Monica Lewinsky Research Paper

Monica Lewinsky
In 1995 Monica Lewinsky and president Bill Clinton initiated an affair, which was disclosed in 1998. It was a scandal, and was the very first time a story of that caliber was broken online. Monica was the first person to be thrown into the claws of newest branch on the medium-tree: the internet, which the story quickly spread on. Suddenly, news and stories could be accessed at all times, not just at given ones, like the broadcasting-times. Ordinary people could suddenly comment articles, without having to compose a reader’s letter, stamp it, bring it to the post-office and wait for it to arrive and probably not be approved for publishing. In general, it became a lot less effort. And commenting anonymously became possible.
Obscene myriads of ill-intended, offending comments were made on the articles, attacking not only her actions but also her person. Overnight she went from being a completely private person to a public figure everyone knew of.
She went through a devastating time of gut-wrenching humiliation, where her parents were worried about her will to live and felt that she needed to be surveilled constantly, even showering.
Monica Lewinsky recently started speaking publically after about one and a half decade of shame-induced silence, because she felt, that it was time to speak up about online bullying.
Her need to do so was triggered by Tyler Clementi, an 18-year old, who committed suicide after his roommate livestreamed him and another man kissing in their dorm-room, and Monica could see, how hearing about this story affected her mother, because of the many parallels between the two stories. By talking about her mother’s despair and referring to Tyler Clementi as “sweet, sensitive, creative Tyler, who was only 18”, she appeals to our feelings; she uses
pathos.
Monica’s words leave a tremendous impact, because she is a great authority concerning cyber bullying, through the ethos it gives to be the first ever victim. She also, amongst others, quotes Brené Brown: “shame cannot survive empathy”, as “a researcher”, which is also using ethos.
She also, using logos, mentions the ever-increasing amount of cyberbullying by referring to some statistics stating that the number of calls to a charity related to cyber-bullying were up by 87%, and for the first time ever, the number of people contacting, contemplating suicide because of cyber-bullying was higher than the number because of offline bullying.
Monica believes that a change in our culture, which she says has “a compassion-deficit and an empathy-crisis”, is needed to solve the cyber-bullying-issue. It has to start with evolving beliefs, as it is seen with many other subjects. To do that, we need to return to the old values compassion and empathy. It was the compassion of people around her, that helped her through the hard times after the revelation, and receiving empathy from even one person made a difference to her. And, according to her, it is the individual that makes a difference with a consistency over time. We have to become “upstanders” and make positive comments when everyone else is making negative ones and report bullying-situations. That will, in time, change the general attitude towards humiliating others.
I agree with Monica’s points, and I believe that we should all start with ourselves and think twice every time we hit the “send”-button.