Monica Lewinsky’s diagnosis lands in a world she already understands too well: one that feeds on scandal, clicks, and the illusion that a person is only the worst thing that ever happened to them. Yet this time, she isn’t the voiceless subject of someone else’s narrative. By choosing to announce her COVID-19 status in her own words, she preempts the snickering, the memes, the lazy late-night monologues. She frames it as irony, not tragedy; a reminder that “viral” once nearly destroyed her, and that she survived.
In isolation, she confronts an old ghost: 1998, the year that never quite let her go. But the woman in that apartment is not the intern America mocked. She’s a producer, an activist, and a writer who turned humiliation into purpose. The virus will pass. The question is whether the culture that infected her first ever will.
