Monica Lewinsky offers details on event she says disinvited her

Monica Lewinsky on Friday criticized Town & Country Magazine for its handling of a philanthropy summit she says she was invited to until former President Clinton announced he would attend the event.

In an op-ed for Vanity Fair, the former White House intern said that event organizers “wanted to put me in a position that made the event so unappealing that I would decline — and their social problem would be solved.”

“It was lunch, or nothing,” Lewinsky wrote.

“Your invitation to come to the museum’s new art exhibit is being revoked, dear, but we’ll grant you entry into the gift shop,” she added, in her interpretation of the tone of the magazine’s email to her.

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Lewinsky tweeted earlier this week that an event, which was revealed to be Town & Country’s annual philanthropy summit, had disinvited her upon learning that the former president would be attending.

Lewinsky first entered the national spotlight because of an affair with the then-president while she was a White House intern.

“dear world: please don’t invite me to an event (esp one about social change) and –then after i’ve accepted– uninvite me because bill clinton then decided to attend/was invited. it’s 2018. emily post would def not approve,” she tweeted on Wednesday.

In the column for Vanity Fair, Lewinsky adds that Town & Country organizers inaccurately told her that they had been working “for a year” to secure Clinton to attend the event in order to introduce student survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. 

“It was also conveyed to me that the planners had worked for a year to get Clinton to introduce the Parkland kids. Interesting, given that the Parkland tragedy happened this past February,” she wrote. The mass shooting took place at the Parkland, Fla., high school on Feb. 14.

“I proposed an easy solution: I would arrive a half hour after [Clinton’s] remarks, at the conclusion of the first panel (as disappointing as it would be to miss hearing the inspirational student activists from Parkland, Florida),” Lewinsky adds. “But hours later, I was informed that that wouldn’t work.”

Town & Country Magazine apologized for how Lewinsky’s disinvitation was handled this week following Lewinsky’s tweet.

“We apologize to Ms. Lewinsky and regret the way the situation was handled,” the magazine tweeted. A spokesman for Clinton said the former president was not aware of the situation in advance.

We apologize to Ms. Lewinsky and regret the way the situation was handled.

— TOWN&COUNTRY (@TandCmag) May 10, 2018

“On the spectrum of world injustices, I recognize fully, the act of receiving an invitation to a philanthropy summit and then having it revoked doesn’t even rate,” Lewinsky wrote in the op-ed. “However, in a time when society is struggling to address issues of power and inclusion, maybe it is worth examining.”