internet, Refuses to Be Bullied by the Internet
Monica Lewinsky was in Jerusalem on Monday at a conference to give a speech on the perils of the Internet when she abruptly left the stage during the Q&A portion of the program. Her interviewer, Yonit Levi, a top news anchor in Israel, had begun the questioning by asking whether Lewinsky still expected an apology from President Bill Clinton. (Lewinsky and Clinton had engaged in a romantic affair during his presidency while she was a 22-year-old White House intern, the exposure of which led to his impeachment and her sustained, abusive scrutiny by the public at large—also a topic of her speech that evening at the Israeli Channel 2 News–hosted event, in which The Times of Israel reports she spoke of the trauma and decade-long depression she had endured.) “I’m so sorry, I’m not going to be able to do this,” Lewinsky told Levi, exiting the stage. Lewinsky later tweeted that they had agreed before the talk that the topic would be off-limits and that Levi had violated their agreement. “I left because it is more important than ever for women to stand up for themselves and not allow others to control their narrative,” Lewinsky wrote, later rebutting allegations that she had “stormed offstage” rather than exited politely.
“We believe the question asked on stage was legitimate and respectful and one that certainly did not go beyond Ms. Lewinsky’s requests and did not cross the line,” the news company spokesman Alon Shani told The Washington Post. Lewinsky, for her part, had spoken about the scandal, the way it had affected her life, and the different way it might have been handled post the mainstreaming of the #MeToo movement earlier in the program. “I don’t think I would have felt so isolated if what happened in 1998 happened in 2018,” she told the audience. “By and large I had been alone. Publicly alone. Abandoned most by the main figure in this crisis, who knew me well and intimately. . . . I was shunned from almost every community which I belonged to, including my religious community. That led to some very dark times for me.”
The Clinton-Lewinsky saga has seemingly not lessened in public interest with the progression of time—it’s also currently the focus of the hit Slate podcast Slow Burn—and this past January, Lewinsky celebrated 20 years “of surviving the unimaginable”. Here’s to hoping that soon the world will let her move on too.
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