Monica Lewinsky has jumped onto a Taylor Swift meme, using it to take a swipe at Bill Clinton and reference her infamous 1990s scandal.
The social activist became internationally known in 1998 when it emerged that the sitting US president Clinton, 50, had been having an affair with her for two years, while she, aged 22, was working as a White House intern. Clinton was later impeached as a result of the scandal.
And now, Lewinsky, who now campaigns against cyberbullying among other things, has posted a meme that has been circulating on social media ever since the release of Taylor Swift’s album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.
Included on Swift’s 11th album is the track ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’, and one lyric – “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” – has been used as a launching pad for the meme in question.
People on X have been posting the lyric alongside an image that ironically represents the place that “raised” them, and many have commented that nobody has nailed the concept better than Lewinsky.
The 50-year-old posted an image of the White House alongside the lyric, in a post that has been viewed 17 million times.
you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me. pic.twitter.com/hkhdRlBCkj
— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) April 25, 2024
‘The Tortured Poets Department’ became the most-streamed album in one day, and has now gone in at Number One in the UK with the biggest opening week in seven years.
This is not the first time that Lewinsky has dipped her toe into the modern pop world. In 2022, she appeared on Dua Lipa’s podcast At Your Service, where she discussed a range of topics, including women’s rights and cyberbullying.
In the same year, she referenced Beyoncé’s 2015 song ‘Partition’, on which Bey sings: “Oh, he so horny, yeah he want to fuck / He popped all my buttons, he ripped my blouse / He Monica Lewinsky’d all on my gown.”
After Beyoncé had altered the lyrics to her song ‘Heated’ to edit out an ableist slur, Lewinsky suggested that perhaps she could also change the lyrics to ‘Partition’.
She had previously written for Vanity Fair in 2014: “Thanks, Beyoncé, but if we’re verbing, I think you meant ‘Bill Clinton’d all on my gown’.”