Imagine if Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton scandal had broken on social media?
Eighteen years after the succulent scandal, Monica Lewinsky is back in the public eye, as she talks about braving the virtual stone throwers when the scandal involving her and former American president Bill Clinton broke January 1998. The lissom intern of the White House, Lewinsky is now a courageous social activist and public speaker who gave a lecture on cyber bullying which was released recently on TED Talk.
The video on YouTube has a pudgy Lewinsky describing how her world drifted from a "publicly private person to a publicly humiliated person." As the 41 year old talked about her journey to survive the shame, has no inkling of how the humiliation would have been stronger by several degrees if she the scandal had surfaced in the recent times.
As the social media has offered everyone out there with a deadly weapon to judge, assassinate and comment on other person's thought, life, acts and belief. A woman like Lewinsky, who was referred to as "that woman" would have been boundlessly shamed, by way of 140 characters or through nasty trolls, memes or uncharitable jokes, in today's scenario.
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke at a time when the gigantic and precarious world of social media dominated by Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest had yet not emerged. Most of us read every bit of gossip related to the "cigar and the blue dress," more than a decade back. Imagine if it were to happen in the recent times, the scandal would have acquired a monstrous shape what with the hysterical response on the internet by people trying to quench their voyeuristic thirst.
Back then, internet was making an advent in America, yet, all hell broke loose when the news was unleashed on internet news pioneer Drudge Report. Lewinsky had consumed a good part of news prints and was all over on TV channels. She was a victim of dirty politics and was mercilessly ridiculed by a libidinous audience who satiated on every single graphic details of the encounter between her and the president in the Oval office."For nearly two decades now, we have slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil. Gossip websites, paparazzi, reality programming, politics, news outlets and sometimes hackers traffic in shame," she said in her speech in TED Talk, in Vancouver. "Public humiliation as a blood sport has to stop. We need to return to a long-held value of compassion and empathy," said the former White House intern, who claimed to have "fallen in love" with her boss, incidentally the president of America.
To pass judgement, make comments and enforce a point of view is the birthright for anyone having access to the internet. Lewinsky should thank her stars that the scandal broke during pre-social media era, else the price of shame that she has been lecturing about would have blown her far more harshly. The armchair moralist from every corner of the world would have gunned for her blood and her dignity.