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Q. Did Eliza ever forgive Alexander Hamilton after his affair with Maria Reynolds?A. Over time Eliza and Alexander reconciled and remained married. They had two more children together. Elizabeth forgave him. There were many reasons that made her do so; her loyalty and love for her husband, years of marriage and of course she felt the need to do so to save the political career of Hamilton. Although her actions succeeded with Hamilton’s career surviving the storm, his reputation has tampered for the rest of his life.America’s first ‘hush money’ scandal: Alexander Hamilton’s torrid affair with Maria Reynolds (washingtonpost.com)Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton - WikipediaElizabeth Schuyler Hamilton: A Complete Biography Of Alexander Hamilton’s Wife (most complete)Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton American National BiographyThe protect Maria Reynolds squadAmerica’s first ‘hush money’ scandal: Alexander Hamilton’s torrid affair with Maria Reynolds (washingtonpost.com)(Library of Congress)On Dec. 15, 1792, James Monroe and two other members of Congress stepped through Alexander Hamilton’s door, ready to torpedo the powerful treasury secretary’s career.They did not realize the curtain was about to rise on the nation’s first major political sex scandal.The three men believed they had uncovered a financial scam linking Hamilton to a pair of shabby fraudsters, James Reynolds and Jacob Clingman. Notes in Hamilton’s own handwriting to Reynolds and his wife seemed to back up the allegation. Monroe and the two others — Rep. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania and Rep. Abraham B. Venable of Virginia — had already drafted a letter to President George Washington outing the Cabinet member.The house call was only a sign of respect before exposing Hamilton to the long knives of public scorn.As Hamilton would later write, the three politicians “introduced the subject by observing to me that they had discovered a very improper connection between me and a Mr. Reynolds.” The treasury secretary, however, cut them short. They had it wrong, he explained. He was not involved in financial duplicity, but an extramarital affair with Reynolds’s wife, Maria.The woman’s husband knew of the affair, forcing Hamilton — one of the most powerful figures in the fragile republic — to fork over hush money.“Another man might have been brief or elliptical,” Ron Chernow wrote in his 2005 classic biography. “Instead, as if in need of some cathartic cleansing, Hamilton briefed them in agonizing detail. . . . It was as if Hamilton were both exonerating and flagellating himself at once.”Realizing they were dealing with an affair of the heart, not the state, Monroe, Muhlenberg and Venable pledged to stay mum. The letter to Washington went unsent. But the affair would eventually explode into the public domain, marking the first high-profile sex scandal to rock the new nation’s political scene.The scandal not only sank Hamilton’s larger political aspirations and inspired a song in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical, but the payoffs also prefigure the current headlines.On Sunday, porn star Stormy Daniels will sit down with Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes.” She is expected to detail not only her alleged affair with President Trump but also efforts on the part of the real estate developer’s team to buy her silence with a $130,000 payment in conjunction with a “nondisclosure agreement.”Hamilton’s “Reynolds Affair,” as it’s known, began in the summer of 1791 when the 23-year-old blond woman, Maria Reynolds, knocked on his door in Philadelphia in desperate need. As Reynolds explained, her husband had abandoned her and she was in need of financial help getting back to New York City. Hamilton, then 36 and by all accounts dashing, offered to bring money to Maria’s home. When he arrived, he was shown into the bedroom.Maria Reynolds - Wikipedia“Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable,” Hamilton later wrote.Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton - WikipediaMaria and Hamilton continued to meet, including at Hamilton’s own house when his wife, Eliza, and their children were visiting family in Albany. “It is baffling that Hamilton, having worked to achieve a spotless reputation as treasury secretary, did not see that he was now courting danger and would be susceptible to blackmail,” Chernow says in his book.James Reynolds eventually reappeared on the scene, confronting Hamilton about his relationship with his wife. Initially appearing outraged, the husband then encouraged Hamilton to continue the affair. As Hamilton wrote, he “invites me to renew my visits to his wife.”“Its true its in your power to do a great deal for me, but its out of your power to do any thing that will Restore to me my Happiness again for if you should give me all you possess would not do it,” Reynolds said in a note to Hamilton. “I have this preposial to make to you. give me the Sum Of thousand dollars and I will leve the town.”That sum, $1,000 in hush money, is the equivalent of about $25,000 today.Hamilton paid and continued to make amorous calls on Maria. Her husband continued to hit up the powerful government official for money after the encounters, $30 or $40 sums Reynolds cast as loans. He even gave Hamilton receipts. According to Chernow, both Maria and her husband were probably working together on the extortion plot.By the summer of 1792, Hamilton cut off the affair. But that November, Reynolds found himself in a Philadelphia jail cell. Along with a partner, Jacob Clingman, he was charged with defrauding the U.S. government. The two men were accused of posing as the executors of a Revolutionary War veteran to claim $400 in back pay due to him.While free on bail, Clingman tried to secure the help of his former employer, Muhlenberg. The accused scammer sparked the politician’s curiosity.Muhlenberg wrote later: “Clingman, unasked, frequently dropped hints to me that Reynolds had it in his power, very materially, to injure the secretary of the treasury and that Reynolds knew several very improper transactions of his.”Muhlenberg brought this information to Monroe and Venable. The trio interviewed both Maria and her husband about the connection with Hamilton. The couple declined to give specifics on their relationship with the treasury secretary, but Maria provided the politicians with letters between her husband and Hamilton. She claimed she had burned many others.The three men were convinced Reynolds was involved in some official misconduct with Hamilton. Free on bail, Reynolds fled — further confirming their suspicions. On Dec. 15, they decided to confront the Cabinet official.Hamilton instead shocked Monroe, Muhlenberg and Venable with his story about the affair. He showed — and allowed them to copy — letters from both Maria and James Reynolds as evidence.“The small delegation seemed satisfied with Hamilton’s chronicle, if not a little flustered by the awkward situation,” Chernow wrote. “They apologized for having invaded his privacy.”They also pledged to keep the matter private. Maria Reynolds eventually sued her husband for a divorce. The attorney she hired to represent her was Aaron Burr.The affair eventually went public in 1797 as part of a complex political chess match between Hamilton and his enemies in Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Party.That year, a pro-Jefferson writer named James Callender published a series of pamphlets, “The History of the United States for 1796.” The text revived accusations that Hamilton, now out of the Cabinet, had engaged in official misconduct with Reynolds and Clingman.As proof, Callender published the same letters Hamilton had shown Monroe, Muhlenberg and Venable in 1792. The pamphlet suggested the romance between Maria and Hamilton was a cover story for shady financial dealings.Hamilton was in a tight spot. Five years earlier, cornered with the allegations by Monroe and the others, he had opted for disarming honesty. Now, with the Reynolds affair again circulating, he did the same on the public stage with a preemptive strike that would allow him, as the phrase now goes, to put his own spin on everything.Hamilton published a 95-page pamphlet. For 37 pages, he confessed and outlined the affair and extortion; the remaining 58 pages were supplemental letters and affidavits proving his case.Lin-Manuel Miranda appears at the curtain call following the opening night performance of “Hamilton” at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York in August 2015. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)The song, “The Reynolds Pamphlet” in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical opens with Jefferson, Madison and Angelica Schuyler (Hamilton’s sister-in-law) exclaiming “Have you read this?” Founders Online “Reynolds Pamphlet”, 1797Aaron Burr, Jefferson and Madison then describe the horror revealed: “Alexander Hamilton had a torrid affair. And he wrote it down right there.”The pamphlet’s actual words are something less than “torrid”-sounding to modern eyes.“The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation,” Hamilton wrote. “My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me.”The confession may have cleared Hamilton of official misconduct, but it also smeared his name and embarrassed his family. Both Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, believed that James Monroe — a close friend of Hamilton’s archrival Thomas Jefferson — had provided the letters to Callender.Hamilton eventually confronted Monroe at his home in New York.“I will meet you like a gentleman,” Hamilton said, using the language of a duel.“I am ready, get your pistols,” Monroe shot back.The two were eventually talked down from a violent confrontation. The man responsible for defusing Hamilton’s anger was none other than Aaron Burr, the New York senator who would later kill Hamilton in his own duel in 1804.Alexander Hamilton's Death: Suicide or Lost ShotKyle Swenson is a reporter with The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. He previously worked at the New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Cleveland Scene. Follow @kyletalkingElizabeth Schuyler Hamilton - WikipediaEliza was at the time pregnant with their sixth child. Despite her advanced pregnancy and her previous miscarriage of November 1794, her initial reaction to her husband's disclosure of his past affair was to leave Hamilton in New York and join her parents in Albany where William Stephen was born on August 4, 1797. She only came back to her marital house in New York in early September 1797 because the local doctor had been unable to cure their eldest son Philip, who had accompanied her to Albany and contracted typhus.Over time Eliza and Alexander reconciled and remained married, and had two more children together. Only two years later, in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton became involved in a similar "affair of honor," which led to his infamous duel with Aaron Burr and untimely death.Eliza defended Alexander against his critics in a variety of ways following his death, including by supporting his claim of authorship of George Washington's Farewell Address and by requesting an apology from James Monroe over his accusations of financial improprieties.Elizabeth Hamilton petitions Congress to publish her husband Alexander Hamilton's writings (1846). Eliza remained dedicated to preserving her husband's legacy. She re-organized all of Alexander's letters, papers, and writings with the help of her son, John Church Hamilton, and persevered through many setbacks in getting his biography published. She was so devoted to Alexander's writings that she wore a small package around her neck containing the pieces of a sonnet which Alexander wrote for her during the early days of their courtship.Elizabeth Schuyler Hamiltonby Jenny L. Presnell American National BiographyHamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler (9 Aug. 1757-9 Nov. 1854), statesman's wife and charity worker, was born in Albany, New York, the second daughter of Philip Schuyler, a revolutionary war general, and Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler. Schooled at home, her early years were typical of most young women of colonial, aristocratic families. At the age of twenty-two, she met Alexander Hamilton, a dashing aide-de-camp of General George Washington, at the home of Gertrude Cochran, her aunt, wife of John Cochran. For Elizabeth it was love at first sight, a love that remained strong through the many scandals ahead. Accepted into the Schuyler family despite his illegitimate birth and lack of wealth or social standing, Alexander Hamilton held political beliefs similar to those of his future father-in-law. Both supported a strong centralized government and General Washington. Both had been soldiers as well as members of his military staff. The entire Schuyler family revered Alexander as a young political genius. As for Alexander, it is possible that he considered marrying Elizabeth for her family's money and status, for the Schuylers were one of the most influential families in the state of New York. Yet, his true love seemed evident in their courtship correspondence, which was intimate and childlike. Believing his sincerity, Elizabeth, with no formal education, became interested in military and political affairs, and Alexander even discussed Benedict Arnold's treason with her. In many of his letters Alexander also expressed his worry about his poverty and ability to provide for his future wife. The pair were finally married on 14 December, 1780; he was just shy of the age of twenty-four, and she was twenty-three.The Hamiltons' marriage was both blessed with many children and fraught with scandal and credit problems. Elizabeth bore eight children between the years 1782 and 1802, miscarrying at least once. Ironically, her eldest son Philip, aged nineteen, was killed in a duel by an associate of Aaron Burr. After Philip's untimely death, her eldest daughter, Angelica, named after Elizabeth's sister, went insane. Six months later, Elizabeth bore her last child, also naming him Philip. Alexander adored children, both his own and Fanny Antil, a daughter of a fellow revolutionary war veteran, whom Alexander adopted. Elizabeth's frequent pregnancies often prevented her attendance at social functions at which Alexander was accompanied often by Elizabeth's eldest sister, Angelica. Both of the Hamiltons adored Angelica, but Alexander's affection appeared to exceed mere brotherly sentiment. It is unclear if this attraction actually turned into an affair. Alexander believed that his marriage vows to Elizabeth were unbreakable promises, but between 1791 and 1792 Alexander did have an affair with Maria Reynolds. Elizabeth and the children spent summers in Albany, New York, away from the disease-ridden summers of urban Philadelphia, leaving Hamilton alone. Maria claimed to be an abandoned relative of several prominent New York families, and Hamilton's pity for her plight resulted in a liaison. Probably entrapped by Reynolds's husband, James, Alexander publicly confessed the affair by publishing his personal account. Elizabeth forgave him; if she had not, his career and reputation would have been irrevocably ruined.Despite Alexander's actual and rumored affairs, the Hamiltons' personal relationship was one of mutual respect. Elizabeth accepted his flirtatiousness. Alexander continued to solicit her advice on political and family matters, as he had early in their courtship. Before their marriage, he had trusted his wife to negotiate the purchase of a house. Throughout their married life, he often read selections of his writings to her, seeking her opinion and approval. She listened to his early drafts of Washington's "Farewell Address" and excerpts from the Federalist Papers. She probably copied some of the Federalist Papers for Alexander to distribute.Never idyllic, the Hamiltons' marriage was hampered by incessant credit problems. Alexander resigned from military service and qualified for the bar in 1782. From 1789 to 1795, he worked for the fledgling American government as the first secretary of the treasury and as a member of President Washington's cabinet. He resigned in 1795 and returned to his New York City law practice. The Hamiltons struggled financially, never accepting assistance from General Schuyler, with the exception of food and goods from Schuyler's estate. With credit already stretched, Alexander bought fifteen acres in Harlem Heights, New York, to build his own estate, "The Grange," named after his ancestral home in Scotland.Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton: A Complete Biography Of Alexander Hamilton’s WifeTragically, Elizabeth's life changed dramatically in 1804 with the deaths of both her husband and father. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had quarreled over Hamilton's alleged personal slurs against Burr's reputation and political aspirations, and Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, which took place on 11 July 1804. Told he was just having spasms to prevent her hysterics, Elizabeth rushed to the mortally wounded Alexander. He left Elizabeth and his family virtually destitute.Left to pay her husband's debts and raise their children (the youngest was two), Elizabeth relied on the help of friends and family. The death of her father four months after her husband's provided her with some financial relief through her inheritance of property and money. She was able to repurchase The Grange, which had been sold at public auction. She also petitioned the government for her husband's army pension that he had waived. Not granted until 1837 through a special act of Congress, her petition provided her with $30,000 and included land.Even though Elizabeth spent her widowhood in poverty, she was active in charitable organizations. She held positions in the New York Orphan Asylum Society and founded orphanages in New York City and Washington, D.C. She was known to take homeless children into her own home. To establish her husband's political legacy and repair his reputation, she spent nearly fifty years after his death collecting and preserving his papers and letters. She corresponded with and visited the leading Federalists to collect papers and other information concerning her husband. Ironically, none of her correspondence to Alexander survived, although she did save his letters to her.Throughout her life Elizabeth Hamilton staunchly defended her husband against his critics, maintaining his authorship of Washington's "Farewell Address" and refusing to acknowledge his responsibility in the duel and sexual scandals of his life. James Monroe had accused Alexander of financial irregularities during the Reynolds affair. Steadfast until the end, Elizabeth demanded a complete apology, which Monroe would not give, but before her death he visited Elizabeth to reconcile their differences concerning her husband's reputation. Alexander Hamilton's papers were not published until 1850-1851 by his son, John Church Hamilton, and after the U.S. government had purchased them in 1849. Elizabeth lived her final years in Washington, D.C., with her daughter Eliza Hamilton Holly. She was buried with her husband in the graveyard of Trinity Church in New York City.Bibliography: Most of the information on Elizabeth Hamilton must be gleaned from biographies written about her husband. Broadus Mitchell has written widely on Hamilton, including Alexander Hamilton (2 vols., 1957-1962). Allan McLane Hamilton, the grandson of Alexander and the son of Philip, the youngest child, has selected and compiled many letters and other documents written by Hamilton in The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton (1910). His narrative is one of the more comprehensive for information on Elizabeth. Other useful biographies include Forrest McDonald, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (1979); Robert A. Hendrickson, The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton (1981); Noemie Emery, Alexander Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait (1982); and Jacob Ernest Cooke, Alexander Hamilton (1982). For the later years of her life and charity work, see George W. Bethune, Memoirs of Mrs. Joanna Bethune (1863).Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton PoemThe protect Maria Reynolds squad

I am in 4th class. Please follow me and give your precious upvote to me…Monica LewinskyMonica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973)is an American activist, television personality, fashion designer, and former White House intern. President Bill Clintonadmitted to having had what he called an "inappropriate relationship" with Lewinsky while she worked at the White House in 1995–1996. The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment) became known later as the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.Monica LewinskyLewinsky in December 2014BornMonica Samille LewinskyJuly 23, 1973 (age 45)San Francisco, California, U.S.EducationSanta Monica CollegeLewis and Clark College (BS)London School of Economics(MS)Occupationanti-bullying activistfashion designertelevision personalitygovernment assistantYears active1995–2005; 2014–presentEmployerWhite House Office of Legislative AffairsThe PentagonKnown forLewinsky scandalParent(s)Bernard LewinskyMarcia LewisAs a result of the public coverage of the political scandal, Lewinsky gained international celebrity status; she subsequently engaged in a variety of ventures that included designing a line of handbags under her name, being an advertising spokesperson for a diet plan, and working as a television personality.Lewinsky later decided to leave the public spotlight to pursue a master's degree in psychology in London. In 2014, she returned to public view as a social activist speaking out against cyberbullying, from which she personally suffered when publicly ridiculed on the Internet regarding the scandal.Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in an affluent family in Southern California in the Westside Brentwood area of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills.Her father is Bernard Lewinsky, an oncologist, who is the son of German Jews who escaped from Nazi Germany and moved to El Salvador and then to the United States when he was 14.Her mother, born Marcia Kay Vilensky, is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis. In 1996, she wrote her only book, the gossip biography, The Private Lives of the Three Tenors. During the Lewinsky scandal, the press compared Lewis' unproven "hints" that she had an affair with opera star Plácido Domingo to her daughter's sexual relationship with Clinton.Monica's maternal grandfather, Samuel M. Vilensky, was a Lithuanian Jew, and Monica's maternal grandmother, Bronia Poleshuk, was born in the British Concession of Tianjin, China, to a Russian Jewish family.Monica's parents' acrimonious separation and divorce during 1987 and 1988 had a significant effect on her.Her father later married his current wife, Barbara;her mother later married R. Peter Straus, a media executive and former director of the Voice of America under President Jimmy Carter.The family attended Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and Monica attended Sinai Akiba Academy, its religious school.For her primary education she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air.She then attended Beverly Hills High School, but for her senior year transferred to, and graduated from, Bel Air Prep (later known as Pacific Hills School) in 1991.Following high school graduation, Lewinsky attended Santa Monica College, a two-year community college, and worked for the drama department at Beverly Hills High School and at a tie shop.In 1992, she allegedly began a five-year affair with Andy Bleiler, her married former high school drama instructor.In 1993, she enrolled at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1995.With the assistance of a family connection,[who?]Lewinsky got an unpaid summer White House internship in the office of White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C. and took up the position in July 1995.She moved to a paid position in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs in December 1995.Lewinsky stated that between November 1995 and March 1997, she had nine sexual encounters in the Oval Officewith then-President Bill Clinton. According to her testimony, these involved fellatio and other sexual acts, but not sexual intercourse.[17]Clinton had previously been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as Governor of Arkansas. Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jonesfiled a civil lawsuit against him; she alleged that he had sexually harassed her. Lewinsky's name surfaced during the discovery phase of Jones' case, when Jones' lawyers sought to show a pattern of behavior by Clinton that involved inappropriate sexual relationships with other government employees.[18]In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors transferred her from the White House to the Pentagon because they felt she was spending too much time around Clinton.[3]At the Pentagon, she worked as an assistant to chief Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth Bacon.[3]Lewinsky told co-worker Linda Tripp about her relationship with the President. Beginning in September 1997, Tripp began secretly recording their telephone conversations regarding the affair with Clinton. In December 1997, Lewinsky left the Pentagon position.[19]In January 1998, after Lewinsky had submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying any physical relationship with Clinton, and had attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in that case, Tripp gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, adding to his ongoing investigation into the Whitewater controversy. Starr then broadened his investigation beyond the Arkansas land use deal to include Lewinsky, Clinton, and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case. Tripp reported the taped conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. She also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during their relationship, and not to dry clean what would later become known as "the blue dress". Under oath, Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair", "sexual relations", or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky.[20]News of the Clinton–Lewinsky relationship broke in January 1998. On January 26, 1998, Clinton stated, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" in a nationally televised White House news conference.[21]The matter instantly occupied the news media, and Lewinsky spent the next weeks hiding from public attention in her mother's residence at the Watergate complex.[5]News of Lewinsky's affair with Bleiler also came to light, and he turned over to Starr various souvenirs, photographs, and documents that Lewinsky had sent him and his wife during the time she was in the White House.[16][19]Clinton had also said, "there is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship"[21][22]which he defended as truthful on August 17, 1998 because of his use of the present tense, famously arguing "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"[23](i.e., he was not, at the time he made that statement, still in a sexual relationship with Lewinsky). Under pressure from Starr, who had obtained from Lewinsky a blue dress with Clinton's semen stain, as well as testimony from Lewinsky that the President had inserted a cigar into her vagina, Clinton stated, "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate."[22]Clinton denied having committed perjury because, according to Clinton, the legal definition[24]of oral sex was not encompassed by "sex" per se. In addition, relying upon the definition of "sexual relations" as proposed by the prosecution and agreed by the defense and by Judge Susan Webber Wright, who was hearing the Paula Jones case, Clinton claimed that because certain acts were performed on him, not by him, he did not engage in sexual relations. Lewinsky's testimony to the Starr Commission, however, contradicted Clinton's claim of being totally passive in their encounters.[25]Clinton and Lewinsky were both called before a grand jury; Clinton testified via closed-circuit television, Lewinsky in person. She was granted transactional immunity by the United States Office of the Independent Counsel, in exchange for her testimony.[26]Life after the scandalThe affair led to pop culture celebrity for Lewinsky, as she had become the focus of a political storm.[27]Her immunity agreement restricted what she could talk about publicly, but she was able to cooperate with Andrew Morton in his writing of Monica's Story, her biography which included her side of the Clinton affair.[28][29]The book was published in March 1999; it was also excerpted as a cover story in Time magazine.[28][29]On March 3, 1999, Barbara Walters interviewed Lewinsky on ABC's 20/20. The program was watched by 70 million Americans, which ABC said was a record for a news show.[28]Lewinsky made about $500,000 from her participation in the book and another $1 million from international rights to the Walters interview, but was still beset by high legal bills and living costs.[30]In June 1999, Ms. magazine published a series of articles by writer Susan Jane Gilman,[31]sexologist Susie Bright,[32]and author-host Abiola Abrams[33]arguing from three generations of women whether Lewinsky's behavior had any meaning for feminism. Also in 1999, Lewinsky declined to sign an autograph in an airport, saying, "I'm kind of known for something that's not so great to be known for."[34]She made a cameo appearance as herself in two sketches during the May 8, 1999, episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live, a program that had lampooned her relationship with Clinton over the prior 16 months.By her own account, Lewinsky had survived the intense media attention during the scandal period by knitting.[30]In September 1999, she took this interest further by beginning to sell a line of handbags bearing her name,[35]under the company name The Real Monica, Inc.[30]They were sold online as well as at Henri Bendel in New York, Fred Segal in California, and The Cross in London.[30][35][36]Lewinsky designed the bags—described by New Yorkmagazine as "hippie-ish, reversible totes"—and traveled frequently to supervise their manufacture in Louisiana.[30]At the start of 2000, Lewinsky began appearing in television commercials for the diet company Jenny Craig, Inc.[37]The $1 million endorsement deal, which required Lewinsky to lose 40 or more pounds in six months, gained considerable publicity at the time.[30]Lewinsky said that despite her desire to return to a more private life, she needed the money to pay off legal fees, and she believed in the product.[38]A Jenny Craig spokesperson said of Lewinsky, "She represents a busy active woman of today with a hectic lifestyle. And she has had weight issues and weight struggles for a long time. That represents a lot of women in America."[37]The choice of Lewinsky as a role model proved controversial for Jenny Craig, and some of its private franchises switched to an older advertising campaign.[30][38]The company stopped running the Lewinsky ads in February 2000, concluded her campaign entirely in April 2000, and paid her only $300,000 of the $1 million contracted for her involvement.[30][38]Also at the start of 2000, Lewinsky moved to New York City, lived in the West Village, and became an A-list guest in the Manhattan social scene.[30]In February 2000, she appeared on MTV's The Tom Green Show, in an episode in which the host took her to his parents' home in Ottawa in search of fabric for her new handbag business. Later in 2000, Lewinsky worked as a correspondent for Channel 5in the UK, on the show Monica's Postcards, reporting on U.S. culture and trends from a variety of locations.[30][39]In March 2002, Lewinsky, no longer bound by the terms of her immunity agreement,[30]appeared in the HBO special, "Monica in Black and White", part of the America Undercover series.[40]In it she answered a studio audience's questions about her life and the Clinton affair.[40]Lewinsky hosted the reality television dating program, Mr. Personality, on Fox Television Network in 2003,[27]where she advised young women contestants who were picking men hidden by masks.[41]Some Americans tried to organize a boycott of advertisers on the show, to protest Lewinsky's capitalizing on her notoriety.[42]Nevertheless, the show debuted to very high ratings,[41]and Alessandra Stanley wrote in The New York Times: "after years of trying to cash in on her fame by designing handbags and other self-marketing schemes, Ms. Lewinsky has finally found a fitting niche on television."[43]The ratings, however, slid downward each successive week,[44]and after the show completed its initial limited run, it did not reappear.[45]The same year she appeared as a guest on the programs V Graham Norton in the UK, High Chaparall in Sweden, and The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the U.S.[45]After Clinton's autobiography, My Life, appeared in 2004, Lewinsky said in an interview with the British tabloid Daily Mail:[46]He could have made it right with the book, but he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied. ... I really didn't expect him to go into detail about our relationship. ... But if he had and he'd done it honestly, I wouldn't have minded. ... I did, though, at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert. ... This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. ... I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character.By 2005, Lewinsky found that she could not escape the spotlight in the U.S., which made both her professional and personal life difficult.[27]She stopped selling her handbag line[35]and moved to London to study social psychology at the London School of Economics.[27]In December 2006, Lewinsky graduated with a Master of Science degree.[47][48]Her thesis was titled, "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third-Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity."[49]For the next decade she tried to avoid publicity.[27][50][51]Lewinsky did correspond in 2009 with scholar Ken Gormley, who was writing an in-depth study of the Clinton scandals, maintaining that Clinton had lied under oath when asked detailed and specific questions about his relationship with her.[52]In 2013, the items associated with Lewinsky that Bleiler had turned over to Starr were put up for auction by Bleiler's ex-wife, who had come into possession of them.[53]During her decade out of the public eye, Lewinsky lived in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Portland but, due to her notoriety, had trouble finding employment in the communications and marketing jobs for nonprofit organizations where she had been interviewed.In May 2014, Lewinsky wrote an essay for Vanity Fairmagazine titled "Shame and Survival", wherein she discussed her life and the scandal.[54][55]She continued to maintain that the relationship was mutual and wrote that while Clinton took advantage of her, it was a consensual relationship.[56]She added: "I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened."[51]However, she said it was now time to "stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past."[51]The magazine later announced her as a Vanity Fair contributor, stating she would "contribute to their website on an ongoing basis, on the lookout for relevant topics of interest".[57][58]In July 2014, Lewinsky was interviewed in a three-part television special for the National Geographic Channel, titled The 90s: The Last Great Decade. The series looked at various events of the 1990s, including the scandal that brought Lewinsky into the national spotlight. This was Lewinsky's first such interview in more than ten years.[59]In October 2014, she took a public stand[60]against cyberbullying, calling herself "patient zero" of online harassment.[61]Speaking at a Forbes magazine "30 Under 30" summit about her experiences in the aftermath of the scandal, she said, "Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame game survive, too."[61][62]She said she was influenced by reading about the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers Universityfreshman, involving cyberbullying[61]and joined Twitter to facilitate her efforts.[62][63]In March 2015, Lewinsky continued to speak out publicly against cyberbullying,[64]delivering a TED talk calling for a more compassionate Internet.[65][66]In June 2015, she became an ambassador and strategic advisor for anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution.[67]The same month, she gave an anti-cyberbullying speech at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.[68]In September 2015, Lewinsky was interviewed by Amy Robach on Good Morning America, about Bystander Revolution's Month of Action campaign for National Bullying Prevention Month.[69]Lewinsky wrote the foreword[70]to an October 2017 book by Sue Scheff and Melissa Schorr, Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate.[71][72]In October 2017, Lewinsky tweeted the #MeToo hashtag to indicate that she was a victim of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault, but did not provide details.[73]She wrote an essay in the March 2018 issue of Vanity Fair in which she did not directly explain why she used the #MeToo hashtag in October, but she did write that although her relationship with Bill Clinton was consensual, because he was 27 years older than she was and in a position with a lot more power than she had, in her opinion now the relationship constituted an "abuse of power" on Clinton's part. She added that she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the experiences involved after the relationship was disclosed.[74]In May 2018, Lewinsky was disinvited from an event hosted by Town & Country when Bill Clinton accepted an invitation to the event.[75]In September 2018, Lewinsky spoke at a conference in Jerusalem. Following her speech, she sat for a Q&A session with the host, journalist Yonit Levi. The first question Levi asked was whether Lewinsky thinks that Clinton owes her a private apology. Lewinsky refused to answer the question, and walked off the stage. She later tweeted that the question was posed in a pre-event meeting with Levi, and Lewinsky told her that such a question was off limits. A spokesman for the Israel Television News Company, which hosted the conference and is Levi's employer, responded that Levi had kept all the agreements she made with Lewinsky and honored her requests.[76]psychology at the London School of Economics. On her first weekend, she went drinking with a woman she thought might become a friend. “But she suddenly said she knew really high-powered people,” Lewinsky says, “and I shouldn’t have come to London because I wasn’t wanted there.”Lewinsky is telling me this story at a table in a quiet corner of a West Hollywood hotel. We had to pay extra for the table to be curtained off. It was my idea. If we hadn’t done it, passersby would probably have stared. Lewinsky would have noticed the stares and would have clammed up a little. “I’m hyper-aware of how other people may be perceiving me,” she says.She’s tired and dressed in black. She just flew in from India and hasn’t had breakfast yet. We’ll talk for two hours, after which there’s only time for a quick teacake before she hurries to the airport to give a talk in Phoenix, Arizona, and spend the weekend with her father.Why did that woman in London say that to you?” I ask her.“Oh, she’d had too much to drink,” Lewinsky replies. “It’s such a shame, because 99.9% of my experiences in England were positive, and she was an anomaly. I loved being in London, then and now. I was welcomed and accepted at LSE, by my professors and classmates. But when something hits a core trauma – I actually got really retriggered. After that I couldn’t go more than three days without thinking about the FBI sting that happened in ’98.”Seven years earlier, on 16 January 1998, Lewinsky’s friend – an older work colleague called Linda Tripp – invited her for lunch at a mall in Washington DC. Lewinsky was 25. They’d been working together at the Pentagon for nearly two years, during which time Lewinsky had confided in her that she’d had an affair with President Bill Clinton. Unbeknown to Lewinsky, Tripp had been secretly recording their telephone conversations – more than 20 hours of them. The lunch was a trap. When Tripp arrived, she motioned behind her and two federal agents suddenly appeared. “You’re in trouble,” they told Lewinsky.She was bustled upstairs to a hotel room filled with prosecutors and federal agents. She started to cry. They told her they were investigating claims that President Clinton had sexually harassed a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, and that if Lewinsky didn’t cooperate with them she’d be charged with perjury and jailed for 27 years.Lewinsky with Bill Clinton at the White House in 1995; this image was later used as evidence in the Starr report. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock“How long were you retriggered for after that night in London?” I ask her.“The impact reverberated throughout my year there,” she says.“What does retriggered actually mean?” I ask. “What are the physical symptoms?”“That varies for me, depending on what trauma is being retriggered – lucky me,” she replies. “It’s as if I’m seeing and feeling on fast-forward – a quicker pace.”'You want to know what they're writing, even if it hurts': my online abuseLewinsky doesn’t like thinking about her past. It was hard to get her to agree to this interview. She rarely gives them and she nearly cancelled this one. I approached her on several previous occasions, when I was writing a book on public shaming, and she kept saying no.It’s not because she’s difficult. She isn’t. She’s very likable and smart. But it feels as if I’m sitting with two Lewinskys. There’s the open, friendly one. This is, I suspect, the actual Lewinsky. In a parallel world where nothing cataclysmic happened in the 1990s, I imagine this would be the entire Lewinsky. But then there’s the nervy one who sometimes suddenly stops mid-sentence and says, “I’m hesitating because I have to think through the consequences of saying this. I still have to manage a lot of trauma to do what I’m doing, even to come here. Any time I put myself in the hands of other people…”“What’s your nightmare scenario?” I ask her.“The truth is I’m exhausted,” she says. “So I’m worried I may misspeak, and that thing will become the headline and the cycle will start all over again.”The reason why she finally agreed to meet me, despite her anxieties, is that the Guardian is highlighting the issue of online harassment through its series The web we want – an endeavour she approves of. “Destigmatising the shame around online harassment is the first step,” she says. “Well, the first step is recognising there’s a problem.”Lewinsky was once among the 20th century’s most humiliated people, ridiculed across the world. Now she’s a respected and perceptive anti-bullying advocate. She gives talks at Facebook, and at business conferences, on how to make the internet more compassionate. She helps out at anti-bullying organisations like Bystander Revolution, a site that offers video advice on what to do if you’re afraid to go to school, or if you’re a victim of cyberbullying.Lewinsky’s March 2015 TED talk. ‘If I’m stuck with my past, giving it purpose feels meaningful to me.’ Photograph: TED: Ideas worth spreadingA year ago she gave a TED talk about being the object of the first great internet shaming: “Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. Granted, it was before social media, but people could still comment online, email stories, and, of course, email cruel jokes. I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and, of course, ‘that woman’. It was easy to forget that ‘that woman’ was dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken.” Lewinsky’s talk was dazzling and now gets taught in schools alongside Nathaniel Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter. I can think of nobody I’d rather talk to about the minutiae of online bullying – who does it and why, the turmoil it can spark, and how to make things better.***Monica Lewinsky grew up in Beverly Hills. Her father was an oncologist, her mother an author (she wrote the biography The Private Lives Of The Three Tenors). She had weight issues as a teenager. Beverly Hills is a bad place to grow up with weight issues. “I was very sensitive, so I couldn’t take a joke,” she says. “I remember sitting on my parents’ bed and them practising with me how to take a joke, how to not cry. I remember one very specific day in the playground when a group of girls had concocted some game. They’d say a number and it would mean something – run up and push me, or make a face at me, or say something stupid.” She pauses. “Those memories inform a lot of who we become. They contributed to me not having a strong sense of self. Look. I could sit and cry all day about kids being afraid to go to school.”“Do you remember what the girls said to you?” I ask.“No, I just remember the feeling,” Lewinsky says. “And I just stood there. Why didn’t I walk away? That’s an interesting…”She trails off. Why didn’t she just walk away? Her question sparks a memory. A couple of years ago, I interviewed a care worker called Lindsey Stone who was shamed online for a joke that came out badly. She posted a photograph on Facebook of her posing in front of a sign at Arlington military cemetery that read Silence and Respect. In the photograph, she was pretending to yell and flip the finger. She was making fun of the sign, not the military dead, but even so she was vilified across social media, and then the mainstream media joined in, like the nerdy kid sucking up to the school bully, and the next day she was fired.I was hung out to dry by a lot of people. It was very scary to be a young woman thrust on to the world stageLike Lewinsky in the school playground, Lindsey Stone didn’t walk away. She stayed up, night after night, reading every online comment: “Typical Feminist. Fifty pounds overweight? Check. Sausage arms and little piglet fingers? Check,” and so on. She fell into a depression and barely left home for a year. Some people think online harassment is no big deal because only idiots read the negative comments, whereas sensible people simply ignore them. It’s even considered somewhat shameful to search your name and seek out the negative comments. The truth is that it may be idiotic, but it’s human.Later, she emails to explain why she didn’t walk away in the school playground – and why we read the negative comments. “I guess I was in shock,” she writes. “Psychologists speak about freezing as a response to a traumatic event. I was probably more afraid of the imagined pain of being completely outcast than the pain I was experiencing in that moment. Maybe there’s a twisted need to read the comments as a form of self-preservation, to be prepared for what may come down the pike.”Lewinsky was 22 when she began interning at the White House. She and Bill Clinton started flirting soon afterwards. One day she blurted out to him, “I have a crush on you,” and he replied, “Well, do you want to come into the back office?” Eventually, Clinton staffers noticed how much time she was spending in the West Wing, including at weekends, and so a deputy chief of staff had her transferred to the Pentagon, which was where she met Linda Tripp.Five days after the FBI sting, Lewinsky was outed by the online gossip site the Drudge Report, under the headline: “A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!” Bill Clinton called her a liar, denying he had had “sexual relations” with “that woman”. Lewinsky, who has often said she’d “do anything to have my anonymity back”, was forced to testify before a grand jury. The 3,000-page Starr report, which included mortifying details of their nine sexual encounters, was released to the world.‘It was a very desolate 10 years for me. I was really floundering. I could not find my way.’ Photograph: Steve Schofield for the Guardian“That people could read the transcripts was horrific enough,” Lewinsky said in her TED talk, “but a few weeks later the audio tapes [the telephone calls Tripp secretly recorded] were aired on TV, and significant portions made available online. The public humiliation was excruciating. Life was almost unbearable.”“I felt like every layer of my skin and my identity were ripped off of me in ’98 and ’99,” she tells me now. “It’s a skinning of sorts. You feel incredibly raw and frightened. But I also feel like the shame sticks to you like tar.”She never attempted suicide, she says, “but I came very close”.“You worked out how you’d do it?” I ask.“Yes,” she says. “I think some young people don’t see suicide as an ending, but as a reset.”***Back then, the world basically saw Lewinsky as the predator. Late-night talkshow hosts routinely made misogynistic jokes, with Jay Leno among the cruellest: “Monica Lewinsky has gained back all the weight she lost last year. [She’s] considering having her jaw wired shut but then, nah, she didn’t want to give up her sex life.” And so on.In February 1998, the feminist writer Nancy Friday was asked by the New York Observer to speculate on Lewinsky’s future. “She can rent out her mouth,” she replied.I hope those mainstream voices wouldn’t treat Lewinsky quite this badly if the scandal broke today. Nowadays most people understand those jokes to be slut-shaming, punching down, don’t they?“I hope so,” Lewinsky says. “I don’t know.”A lot of vicious things that happen online to women do happen at the hands of men, but women are not immune to misogynyEither way, misogyny is still thriving. When the Guardian began researching the online harassment of its own writers, they discovered something bleak: of the 10 contributors who receive the most abuse in the comment threads, eight are women – five white, three non-white – and the other two are black men. Overall, women Guardian writers get more abuse than men, regardless of what they write about, but especially when they write about rape and feminism. I noticed something similar during my two years interviewing publicly shamed people. When a man is shamed, it’s usually, “I’m going to get you fired.” When a woman is shamed it’s, “I’m going to rape you and get you fired.”With statistics like these, it’s no surprise that many consider this an ideological issue – that the focus should be on combatting the misogynistic, racist abuse committed by men. But Lewinsky doesn’t see it that way. “A lot of vicious things that happen online to women and minorities do happen at the hands of men,” she says, “but they also happen at the hands of women. Women are not immune to misogyny.”“That happened to you,” I say. “With people like Nancy Friday. You found yourself being attacked by ideologues.”“Yes,” Lewinsky says. “I think it’s fair to say that whatever mistakes I made, I was hung out to dry by a lot of people – by a lot of the feminists who had loud voices. I wish it had been handled differently. It was very scary and very confusing to be a young woman thrust on to the world stage and not belonging to any group. I didn’t belong to anybody.”I tell Lewinsky that I think the problem with focusing all the attention on misogynists and racists is that it’s bound to legitimise certain types of bullying. I’ve seen men try to speak up about their online abuse only to be met with a barrage of “stop whining” and “check your privilege”. The sentimental view is that men tend to recover from online bullying just fine, whereas women are crushed; but psychologists will tell you there are bigger differences between individuals than gender when it comes to overcoming abuse.“It’s very easy to get micro, especially when someone is telling you a personal story that’s gutting,” Lewinsky says. “And it’s important to highlight which groups experience cyberbullying the most. But this is an umbrella problem, and under this umbrella sit many people who suffer online harassment for many different reasons.”I thought that if I retreated from public life, the narrative would dissipate. But instead it ran away from me even moreLewinsky’s outlook on her scandal has been doggedly non-ideological from the start. “I’m endlessly fascinated by how people derive meaning in life,” she says, “the chasm between how idealised people pretend life is and how complex we really are.” She’s written that she thought it was stupid and wrong in the 1990s when most people blamed her for the affair with President Clinton, but also stupid and wrong in the 2010s when people got more enlightened and started retrospectively blaming him. There’s an extraordinary moment in the 2002 HBO documentary, Monica In Black And White. It’s a kind of Ask Me Anything session, with Lewinsky taking questions from an audience of graduate students and HBO staff. Towards the end, a man stands up and asks, “How does it feel to be America’s premier blowjob queen?” There are gasps from the audience.“I don’t actually know why this whole story became about oral sex,” Lewinsky replies. “It was a mutual relationship.”When I mention the documentary to Lewinsky, she tells me about the press conference they had for it a week earlier, at the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles: “A reporter told me he was surprised I’d agreed to take part in it. He said, ‘We expected you to crawl under a rock and die.’ Then he said, ‘I misspoke. I meant hide. Not die.’” Lewinsky smiles. “But he did say die.”In 2005, Lewinsky retreated. She moved to London to take the course in social psychology at the LSE. “It looked at identity, and what happens when your identity is threatened. A threatened identity can be something like getting divorced: you’re someone’s wife and now you’re not someone’s wife. Or losing a child: you’re a parent and now you’re not a parent.”Her plan after graduating was to get a job and lead “a much more private life, and move towards a more normal developmental path”. But she found that nobody would employ her. The stigma outweighed her qualifications and aptitude. She couldn’t even get volunteer work with a charity. “I was going through such a hard time,” she says, “I felt so shattered, it took me six months to even get up the courage to approach this particular organisation. And when I did, they told me my working there ‘wasn’t a good idea’. It was a very desolate 10 years for me. I was really floundering. I could not find my way.”Lewinsky leaves her lawyer’s office in 1998; she ‘came very close’ to suicide after being pilloried by the media. Photograph: Tony Gutierrez/APShe drifted back to London and had coffee with her old LSE professor, Sandra Jovchelovitch. “She said to me, ‘Whenever power is involved, there always has to be a competing narrative. And you have no narrative.’ It was true. I had mistakenly thought that if I retreated from public life the narrative would dissipate. But instead it ran away from me even more.” That’s when Lewinsky realised she had to do something to de-objectify herself.***The same words tend to come up again and again when I’ve asked shamed people to describe the most tumultuous aspects of the experience. One of those words is “objectification”. Being shamed feels like being a victim of identity theft. One minute you’re a private individual, working out who you are, your likes and dislikes. The next minute, you’re America’s premier blowjob queen.The writer Mike Daisey described this sensation to me in a chillingly perceptive way. (He’d been publicly shamed for embellishing the facts of a story about visiting Apple manufacturing plants in China.) “What they want is for me to die,” he said. “They will never say this because it’s too histrionic. But they never want to hear from me again, and while they’re never hearing from me, they have the right to use me as a cultural reference point whenever it services their ends. That’s how it would work out best for them.”Lewinsky lets out a long sigh of recognition when I quote this to her. “Wow,” she says.“Mike Daisey carried on,” I say. “He said, ‘I’d never had the opportunity to be the object of hate before. The hard part isn’t the hate. It’s the object.’”Something else that often comes up is how lonely it feels. “The fear of ostracisation strikes at the core of who we are,” Lewinsky says. “We cannot survive alone.”Don’t bully the bully. It doesn’t move the conversation forwardThese days, she’s often approached by victims of online bullying, “when I’m on the subway, in line for coffee, at dinner parties.” Shamed people tend to seek each other out, the cure for shame being empathy. “Sometimes they’ll say, ‘I went through this, but it’s nothing like what you went through.’ But I tell them that, if I drown in 60ft of water and you drown in 30ft, we both still drowned. You either know what it’s like to be publicly shamed or you don’t.”And so she’s spent much of the past few years trying to formulate practical advice for them. “To be able to give a purpose to my past, if I’m stuck with my past, feels meaningful to me,” she says. Her number one piece of advice: “Integrate what has happened to you. Integrate the experience, the faster the better.” She knows this can be hard. “There’s shame about the shame. So there’s a tendency to not want to tell someone what’s going on.”But it worked for her. In 2014, after a decade of silence, Lewinsky wrote an essay for Vanity Fair, headlined Shame And Survival. “The night before it was published, a friend gave me a card with an Anaïs Nin quote: ‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.’”As a result she was asked to speak at a Forbes conference, and then came the TED invitation. She knew what a big deal TED was and so she employed “a team in London to help me find my authentic voice in public speaking”. It was worth the effort. Nowadays, charities like the Diana Award are queueing up to work with her. (The Diana Award is an enterprise, endorsed by Princes William and Harry, that hopes to “inspire and recognise social action in young people”.) Of course, most bullying victims don’t have such a highfalutin stage as TED upon which to reclaim their identity, but most bullying victims weren’t bullied relentlessly all over the world for years, often by highfalutin people.Lewinsky has advice for bystanders, too: “Don’t bully the bully. It doesn’t move the conversation forward. I see bullying as similar to cutting. People who cut are trying to localise their pain. I think with bullying, people are suffering for myriad reasons and are projecting it. Instead of cutting themselves, they’re cutting someone else.”She knows her advice can sometimes seem hard to stick to, such as when she suggests boycotting unfolding public shaming stories: “Because of the way the algorithm of the internet works, we do have some control. Editors aren’t going to assign stories that aren’t going to get clicks.” But then she confesses that she sometimes clicks on those exciting stories, too.She came up with her most recent endeavour after some teenagers told her how hard it can be to find the right words. They’d see their friends being bullied online and wouldn’t know what to say. “I realised,” she says, “that our brains process images faster than text, which means the fastest way you can help – the least amount of time between someone feeling alone and upset, and feeling just a tiny bit better – is with an image.”And so she pitched an idea to Vodafone. Could she design a keyboard of anti-bullying gifs and emojis for them?“And now you can get them on all carriers,” she says. “Look. Let me show you…”Some of Monica Lewinsky’s new anti‑bullying emojis for Vodafone, inspired by teenagers. Photograph: VodafoneShe pulls out her phone and starts to search for them. I remember something we talked about at the start of the interview – her fear of misspeaking and bringing the maelstrom back down upon her. It’s not an irrational anxiety. Formerly shamed people frequently find themselves suddenly reshamed for the original transgression when they least expect it – when social media hears they’ve got a new job, for instance. We tend to relentlessly define people by the worst mistake they ever made.“Somewhat unique about my situation,” Lewinsky says, “is that my narrative is tied to other people’s narratives, people on the public stage. And so my narrative gets pulled into things, based on what other people are doing, even if I do nothing.”The dark side of Guardian commentsAs it happens, we are speaking the day after Super Tuesday. Twelve US states held primary elections yesterday and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton emerged as frontrunners. I’m assuming this is Lewinsky’s least preferred candidate combination. Donald Trump released a campaign video on Instagram that included a photograph of a young Lewinsky in a beret, smiling at Bill Clinton. It felt like a harbinger – a warning shot. He’d already told NBC’s Today Show, back in December 2015, that he considered Lewinsky “fair game” in his battle against the Clintons.“Are you worried Trump is going to make hay with you?” I ask her.“I’m not going to answer that,” she replies. “How’s this? I’m affected by what happens on the world stage. But I don’t let it deter me. I’m incredibly grateful for the movement I have in my life right now… OK! Found them!”She passes me her phone.There’s a gif on the screen. It’s a big heart with two arms inside it, embracing. The heart shakes.There’s a TV on the restaurant wall. We’re veiled behind a curtain, so I can only make out the vague shape and the colour of what’s being shown. But it’s obvious. It’s the unmistakable yellow blob of Donald Trump, looming down, yelling from a podium. I look back down at Lewinsky’s delightful, sweet-natured gif, shaking away.“It feels like a hug!” she says. “Right?”“I think it looks great,” I say. “It really does feel like a hug.”“Well, thanks!” she says. She mimes a “phew”. Suddenly all her nerviness is gone. She smiles a huge smile and points at the gif on the screen and says, “I worked my little heart out on it.”Rick Maiman / Sygma / CorbisAfter the White House intern conducted an infamous affair with President Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1996, Lewinsky's name became a punch line. Though Clinton initially denied their relationship, Lewinsky was called to testify before the Starr commission and contradicted the President, leading to an impeachment trial (and an eventual acquittal) in the Senate.Post-affair: Lewinsky summed it up well: "I'm well-known for something that isn't great to be well-known for." Lewinsky remained a minor celebrity, appearing on Saturday Night Live and hosting a short-lived reality-TV show. But for the past five years, Lewinsky has kept out of the spotlight. In 2006 she graduated from the London School of Economics with a master's degree in social psychology.At one point in the newly released A&E documentary series “The Clinton Affair,” Monica Lewinsky says she now realizes part of her attraction to President Bill Clinton was that “someone who other people desired, desired me.”Please follow me and give your precious upvote to me…