Ms. Lewinsky, who was a key player in a spectacular scandal involving U.S. President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, emerged from more than a decade of self-imposed silence last year with a personal essay published in Vanity Fair magazine. She told the audience in Vancouver that she has decided to go public to try to turn around what she called a compassion deficit and empathy crisis in the online environment.
“It’s time to stop tip-toeing around my past, time to stop living a life of opprobrium, and time to take back my narrative.”
She said her decision to go public at this time has nothing to do with politics. While she didn’t mention the U.S. presidential race or Hillary Clinton by name, the implication was clear.
Ms. Lewinsky, now 41, walked a rapt audience through what it feels like to be the target of widespread online bullying. She went back to the events that have shaped her life and almost, she said, caused her death: her affair with Mr. Clinton when she was a White House intern.
“At the age of 22 I fell in love with my boss. And at the age of 24 I learned the devastating consequences,” she said, before asking for a show of hands of those in the audience who had also made a mistake at that age. There were many hands.
“So like me at 22 a few of you may have also taken wrong turns and fallen in love with the wrong person – maybe even your boss. Unlike me, though, your boss probably wasn’t the President of the United States of America. ... Not a day goes by that I’m not reminded of my mistake and I regret that mistake deeply.”