Monica Lewinsky Used Taylor Swift’s ‘Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?’ Meme To Joke About Bill Clinton

In Uproxx’s review of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, Josh Kurp pointed toward “Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?” as an example of Swift’s “genuine humor.” Perhaps the only person who can credibly one-up Swift’s self-deprecation — and can understand Swift’s omnipresence in monoculture — is Monica Lewinsky.

On Wednesday night, April 24, Lewinsky posted a photo of The White House on X (formerly Twitter) alongside, “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”

The line from Swift’s “Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?” has become a widespread meme in the days after Swift releasing The Tortured Poets Department last Friday, April 19.

For the uninitiated, Lewinsky was a ubiquitous figure in the nineties after it was publicly revealed that then-President Bill Clinton engaged in an affair with Lewinsky, an intern in her early 20s at the time. In 2021, FX aired the third season of American Crime Story, which focused on Clinton’s subsequent impeachment, entitled Impeachment: American Crime Story. Beanie Feldstein starred as Lewinsky, while Sarah Paulson portrayed the late Linda Tripp. Edie Falco and Clive Owen portrayed Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, respectively.

“You go to bed one night a private person, and the next day, you’re a public human being and the whole world hates you,” Lewinsky told The Hollywood Reporter in August 2021. “And you might go to jail. And you’re going to bankrupt your family. And, and, and… […] And just because I wasn’t on the news every night for 20 years in the same way that I was in 1998 doesn’t mean that this story ended. Ten years on, I still could not get a job. I couldn’t support myself.”