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“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,”

Can you believe that it’s been almost a quarter century since Bill Clinton said those infamous words? The ‘almost first husband’ was of course lying his ass off at the time, but he seems to have come out of the 1999 scandal relatively ok. Unfortunately ‘that woman’ enjoyed less political protection and in the decades that followed, Monica Lewinsky became the punchline for dirty office jokes and a punching bag for political slut-shamers.

At the end of Jay Leno’s run, the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University analyzed the 44,000 jokes he told over the course of his time at the helm. While Clinton was his top target, I was the only one in the top 10 who had not specifically chosen to be a public person.

Now, after being the butt of too many jokes,  Lewinsky is looking back at the last 25 years since the incident and has shared with Vanity Fair the 25 lessons she has learned.

Some of the ‘lessons’ are quite strange, such as that the multiverse is real, or that it seems weird that Paul Rudd still looks the same, but there are some lessons that only anger and regret could teach.

“The blame-the-woman mindset has thankfully receded over time through social conditioning. One prime example: What began in 1998 as “the Lewinsky Scandal” or “the Lewinsky Affair” underwent a nomenclature upgrade as the years marched on. The culture and the media adapted to rebrand the whole narrative as “the Clinton Scandal” or “the Clinton Impeachment”

“Grief reigns in the kingdom of loss. I refer to not only the loss of a loved one but also the loss of a hope, a dream, or love itself.”

“The power of one kind word is extraordinary. In the deepest, darkest moments of the soul, a simple act of human kindness is a powerful thing.”

The full list is definitely worth checking out. You can find the full article here.

We’re sure Bill and Hillary would love to forget Monica, but the lessons we all learned from her sordid treatment at the hands of powerful people should never be forgotten.

[source:vanityfair]