Just when you hoped you might go the rest of your days without ever again hearing the name Monica Lewinsky—sorry, she’s back. Or at least her voice is.
The National Enquirer has released a copy of a November 1997 cassette recording in which Monica Lewinsky plots a rendezvous with President Clinton, according to Radar Online. If you don’t remember, this was the affair that led to Clinton’s eventual impeachment during his second term—though he didn’t leave office.
On the audio tape, Lewinsky can be heard trying to seduce the commander-in-chief with language that is tame by today’s sexual scandal standards: “I could take my clothes off and start… well… I know you wouldn’t enjoy that? I hope to see you later and I hope you will follow my script and do what I want.”
How is this relevant, you may ask? Why do we need to go down this road again, you may wonder? Well, the Web is trying to make it relevant by making the connection to disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose comeback attempt in running for New York mayor has been derailed by yet more admissions of nasty sexting with women who are not his wife. His wife is the point here, apparently. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, 37, is a longtime senior aide to Hillary Clinton. Many think she’s Clinton’s most powerful sidekick and will rise in power once again if Clinton decides to run for president. One more thing: Bill Clinton officiated at the 2010 marriage of Weiner and Abedin. Because Abedin’s boss was the wronged wife during the Monica Lewinsky days, the Lewinsky tapes are now deemed relevant because Abedin is in the midst, again, of being the wronged wife in the affairs of Weiner—who still refuses to suspend his mayoral campaign.
Yet many of the outlets reporting on the Lewinsky tapes are trying hard to make the story about the fact that Lewinsky made recordings on tape, and how quaint and old-fashioned it seems in the age of text messages and email.
“In 1997, this was still what you did: you made tapes,” writes The Atlantic Wire. “If you wanted to share songs with people, you made a tape. If you wanted to record a special message to someone you loved, you mailed them a tape recording of your voice. CD burners existed, but were mostly used by record companies; audio existed on computers, but the compression and bandwidth needed to make sending them feasible were still a ways away. Cassettes played such an outsized role in culture that nostalgists have tried to resurrect it. (It won’t happen.)”
In other Clinton news, the former president is featured in a profile in AARP magazine discussing how drastically his health has improved since he became a vegetarian three years ago and lost 30 pounds.
“I just decided that I was the high-risk person, and I didn’t want to fool with this anymore. And I wanted to live to be a grandfather,” Clinton said. “So I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival.”
Today, Clinton’s diet is free of dairy, meat and fish—but he said the transition was difficult.
“The main thing that was hard for me actually — much harder than giving up meat, turkey, chicken and fish — was giving up yogurt and hard cheese,” the former president said.
Clinton said he “would keep a record of everything I ate every day — what, when and how much.”
“That’s easy for everybody to do. Just go write it down. And then I’d start looking at it and say, ‘what am I going to give up and what am I going to substitute?'” Clinton said.
