Deep Thoughts by Monica Lewinsky: Why she stopped watching ‘Orange is the New Black’
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky poses as she arrives as a guest for the PETA Party of the Century and Humanitarian Awards on September 18, 1999 at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. (Reuters)
Remember the Saturday Night Live sketch 'Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy" where Al Franken's character offered personal observations like: "If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean to poor people, like I am now" and "The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face"?
Well Monica Lewinsky has written a "Deep Thoughts by Monica Lewinsky"-esque personal narrative on VanityFair.com.
In it, Lewinsky reveals she got hooked on the Netflix show “Orange is the New Black,” and while binge watching the series, was none too happy to discover the show used her name as a verb.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“In [season 1, episode 11], there was a vulgar reference to my last name and DNA,” Lewinsky wrote.
She said the mention led her to turn off the show.
“I did what I usually do in these situations where the culture throws me a shard of my former self," she wrote. "After the cringing embarrassment, the whiff of shame, and the sense that I am no longer an agent running my own life, I shuddered, I got up off the sofa, and I turned it off.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Lewinsky then rambled on about her thoughts on her “public narrative,” stolen identities and the rise of “the online rebuttal.”
She quoted an NPR segment she heard while stuck in L.A. traffic (fellow Angelenos will understand the lament, “Even Ohio Avenue is no longer a secret shortcut”) and referred to a short story by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (In it, a sentient, talking, and conniving monkey lurks in the sewers of Tokyo—and steals people’s names in an elfin fashion).
Lewinsky concluded the piece by calling the Vanity Fair article her “online rebuttal” to the show’s use of her name.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Go to Vanity Fair’s website and try to decipher Lewinsky's deep thoughts, and if you'd like, let us know what you come up with in "Comments."