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Since Taylor Swift Approved The Tortured Poets DepartmentHer fans turned a line on her song “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” into a meme. Social media is abuzz with people quoting the phrase, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the institution where they raised me,” and now Monica Lewinsky has joined the trend. The 50-year-old activist appeared to be referring to her scandalous affair with the former president Bill Clinton77, during his presidency in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, April 24.
Like many people on social media, Lewinsky quoted Taylor’s lyrics from the standout title of The Tortured Poets Department. She included a photo of the White House, but it is unclear exactly when the photo was taken. The meme appears to be a reference to her infamous scandal.
You wouldn’t last an hour in the institution where they raised me. pic.twitter.com/hkhdRlBCkj
— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) April 25, 2024
Lewinsky said she had nine sexual encounters with the former president between 1995 and 1997, when she was a White House intern during the Clinton administration. News of the scandal broke in January 1998. While Clinton initially famously said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” he later admitted to having a relationship with Lewinsky.
The scandal has inspired countless books, television shows, documentaries, films and parodies, including the 2021 miniseries Impeachment: American Crime History. Since the scandal, Lewinsky has become an activist against cyberbullying, and she has used her platform to share her experiences during the media frenzy surrounding the Clinton scandal. In January 2023, Lewinsky reflected on the 25th anniversary scandal in an essay for Vanity Fair.
The essay took the form of a list of things she had learned and the ways she had grown in the quarter century since the scandal. “You can make the right decision and still regret it,” she wrote in part. “All you can do is try to integrate your past self with as much compassion as you can muster.”