July 26, 2013

"Where was your self-esteem?"

That's the question Barbara Walters asked Monica Lewinsky in 1999, I'm reading this morning as I belatedly catch up on the news that Lewinsky — once famously young — has passed through the portal into middle age and is 40.

I don't remember what her answer was, but here's something she could have said: My self-esteem was sky high. I was having sex — yes, sex, sex, sex, it sure as hell was sex — with the President of the fucking United States. How about you, Babs?

In 2008, Walters would tattle on herself in a memoir:
["Audition: A Memoir"] includes all the affairs she had – when she was married, when she was single with married men, and when she was single with men you might consider fug who happened to be powerful. Walters promoted the book by confessing to Oprah of an affair 30 years ago with married US senator Edward Brooke. Brooke’s wife passed away 13 years ago, and... an insider claims “she hated Barbara Walters till the day she died” and blamed her for their divorce.
So Senator for Walters. Lewinsky had the President. But then Walters also had Alan Greenspan. She spanned Greenspan:



Self-esteem. It's a highly nuanced topic, but I will nevertheless reduce it to this simple poll.

Who had more self-esteem?
  
pollcode.com free polls