“My name is Monica Lewinsky, though I have often been advised to change it or been asked why on earth I haven’t,” the former White House intern told the Forbes “30 Under 30” summit in Philadelphia today. “I am still Monica Lewinsky.”
Building off of her essay in Vanity Fair this summer, Lewinsky has relaunched her public persona — she’s on Twitter now, too — as an advocate against online harassment. “Overnight I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. I was Patient Zero,” she said. “The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed, worldwide, via the internet.”
“It is only my fourth time delivering a speech in public,” she began. “So if I seem nervous, forgive me, because I am. And a little emotional, too.”
“I fell in love with my boss, in a 22-year-old sort of way,” she went on. “It happens. But my boss was the President of the United States.” Lewinsky, through some tears, then detailed the sexist campaign of what’s now dubbed cyberbullying she faced in the wake of the Clinton affair. Her mantra throughout, she said, was “I want to die.”
Invoking Tyler Clementi of Rutgers and the recent hacking of celebrity nudes, Lewinsky said, “Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame game survive, too. I want to put my suffering to good use and give purpose to my past.”
The reviews were glowing:
