5 Feet of Fury

The Orations of Monica Lewinsky: My NEW Taki’s column

Hard to predict this week’s “JOOOOOO!”-yness, but there will be a lot of “girls are yucky!”

I was assigned this topic, and the final results were bitchier than I’d intended them to be.

Plus I was constrained by the knowledge that no one can beat Mark Steyn when it comes to this topic.

Anyhow, Monica doesn’t come across in her videos as a horrible or even crazy woman, just a bit sad and slightly confused.

I can’t prove it, but I’d bet more people committed suicide over the untimely, decidedly pre-Internet deaths of Rudolph Valentino* and James Dean than have offed themselves because somebody called them a slut on Twitter. But then, Big Bully can’t prove any of its claims either, yet continues to metastasize.

Having watched, by sheer coincidence, the 1945 production of The Picture of Dorian Gray on TCM last night, I was struck by Monica’s appearance in this TED-like talk. She still wears her hair and makeup the same way she did two decades ago, and appears not to have aged terribly much. But if that’s evidence of some sort of deal with the devil, it clearly hasn’t worked out. She is still unmarried and childless, and now, at 41, her chances of altering her status drop daily.

* The closest I could get to a figure was five.