# Monica Lewinsky Scandal The Monica Lewinsky Scandal was a 1998 political sex scandal involving U.S. President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky that ended in impeachment proceedings. It was the first breaking news story broken online rather than in print, and later spawned a long tail of internet jokes, image macros and Inappropriate Timing Clinton edits. ## Origin In 1995, Lewis & Clark graduate Monica Lewinsky started a White House internship during Clinton's first term. She later confided the affair to coworker Linda Tripp, who secretly taped their calls and handed the recordings to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr[3]. On January 17th, 1998, the Drudge Report broke the story under the headline "Newsweek Kills Story on White House Intern," flagging that Newsweek had sat on a piece about a presidential affair with a young intern[3]. Four days later, on January 21st, 1998, The Washington Post ran the first mainstream write-up, framing it as Clinton allegedly urging an aide to lie[2]. Meme reuse of the scandal came in waves rather than a single origin post. The Inappropriate Timing Clinton image macro format, which pairs a smirking Clinton with punchlines about Lewinsky, was still being posted to r/AdviceAnimals as late as May 2014 when a Redditor used it to joke about Lewinsky's return to public life[3]. - **Platform:** Drudge Report (news break) / Reddit (meme spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 1998 ## Overview The Monica Lewinsky Scandal refers to the 1998 fallout from President Bill Clinton's affair with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and the way that fallout played out on the early web[1]. It is often cited as the story that pulled political news onto the internet for good, since the Drudge Report scooped legacy print outlets in January 1998[2]. As a meme, the scandal lives on through recycled clips of Clinton's finger-wagging "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" denial, blue-dress jokes, cigar gags, and Inappropriate Timing Clinton image macros where a smirking Clinton photo is captioned with tone-deaf lines about Lewinsky or oral sex[3]. The visual shorthand, wagging finger, blue dress, beret, is instantly readable to anyone who lived through the late 90s news cycle[1]. ## How It Spread On January 26th, 1998, Clinton wagged his finger at cameras and denied any sexual relationship, a clip that became the single most-recycled visual of the entire affair[3]. The next morning Hillary Clinton went on the Today Show and blamed a "vast right-wing conspiracy," another line that stuck in the political vocabulary[3]. After Lewinsky handed over a blue dress stained with Clinton's DNA in exchange for immunity, Clinton admitted an "improper physical relationship" in a televised address on August 17th, 1998[3]. Starr's report went online on September 11th, 1998, and functionally broke parts of the early web. CNN reported that traffic to the site hosting its copy peaked around 340,000 hits per minute, AOL saw a 30% overall traffic bump, and the Associated Press site was hit with 20 times its normal load[4]. The House impeached Clinton on December 19th, 1998, on perjury and obstruction charges; the Senate acquitted him on February 12th, 1999[3]. The scandal came back around online in May 2014, when Vanity Fair published Lewinsky's own essay reflecting on being one of the first people to be, in her words, publicly humiliated by the internet[5]. Coverage bounced across CNN, NPR, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, NY Mag and others, and BuzzFeed ran a set of photoshopped mockups imagining how modern blogs would cover the affair if it had broken in 2014[6]. Lewinsky later reframed herself online as an anti-bullying advocate, which is largely how younger audiences first meet the story today[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Monica Lewinsky Scandal? It was the 1998 political sex scandal between President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky that led to Clinton's impeachment and became one of the first major news stories broken on the internet[3]. ### Where did Monica Lewinsky Scandal come from? The story was broken on January 17th, 1998 by the Drudge Report, which reported that Newsweek had killed a story about a presidential affair with an intern, then picked up by The Washington Post on January 21st, 1998[2]. ### What does Monica Lewinsky Scandal mean? Online, it is shorthand for the whole 1998 Clinton affair saga, blue dress, cigar jokes, the "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" clip, and Inappropriate Timing Clinton image macros built around it[3]. ### How do you use Monica Lewinsky Scandal? It is typically used as a reference in Inappropriate Timing Clinton image macros and political jokes, often pairing a smirking Clinton photo with a punchline that awkwardly circles back to Lewinsky or oral sex[3]. ### Is Monica Lewinsky Scandal still popular? It is a classic 90s reference that still gets recycled whenever Lewinsky reappears in the news, most notably around her 2014 Vanity Fair essay about being an early victim of internet humiliation[5]. ## References 1. [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/monica-lewinsky-in-the-age-of-metoo]() 2. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/clinton012198.htm]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/monica-lewinsky-scandal]() 4. [http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9809/11/internet.slowdown/]() 5. [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/monica-lewinsky-humiliation-culture]() 6. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/how-websites-today-would-report-the-monica-lewinsky-scandal]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwtkorQKGFE]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/monica-lewinsky-scandal Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library