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Mind Over MonicaAn e-mail exchange among the editors of Slate.

By Anonymous
Posted Friday, March 20, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

From: Jodie Allen

To: Slate Editors

Subject: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

a friend reports that a lawyer here in town who is helping William Ginsburg, auctioned off a dinner at his house at one of the local girls' schools (Cathedral i think) recently. To the surprise of the buyers, present at the small gathering was no other than Monica herself. She was, they reported, not only luscious but charming and witty. Soon we can expect a raft of such reports in which Monica will slowly be revealed as a renaissance woman, whose deep knowledge of American poetry is matched only by her understanding of the historical tensions underlying the current insurrections in Kosovo (she worries especially about the Bulgarian connection tho doubts that Kosovo's natives are in fact the heirs of Alexander).

From: Frank Foer

To: Jodie Allen; Slate Editors

Subject: RE: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

Funny you should mention Monica Lewinsky. I ran into her last night at the Mayflower Hotel where she was having cocktails with several middle-aged men in double breasted suits. She is as perky and precocious as Bill Safire and Cokie Roberts say. When I spoke with her, she apologized for her slightly glazed eyes, having spent the last forty-eight hours teaching herself ancient Greek. With all this time on her hands, she has decided to read Homer in the original. She also said she was at work on a translation of Vico. We engaged in a perfectly delightful conversation about the Pentagon's two-war strategy. The descriptions of her in the press as "competent" hardly do her justice.

From: Seth Stevenson

To: Frank Foer; Jodie Allen; Slate Editors

Subject: RE: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

monica's in my painting class. she's an amazing talent. perhaps a tad derivative of golub, but still an artist of far more restraint and maturity than one might expect of someone her age.

From: Jodie Allen

To: Frank Foer; Slate Editors; Seth Stevenson

Subject: RE: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

all the more remarkable since she suffers, of course, from dyslexia (hence her failure on the writing test at one of those firms jordan sent her to). I understand she's been invited by Sally Quinn to speak at that school for challenged kids in Georgetown.

From: Cyrus Krohn

To: Jodie Allen; Frank Foer; Seth Stevenson

Subject: RE: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

What's truly astounding is that I saw an application of hers for a job here at MS. She was applying for a development position with the Windows 99 team. Her resume said she could program c, c++, Java, DHTML, VSS, BSS, and STD. She claims STD was one of the easier ones to acquire!

From: David Plotz

To: Cyrus Krohn; Jodie Allen; Frank Foer; Seth Stevenson

Subject: RE: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

It's funny that you guys should be talking about this today because I happened to run into Monica at the Washington Wizards-Denver Nuggets game last night. She gave me a 15-minute disquisition on the NBA's illegal defense rule: I've never heard it explained so carefully. Turns out she's a big basketball fan too--she played a little for Lewis & Clark (shooting guard, natch), and was even drafted by the WNBA. (I guess that explains where she got those kneepads.)

From: Bill Gates

To: David Plotz; Cyrus Krohn; Jodie Allen; Frank Foer; Seth Stevenson

Subject: RE: finding new depths in Monica Lewinsky

OK, get back to work and stop picking on this sweet young woman. You're all being sexist. If a man had done what she did, no one would ... wait a minute, that's not right. Well, never mind, just get back to work.

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