25 Years Later, Monica Lewinsky Shares 25 'Randoms'

To mark 25 years since her name became a household name, Monica Lewinsky published a list of 25 "randoms" in Vanity Fair. Some of them are tongue-in-cheek, like No. 11: "As the years pass, one’s taste in partners gets better. (Wink.)" Others are pointed, still others poignant. Lewinsky says she's trying to convey what the nation, and she herself, have "come to understand in the 25 years since" her and former President Clinton's relationship was revealed. A few other notable tidbits:

• Linda Tripp: Lewinsky refers to her as "one of the world's worst friends" and jokes that her middle name is "Judas, hold my beer." She says she's been fortunate, in the quarter-century since Tripp secretly recorded her conversations with Lewinsky about Clinton and then turned them over to Kenneth Starr, to have learned how to choose her friends carefully and to now be "able to trust new people."

• Some things have gotten worse: "We thought that the tabloidization of our news coverage could not get more tawdry or destructive" than the coverage of such topics as OJ Simpson, Princess Diana, and, yes, the Clinton impeachment, but we were wrong, she writes. "Due, in large part, to the menacing aspects of social media, the 24/7 scandal cycle has turned out to be even more devastating over time—to lives, careers, reputations, public discourse, and the American psyche."
• Other things have gotten better: "Two benchmarks of social triumph, 1998–2023? The freedom to marry whomever one wants was made possible (2015) and protected (2022). #MeToo is now a baseline, not an aberration."
• A conclusion: "Lastly," she writes in No. 25, "I don’t know how to say this other than to be direct and insufferably corny: You can survive the unimaginable. (Not for nothing did I name my film and TV production company Alt Ending.)"

See the complete list here. (More Monica Lewinsky stories.)