Lewinsky calls for online civility, will speak twice in South Coast Massachusetts this academic year

Goodman as Linda Tripp, Molly Shannon as Lewinsky, in
1998 (SNL). President Clinton's escapades were good business
for SNL, which released a Best Of collection in 1999.

Monica Lewinsky has become a public figure in a whole new light in recent years, leaving behind the scandal that took her name, rather than his, mostly to differentiate scandals.  As Time put it, "Monica Lewinsky" was once the butt of a joke, many jokes.  John Goodman playing Linda Tripp (see WaPo reemergence in 2018) made for instant-classic Saturday Night Live bits (see Tripp's later perspective and a brief recollection with Goodman).

The world has changed, #MeToo, and Lewinsky figures into it differently today.  She has described herself as an original victim of cyber-bullying, before it was a thing.  Aptly, she's become an outspoken advocate against it, and a mite more effective in that capacity than the present First Lady.  Lewinsky broke her relative silence in Vanity Fair in 2014 and subsequently became a VF contributor and Twitter personality.  John Oliver interviewed her on Last Week Tonight in his excellent program on "public shaming" (below) (cf. Jon Ronson's definitive 2016 treatment of the subject in his book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, featured here on The Savory Tort in 2017).

Apparently Lewinsky's "second act" is only getting going.  Among her many projects, she is contributing to the fall 2020 season of American Crime Story, on FX, The Hill reported, in which Sarah Paulson will play Linda Tripp decidedly more darkly than John Goodman did.  Meanwhile on stage, Lewinsky has become an advocate for online civility.  Building on her 2015 TED talk, The Price of Shame, she's booked into an aggressive public speaking agenda.

I can't help but find Lewinsky to be a compelling figure.  Aside from her curious, mostly involuntary role in American history, she embodies the mass media's power to destroy reputations with the impunity the First Amendment affords.  Yet her story unfolded in the highest of political arenas, the American executive office, in which First Amendment values are most urgently implicated, and First Amendment absolutism is most persuasively justified.  Whatever the merits of the case that shaped her perspective, she shares today a meritorious message: If the internet can be tamed, to do more good than harm, it will be by people and their choices, not by law and regulation.

Lewinsky is slated to speak in South Coast Massachusetts in fall and spring.  On October 17, 2019, Lewinsky will give an endowed lecture at Bridgewater College (more from WHSV).  On May 15, 2020, Lewinsky will speak in the New Bedford (Massachusetts) Lyceum at the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center ("the Z"); tickets are on sale now.

Book Review: So You've Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson

In an afterword to his 2015 book, Jon Ronson reported that So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed was not the first-draft title.  

Indeed, it must have been a struggle to name this wide-ranging volume.  Ronson explores shame in many contexts, from the woman whose off-color joke about AIDS on Twitter “blew up [her] life” (as the N.Y. Times put it) to the clients of a busted prostitution outfit, to the featured participant in “a German-themed BDSM orgy” (as the New Statesman put it).  I’m not here naming the Twitter woman, because if you read the book, I think you’ll agree she’s been named—and shamed—more than enough.

By Ronson’s broad definition of public shaming, I’ve been there.  Ronson does little to distinguish those who fairly earned some degree of public shaming—such as a journalist who made up quotes—from those who were disproportionately rebuked, or just misunderstood, or falsely maligned.  Ronson’s light touch with judgment—he admits he has not always been so evenhanded in his own social media life—frustrated me at first, as I’m one who likes to see justice done, or at least to wring my hands when it’s not.  However, I came to appreciate Ronson’s approach.  His reluctance to reach normative conclusions forced me, as reader, to acknowledge my own.  Do I really know how This American Life fact-checks, say, David Rakoff, versus Mike Daisey (see “Retraction”)?  Do I need to have an opinion at all on what consenting adults do in their sex dungeon?  (See also extended adventures with Jon Ronson in the porn world at his 2017 podcast, The Butterfly Effect, coming to iTunes free in November.)

Judgment would get in the way of Ronson’s search.  Chapter to chapter, Ronson leads us in a dogged effort to understand the shaming mob.  (Cf. the excellent work of Prof. Ken Westhues on mobbing.)  When does the mob spring into action, and when does it not?  Ronson tells stories of public shamings from the perspectives of the victims.  He went to the trouble of tracking them all down to get their stories; the Internet doesn’t usually bother.  (In my experience, neither does The New York Times, nor even a respectable author.)  Can the victim do anything to fight back against a public shaming?  Ronson gives us a fascinating glimpse into the sometimes shady world of online reputation management.  And ultimately:  Is there such a thing as redemption in the Internet age?

That was the question that kept me turning pages.  Coverage of Ronson’s book since 2015 really obsessed on the implications of social media, but this book is about so much more than that.  Despite my ongoing research into online erasure, or “the right to be forgotten” (e.g., here and here, and an exciting panel discussion at NCA 2016, reported here and here), I was surprised to see Ronson make the connection.  He considers the RTBF later in the book, tackling the conflicted feelings about RTBF that a lot of people in the journalism world have over interacting rights to expression, privacy, and identity. 

I continue to be captivated by the redemption problem, which I wrote about in a Washington Post opinion column some years ago.  I won’t tell where Ronson’s search leads, because that would spoil the fun.  Suffice to say, there’s plenty of work yet to do, if justice is really our aim.