Monica Lewinsky says ‘we’re all guilty’ ahead of Depp-Heard verdict

Monica Lewinsky has declared gawking at the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial “courtroom porn” in a new op-ed.

“The obsessive chatter around the Depp-Heard trial is just one small example of the ever-expanding, ever-demanding search for schadenfreude and titillation,” she wrote in the Vanity Fair piece, noting how onlookers feel entitled to give opinions on the trial. “No matter whom the jury’s verdict favors — be it defendant Heard or plaintiff Depp — we are guilty.”

Her commentary, which was published on Tuesday, shared her two cents on the high-profile case as someone who is no stranger to the ugly side of media attention.

Former White House intern Lewinsky was once at the center of a political sex scandal involving former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and she recalled the “cruelty” of the news cycle.

“Having been on the receiving end of this kind of cruelty, I can tell you the scars never fade,” she wrote, asking readers to define what is “too far” or “too much” when watching the trial.

In the high-profile courtroom spectacle, Depp and Heard went toe-to-toe in a battle of defamation. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star first sued his ex-wife for defaming him with her 2018 Washington Post op-ed, where she claims she suffered from domestic abuse. Meanwhile, Heard countersued to the tune of $100 million.

As the “celebrity circus” trudged on in the courthouse for six weeks, Lewinsky watched the trials with “guilty fascination,” combing through her social feeds or grazing media outlets.

But this cherry-picking, which she blames on modern news consumption through apps and platforms, causes people’s consumption of media to be “biased, curated and cursory.”

“We have become so attuned to this narrow, cynical cycle of social media encounters that we consider the trial not tragic or pathetic, but as a pure car wreck: accessible, tawdry and immediately gratifying,” she said. “Such scattershot consumption hasn’t allowed for real comprehension. Instead, we experience only apprehension, knee-jerk outrage and titillation.”

Then, she took a shot at the reactions, stating she “wasn’t surprised” that the cruel, online jokes made a villain of Heard more often than Depp, or that the surrounding discourse was mostly directed at “the woman.”

“And I shouldn’t have been surprised (but I was) that shortly after my search, I began to be served suggested posts on the trial,” she continued. “But they were less about Depp and Heard; more seemed to idolize Camille Vasquez (Depp’s lawyer) for her ‘performance’ cross-examining Heard.”

She noted, with a poignant joke, that “girl-on-girl action” is on “Misogyny’s greatest-hits album.”

“This legal spectacle would be sad enough if it just impacted the personal lives of Depp, Heard, and their loved ones. It would be sad enough even if we just considered how it has impacted domestic violence survivors or those who have sought strength in the #MeToo movement,” she stated. “However, it’s the larger implications for our culture that concern me the most: the ways we have stoked the flames of misogyny and, separately, the celebrity circus.”

Calling the courtroom hit a “soap opera,” Lewinsky, who works as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, also took a jab at the audience who is sizing up Depp and Heard in an attempt to declare one more “triggering” than the other.

She asks a series of questions, like whether people, who are acting as “virtual jurors,” are allowed to create memes mocking the A-listers who are “already suffering” just for the “dopamine hits” of a laugh, follow or like.

“The ways we have contemptuously co-opted the trial for our own purposes are a sign of how many of us, the social-media-mongrelized, have continued to devalue our dignity and humanity,” she said. “As we have watched this story unfold, what does our opinion entitle us to? Does it entitle us to say whom we ‘believe’?”

Yet, she begs the question: “But does it entitle us to be cruel?”