Monica Lewinsky has reappeared on the national stage and is speaking out against cyberbullying. Perhaps she should consider addressing the breakdown of the American family instead.
First a spread in Vanity Fair and now a TED Talk: like Lazarus, Monica Lewinsky has risen again. This time, she’s on a mission to clean up the internet and protect the world from cyberbullying.
It’s not the message Lewinsky brings that’s troubling—it’s the messenger.
Cyberbullying is wrong, and it’s a growing problem. On this, Monica and I agree. In fact, we probably share the same views on many political and moral issues. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a Democrat and lean liberal. And I too have experienced online bullying.
Mine began in 2010, the same year Lewinsky says she was inspired to become a spokesperson against unwarranted media attention. I had just begun speaking out about divorce reform, sharing the story of my earlier efforts to save my marriage and spare my children from the hardship of divorce, even while my then-husband continued his extramarital affair.
At the time, the state of New York had not adopted no-fault divorce, and I was entitled to contest the wrongful divorce allegations leveled against me. But when I told my story, I was repeatedly and viciously attacked by anonymous online haters and lashed out at by bloggers. Even the family court judges who heard my case joined the throng pressuring me to give up on my marriage.
And yet family breakdown and all of its damaging byproducts is the most serious problem facing America today. Divorce rates remain high, while marriage rates have plummeted to a new low. The family models of cohabitation and single parenting are replacing marriage, but they are no match when it comes to the well-being of adults and children. Like homes and well-paid, secure employment, marriage is fading from the American dream. Instead of crying victim about the consequences of her own actions, Monica should use her fame to help save the American family.
Unemployed and in the Spotlight
“Shame is an industry,” Lewinsky says during her TED Talk. “Not a day goes by that I’m not reminded of my mistake.” But the only mistake she specifies, chuckling, is “wearing that beret.” The allusions to her real transgressions are couched in the language of fairy tales, like Cinderella or Camelot.
“At 22, I fell in love with my boss,” she says. “Swept up into an improbable romance.” Unlike Guinevere, however, Lewinsky hasn’t joined a nunnery—or whatever its modern equivalent could be. If she had devoted her life to teaching in a ghetto or building houses for poor people, no one there would know her name. There are plenty of choices she could have made to stay far away from the media attention she claims to abhor.
Instead, she courts the red carpet. She’s unemployed, Lewinsky laments. Yet she globetrots between London, LA, New York, and Portland searching for jobs in creative communications and branding—jobs where Lewinsky could remain in the public eye and attend events involving press cameras.
Nor does Monica mention the millions she raked in as a result of what went on behind the Oval Office doors. From her million-dollar interview with Barbara Walters on 20/20 to the cool half a million she received for her biography, it seems that Monica has managed to do quite well for herself—her designer handbag line, television commercials and endorsements for Jenny Craig, and lipstick line for Club Monaco. She’s also appeared on Saturday Night Live, MTV, and as the host of her own reality show on Fox.
Who else but the privileged can maintain multiple residences or command such opportunities?
If Monica needs a cause, why not speak up for the nine million unemployed people in the United States she seems to identify so strongly with? Or use her skills from her degree at the London School of Economics to help the millions earning minimum wage who find themselves unable to feed their families—the ones who can’t fall back on their connections or their bourgeois upbringing?
Better yet, why not speak out on behalf of the millions of divorced men and women, many of whom are the victims of spousal infidelity, and their millions of children? Millions of divorcees are thrown into poverty by divorce. Their children are at a greater risk of premature death, drug and alcohol abuse, diminished educational attainment, and suicide.
lain:
