Award-winning journalist Allison Yarrow says America is still obsessed with Monica Lewinsky’s affair with then-President Bill Clinton while she was an intern at the White House in 1998.
“They still can’t be in the same room together without the story being they’re in the same room together,” Yarrow told “Rising” co-host Krystal Ball on Monday.
Yarrow thinks the onset of the 24-hour news cycle made the scandal particularly cruel for Lewinsky, who was 22-years-old at the time.
“During the 1990s, we had the onset of the 24-hour news cycle and cable news, and so for the first time, you saw these relentless stories that were continuous and happening all the time for days, weeks, months and years,” Yarrow said. “It’s hard to image that today because the landscape is so different.”
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal has come under a renewed focus in light of the #MeToo movement, with Yarrow saying Americans are now waiting on an apology from Clinton.
“We culturally — and sort of a society — are still so focused on an apology from Bill Clinton. ‘Did he apologize – was his apology significant enough,’ “ Yarrow told Hill.TV.
Clinton came under criticism from his own party last month when he defended in an interview with NBC News his lack of a personal apology to Lewinsky.
While America’s obsession with the affair might not have changed, Yarrow says the discourse has.
“Monica Lewinsky was shamed, blamed and misunderstood [at the time]. She was absolutely attacked by the mainstream media,” Yarrow told Hill.TV.
Yarrow just debuted her new book, ‘“90s Bitch,” which aims to tell the “true story” of women and girls in the 1990s.
— Tess Bonn
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