Last week, the former mistress of the former President of the United States, wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about her experience watching Orange is the New Black, and how she quit watching a series she otherwise enjoyed after they used her name as a vulgar reference.
Here’s what she wrote in Vanity Fair:
In it, there was a vulgar reference to my last name and DNA. I did what I usually do in these situations where the culture throws me a shard of my former self. 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.
Lewinsky then spent the next 500 words talking about the art of the online rebuttal, and owning your reputation, something that she basically failed to do in the piece.
Last night, at the Directors’ Guild Awards, several members of the cast were asked by E! about that piece, and their responses basically ranged from “Uh, sorry?” to “Lighten up, Francis.”
Taylor Schilling, the lead, offered: “I apologize, Monica Lewinsky, for the show — honestly. If you were offended, nobody wants to offend anyone.” Meanwhile, Natasha Lyonne said, “Hey, Lewinsky, we love you. Take it easy.”
Lea DeLaria, on the other hand, wasn’t so upset about it. “Now, instead of 50 million viewers, we have 49,999,999.” Jason Biggs basically said the same thing, while the show’s creator, Jenji Kohan, told Lewinsky to “have a sense of humor about it.”
You’d think, by now, she might. And if she wants to own her reputation and turn it into a positive, as she suggested in her VF piece, she should cameo on Archer and basically let those guys run her through the wringer. It’ll be cathartic, and by the end of it, no one will ever accuse her again of not having a sense of humor about herself.
Source: E!
