“Impeachment: American Crime Story”: Monica Lewinsky Explained

Monica Lewinsky is one of the most ridiculed women of modern times, the subject of countless cruel late-night jokes and racy rap lyrics. Yet few people know much about her beyond the salacious details of her affair with President Bill Clinton.

The Washington Post once called Lewinsky an “enigma shrouded in contradictory images,” and few Americans even saw her speaking on camera until she gave an interview to Barbara Walters in March 1999. “Monica’s Story,” a revealing biography of Andrew Morton, portrayed her sympathetically but failed to reset the narrative.

Lewinsky has spent most (if not all) of the past two decades avoiding the limelight, gradually reappearing to tell his side of the story to an American audience that has grown more sophisticated in their understanding of the power in relationships. sexual and more receptive to the idea that his whole life should not be defined by his youth.

She has given well-received TED talks, writes eloquent columns for Vanity Fair, and is now a producer of the FX series “Impeachment: American Crime Story”, which revisits the very chronic scandal from a new perspective: her own.

Episode 2, “The President Kissed Me,” traces the unlikely sequence of events that made the case and its public disclosure possible – including the shutdown of the government in 1995 and Lewinsky’s reassignment to the Pentagon, where she worked alongside Linda Tripp.

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky signs her book, “Monica’s Story,” at an event in 1999 at a bookstore in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

(Rhona Wise / AFP via Getty Images)

Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton began as an essentially silent flirtation

In the months leading up to the fateful government shutdown, Lewinsky worked in an office in the Old Executive Office Building, across West Executive Avenue from the West Wing.

Lewinsky told Morton that she did not find Clinton – “with his big red nose and coarse, straight gray hair” – attractive until she finally saw him in person at a ceremony. arrived on the White House lawn in July 1995. “Now I see what all the girls are talking about,” she remembers. Captivated by her charisma, she began to attend more of these routine events each time she went. ‘she could.

As shown in “Impeachment,” Lewinsky wore his favorite sage green J. Crew suit to a departure ceremony in August 1995 and caught the President’s attention. He gave her what she called “the complete Bill Clinton”, an intensely focused greeting charged with sexual energy. The next day, Lewinsky and other White House interns secured a last-minute invitation to Clinton’s 49th birthday party. She rushed home to put on her sage green suit so he would remember her. At the party, she shook hands with the president, whose arm “nonchalantly but needlessly” brushed her chest, according to Morton. She then gave him a kiss.

But it probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere if it hadn’t been for the government shutdown

In the 1994 midterm elections, Republicans regained control of Congress for the first time in 40 years in what has been dubbed the “Republican Revolution.” Led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his “contract with America,” the GOP has pushed for deep spending cuts. In November 1995, Clinton vetoed a budget that would have cut funding for medicare and education. Gingrich – who was also upset that Clinton had not told him about the budget on the plane home from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral – refused to raise the debt limit, and the federal government was forced to partially shut down for five days from November 14. (A second shutdown in December lasted three weeks.)

The stalemate foreshadowed the increasingly dysfunctional partisan political atmosphere we now take for granted in Washington, DC. It also allowed one of the biggest political scandals in modern American history to bring together Lewinsky, who was about to start paid work in the White House legislative affairs office, for the first time closer. Of the president.

Non-essential officials were put on leave during the shutdown. The White House staff was reduced from over 430 to around 90, and unpaid interns were used to fill the void. Lewinsky, who worked in an office in the basement of the former executive office building, was now in the West Wing, working alongside key figures in the administration – including the president himself.

Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, left, and Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky in “Impeachment: American Crime Story”.

(Tina Thorpe / FX)

Okay, but what about the thong?

Yes, Lewinsky showed his thong to the President on the second day of the government shutdown.

In various accounts, including the Starr Report, Lewinsky has described the thong flash incident as escalating a daylong flirtation with intense eye contact with the President, who stopped at his office. boss, Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, several times throughout the day, even making a surprise appearance at a birthday party for employee Jennifer Palmieri.

As detailed in “Monica’s Story,” at one point Lewinsky was tasked with answering angry phone calls from talk radio listeners who had been asked to express their displeasure with the shutdown. While she was on the phone, the president smiled at her. Some time later, during a lull in calls, she raised the back of her jacket to reveal her thong that protruded from the waistband of her blue pants. Lewinsky’s first sexual encounter with the president took place later that evening.

“This incident, now infamous, was, as far as she was concerned, just one more step in their flirtation,” Morton wrote. “It was over in an instant, although she was rewarded with a grateful look as the president walked past.”

Lewinsky told Walters in his “20/20” interview, describing it as “a subtle and flirtatious little gesture,” which sent a clear message, “I’m interested too. I’ll play. ‘”

As Lewinsky recently told the New York Times, she encouraged the writers of “Impeachment” to include the thong incident, no matter how unflattering. “I just felt like I shouldn’t get a pass,” she said.

Did Lewinsky really tell his mother that she kissed the president? Who else knew about the relationship besides Tripp?

Yes, as depicted in Episode 2 of “Impeachment,” Lewinsky told his mother, Marcia Lewis, that she kissed the President a few hours after their first sexual encounter. She also told her aunt, Debra Finerman. The two women first swept the story, assuming Lewinsky meant an innocent kiss on the cheek, according to “Monica’s Story.” Both women were aware of Lewinsky’s crush on Clinton and his attention to her, but viewed it as “nothing more than a dizzying flirtation,” Morton wrote. (“I can’t believe this middle-aged man is behaving so immature,” Finerman told the biographer.)

In “Impeachment,” Lewinsky recounts his affair with an old friend familiar with his model about falling in love with unavailable men. In fact, Lewinsky confided in several people other than Tripp – 10 in total, she told Walters. This group included friends from middle school and high school. Several of these people would be called to testify.

“I implicitly trusted my girlfriends,” Lewinsky told Walters on “20/20”. “I spoke of him like any other guy.”