Monica Lewinsky gets reported $12 million for memoir

What to say about a book deal for Monica Lewinsky that will bring her a reported $12 million?

Slate points out Bill Clinton was paid $15 million for his memoir. It does seem wrong that the difference between the man who was a two-term president of the United States and the woman who had a sexual encounter with him was only $3 million. Or maybe sad.

Lewinsky has already told her story once, in “Monica’s Story.” She was interviewed for the book by author Andrew Morton, whose unauthorized biographies include the somewhat scandalous “Diana, Her True Story” about the former Princess of Wales.

The new book is rumored to have three things that the earlier one did not: more salacious details about Lewinsky and Clinton, ostensible complaints by Clinton about his wife, Hillary, and Lewinsky’s love letters to Clinton, previously unpublished.

The New York Post writes, “In them, she opened her heart about her love for Bill and how much happier she could make him,” said the source. “Some of what she wrote was so raw that she never sent them.”

It’s been 15 years since Lewinsky’s encounters with Clinton, and 14 since the story hit the airwaves. For those who remember the whole mess -- the surreptitious tape recordings, the denials and non-admissions, the Starr investigation -- it will come as no surprise that Lewinsky saved the letters.

She was known for holding onto things that connected her to Clinton. The photo above was taken outside the Federal Building in Westwood in 1998 after she delivered “long-sought physical evidence” to Kenneth Starr. It might well have been the famed blue dress.

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