News article:

Story highlights Authorities have opened preliminary investigations

 Weiner is alleged to have exchanged sexually explicit text messages with a purportedly underage girl

 Washington (CNN) Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Anthony Weiner's cell phone and other records, according to law enforcement officials.

 The FBI and the New York Police Department have opened preliminary investigations of allegations that the former New York Democratic congressman exchanged sexually explicit text messages with a purportedly underage girl.

 Spokespersons for the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the FBI declined to comment.

 The allegations first surfaced in the Daily Mail

 The online sexting relationship allegedly went on for months between Weiner and a girl claiming to be just 15. The Daily Mail reported she said he sent her numerous photos, one of him in a pool and at least one bare-chested.

 Read More ||||| FILE - In this July 24, 2013 file photo, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment building in New York. Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner has acknowledged he communicated... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this July 24, 2013 file photo, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment building in New York. Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner has acknowledged he communicated... (Associated Press)

 NEW YORK (AP) — Online communications between disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and a 15-year-old girl are being investigated by law enforcement agencies in New York and North Carolina, officials said Thursday.

 The office of Jill Westmoreland Rose, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte, has "begun investigative efforts," a spokeswoman said. An FBI task force in New York designed to combat the sexual exploitation of children also is investigating, according to a law enforcement official who wasn't authorized to discuss an ongoing case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

 The investigations were launched after an online outlet, DailyMail.com, on Wednesday published an interview with the girl in which she describes online and text exchanges with Weiner that went on for several months this year. The girl said that during a Skype chat Weiner asked her to undress and touch herself.

 Weiner, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 2011 amid a sexting scandal, didn't return text or email messages seeking comment on Thursday.

 But in a statement he gave to The Associated Press on Wednesday he said he had "likely been the subject of a hoax," and he provided an email written by the girl in which she recants her story. He also apologized, noting he had "repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgment about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent."

 The girl, whose identity the Daily Mail didn't reveal, said she told her father and a teacher about the relationship. She said she wrote the email because Weiner asked her to but never sent it.

 A spokeswoman for the FBI and a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Manhattan declined to comment.

 Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, an aide to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and has a young son with her. He resigned from Congress after it was revealed he had been exchanging sexually explicit messages with multiple women.

 He then unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2013 and was leading several polls until it was revealed he had continued his questionable behavior. Abedin left him this month after revelations he had sent more sexually charged messages to another woman. ||||| Anthony Weiner carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl during which she claims he asked her to dress up in 'school-girl' outfits for him on a video messaging application and pressed her to engage in 'rape fantasies', DailyMail.com can exclusively report.

 The girl, whose name is being withheld by DailyMail.com because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January while she was a high school sophomore and before Weiner's wife, Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin, announced she was ending their marriage.

 Weiner was aware that the girl was underage, according to DailyMail.com interviews with the girl and her father, as well as a cache of online messages.

 SCROLL DOWN TO HEAR THE TEEN ON TAPE

 Anthony Weiner carried on a months-long sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl online, and even sent her photos of himself, including one of him in a pool

 The high school girl, whose name is being withheld by DailyMail.com because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January

 In one message, he tells the girl he was 'hard' after thinking of her that morning

 In another message, both Weiner and the girl tell each other they feel like they can tell each other anything

 The pair even joke about nicknames for each other, and Weiners old name of 'Carlos Danger.' But he says he wants her call her 'mine'

 In one Confide message - which deletes the sender's name after the first message is open, Weiner tells the girl 'I would bust that tight p***y. 'The app is designed for confidentiality, and automatically deletes messages and images after the first time they are read or viewed. However, the girl took photos of a few of the messages and images from last February and March, which she shared with the Dailymail.com.

 He goes on to say that he would 'bust' it 'so hard and so often that you would be limp for a week'

 'I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent,' Weiner told DailyMail.com

 In the online messages, Weiner, 51, sent bare-chested photos of himself to the underage girl, repeatedly called her 'baby' and complimented her body, and told her that he woke up 'hard' after thinking about her, according to copies of the conversations.

 In one particularly lewd message, he told the teen: 'I would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.'

 When confronted with the claims, Weiner did not deny exchanging 'flirtatious' messages with the teen. He declined to comment on the specifics of the allegations on the record, but provided copies of two emails the girl sent him that he contends raised questions about her claims. DailyMail.com publishes them below.

 He gave a statement to DailyMail.com in which he says, in part: ' I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent. I am filled with regret and heartbroken for those I have hurt.'

 WHAT ANTHONY WEINER TOLD DAILYMAIL.COM 'I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent. 'I am filled with regret and heartbroken for those I have hurt. 'While I have provided the Daily Mail with information showing that I have likely been the subject of a hoax, I have no one to blame but me for putting myself in this position. 'I am sorry.'

 The revelation comes just weeks after Weiner's wife Huma Abedin announced that they had separated in the wake of another sexting controversy.

 In August, the New York Post reported on sexual chats between Weiner and a 40-year-old woman, during which the former congressman sent her provocative shirtless photos of him while his four-year-old son was curled up next to him in bed.

 Weiner has faced a number of sexting scandals since 2011, when he was forced to resign from Congress after his online sexual messages with a female college student were revealed.

 Another sexting scandal in 2013, involving 22-year-old Sydney Leathers, derailed his bid for New York City mayor. In the course of that scandal, his alias Carlos Danger was disclosed.

 The former congressman has faced scrutiny over online chats with minors in the past.

 In 2011, he admitted to sending five private Twitter messages to a 17-year-old girl, but said the messages 'were neither explicit nor indecent'. The girl's family told the New York Times that the conversation appeared to be harmless.

 DailyMail.com reached out to the 15-year-old girl's family earlier this month after receiving information about her relationship with Weiner.

 Although the girl said she did not want to press charges because she believes her relationship with Weiner was consensual, she and her father agreed to sit down for an interview out of concern that Weiner may be sexting with other underage girls.

 Weiner and Abedin, still living in the same apartment despite their split, left separately Wednesday morning before the DailyMail.com story was posted online

 Huma left to meet Hillary Clinton to fly to Orlando to campaign; Weiner went for a walk

 The girl first reached out to Weiner on the evening of January 23, 2016, when she noticed his Twitter page allowed non-followers to contact him through private messages

 Weiner sent the teen a bare-chested picture of himself with his hand on his crotch

 'If there's anybody out there that has a similar story that they can come forward, maybe use my daughter's example to have the courage to come forward,' said her father, whose name is also being withheld to shield the girl's identity.

 He explains that he did not contact authorities to report Weiner because his daughter asked him not to. 'I agreed because her mental health is in jeopardy and I didn't want to exacerbate anything that she has mentally going on.'

 Through interviews and a collection of online messages from applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Kik, and Confide, DailyMail.com has pieced together a timeline of Weiner's relationship with the underage girl.

 The girl first reached out to Weiner on the evening of January 23, 2016, when she noticed his Twitter page allowed non-followers to contact him through direct private messages.

 She told DailyMail.com she was interested in politics and had heard about his sexting scandals, and was curious to see what he was like.

 It was clear from the messages that she was encouraging Weiner to engage with her in a sexual manner. She told DailyMail.com she didn't consider Weiner her boyfriend, but thought the relationship was a 'romantic' one.

 She acknowledged during interviews that she had developed an obsession with Weiner, and sought him out on Twitter in January while trying to write a book about him. She said she continued to write the book as their relationship developed.

 'Why did I message you [in January]?' the girl wrote in an email to Weiner last week. 'I was studying you- for a book of course. You were my Hannibal Lecter.

 'I wanted to know what made you tick. As we chatted, I pretended to not know EVERYTHING about you. I didn't want to appear suspicious.'

 She also told Weiner: 'I was obsessed with you.'

 Weiner quickly messaged her back, and they struck up a conversation about the large snowstorms that had hit New York and the girl's home state.

 The messages started out as small talk, and during their conversation the girl noticed that Weiner had also found her profile on Facebook and sent her a friend request.

 'Where do you go to school?' Weiner asked her.

 '[Redacted] High School,' she responded.

 Still sexting? Weiner was out and about at the park with his son on Tuesday, but took time out to engage with his phone

 Closest aide: Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton's closest aide and vice-chair of her campaign. The two's closeness goes back to when Abedin was a teenage White House intern.

 Huma Abedin announced that they had separated in the wake of another sexting controversy. when the former congressmen sent a 40-year-old woman provocative shirtless photos of himself while his toddler son was curled up next to him in bed

 Early the next morning, Weiner found the girl on Facebook, sent her a friend request and they began messaging

 Weiner sent the teen a picture of himself - with this undershirt rolled up to expose his stomach - and his son.

 In one Facebook message, the girl tells Weiner that she's 'very good at keeping a secret' from her parents

 'You are kinda sorta gorgeous,' Weiner told her, before asking around midnight why she wasn't with a boyfriend that night.

 'My dad is overprotective,' said the girl. '[Boyfriends] couldn't be at my house this late.'

 The next morning, the girl woke up to find a private message from Weiner on Facebook asking how her night had gone.

 'How did you sleep?' the girl asked him.

 'Not great. Woke up very, uh, eager,' he replied.

 He continued to send her flirtatious messages throughout the day, saying he was 'imagining' her when she was in the shower and saying she must get a lot of male attention at the gym.

 At one point, Weiner indicated that he knew the conversation could be a problem.

 '[I]f anyone would get the wrong impression we should say goodbye now,' said Weiner. However, he did not stop the conversation.

 Instead he told the girl they could talk over other chat applications that would not be monitored by her parents.

 They began talking on Kik, an instant message app, where Weiner used the screen name 'T Dog.' He sent her photos of himself shirtless, including one photo of him in a hot tub that showed his face.

 'Maybe delete that. Hehe,' he wrote after sending it.

 In many of the messages, they discussed Weiner's trips to the gym and love of hockey, and the girl's school activities and her newly acquired learner's permit. But in a number of them, Weiner steered the conversation toward sex.

 The pair eventually move to another app, called TK, for conversing, in which they share several photos

 After sending a snap from a pool, Weiner tells the girl, 'Maybe delete that. Hehe.'

 She then tells Weiner that she doesn't think she would 'look good naked' at the time of messaging

 She says she is 'pale' and wants 'to work out more', but Weiner says the flaws 'would no doubt be overlooked'

 'I thought of you this am. Hard,' he wrote in one.

 The girl asked if she was the reason.

 'Yes. And the solution,' responded Weiner, adding an emoji image of squirting water.

 'Your body is pretty insane,' he told her at another point.

 When the girl told Weiner she'd just gotten home from the gym, he wrote back, 'Hard. Again'.

 Several of the messages involve finding times to talk over Skype, a video messaging application, when the girl's parents were asleep or out of the house.

 'Skype may have to be a tomorrow thing,' the girl wrote in one message. 'if I skyped you tonight id have to play music as we talked so that my parents couldn't hear me talking and I'd have to keep the lights off.'

 'No prob baby,' replied Weiner. 'Some other time. When it's easier.'

 The girl told DailyMail.com that she and Weiner first started talking on Skype a few days into the relationship.

 '[Weiner's] son was in the bathtub at the time just downstairs,' she said. 'So he would yell at his son to check on him, and then he asked me to take my clothes off, and just started saying these really sexual things.'

 Afterward, Weiner sent her a message with a heart-eyed emoji, writing 'I caught a glimpse of your body' and indicating he would like to keep talking over Skype.

 She claimed the conversations grew more explicit as time went on, with Weiner allegedly asking her to undress and encouraging her to masturbate over video chat.

 She said Weiner would not get fully nude, but was usually shirtless and wearing boxers.

 'He would tell me to say his name as I was touching myself,' said the girl. 'He would ask me to take my clothes off.

 'He would just have his shirt off. Sometimes he would grab his lower region, but that was about it,' she added.

 Although Weiner did not get undressed on video, she alleges that he did send her nude photos of himself when they would sext over a messaging app.

 The app, which is called Confide, is designed for confidentiality, and automatically deletes messages and images after the first time they are read or viewed.

 However, the girl took photos of a few of the messages and images from last February and March, which she shared with Dailymail.com.

 Shirtless: One of the messages from Kik, where Weiner used the alias T Dog

 At one point, the girl asks Weiner if she was the reason he 'woke up so eager', and he said she was also 'the solution'

 TEXT OF LETTER WEINER ASKED TEEN TO SEND TO TEACHER The teen wrote this letter but sent it to a fake email address and sent a copy to Weiner. Parts of the letter that might identify her are redacted. The teen told DailyMail.com what she had done. Weiner provided a copy of the letter in his belief it was sent to her teacher. Dr. XXXXX Thank you for being the perfect mentor. I remember the first time we met. I was a 'wise 92 year old stuck in a 13 year old's body' as you described me. I was a rising freshman. Above your door was a sign that said 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' At that moment I knew that I'd love your class. I walked in and noticed a stack of all of my favorite literary works. Anything from Martin Amis to Albert Camus. We began chatting and I felt like I had known you my whole life. My freshman year [redacted]. I was the first freshman invited and I was thrilled. I started learning [redacted] at the age of 8 years old. I somehow managed [redacted]. You have brought me sooooo many projects. We started on the writing resources center. You and I would travel to the university to bring students to tutor kids at our school that were having a difficult time learning. I had the opportunity to work with some of the sweetest students at our school. I was able to earn 4 extra English course credits. We [redacted]. The student reporting labs have been an educational and a fun hands on experience. Aside from the plethora of knowledge you have graciously provided me with we have also had our deep, meaningful conversations. We share our writings with each other at least once a week. I have enjoyed reading your writings and I have been thankful for the feedback you have given me on mine. I recently shared with you a story about a former congressman. I contacted Anthony Weiner. Our online chats were never inappropriate, he was always very helpful and kind. I wanted to publish my story. He was the best candidate to pin the story to. The story needed a hoax to ride on. Speaking of candidates the election is coming up and his wife is Hillary Clinton's chief of staff. He doesn't have any credibility, I assumed no one would question the allegations. It was unfair to lie to you and my father. It was unfair to spread this false accusation against Anthony Weiner. He has done nothing to deserve this. I am sorry for lying to you, I hope this doesn't affect the bond we have formed over the years. Sincerely [Redcated]

 'When we would Skype, he would tell me that he was very lonely and that it had been a year since he and his wife [Huma] had sex, and that she really didn't pay him any attention,' said the girl. 'We would talk, just chatting for about 30 minutes and it would lead to more sexual things…asking me to undress…he'd comment on my body. He asked me about masturbation, and that kind of thing.'

 Sometimes, she claims, Weiner would ask the girl to dress up in plaid skirts and pretend he was her school teacher, she said.

 'He would pretend like he was a teacher and I was a student. And he'd talk about me sitting in the front of his class, and him taking me after school,' she said.

 He also shared pornographic videos with her, she added.

 The girl said she was not uncomfortable with the sexting, except for when Weiner would try to engage her in 'rape fantasies'.

 'He had some rape fantasies. It would just be him showing up at my house when my dad was out of town,' she said. 'And just start undressing me, being forceful, asking me if I want to be dominated, strange questions.'

 She said when she told him she was uncomfortable with this, he quickly agreed to change the subject.

 The girl said she started feeling guilty about hiding the relationship, and told her father and a teacher about it in late April.

 When Weiner asks if the girl's boyfriend is 'bigger than' him, she says he's a 'skinny nerdy boy'

 Weiner sent the girl a picture of his chest with welts he said he got from his heart check up

 'I was scared. I felt bad for talking to [Weiner],' she said. 'I felt a little guilty and I wrote [my dad] a letter telling him.'

 But the girl also continued to talk to Weiner. The former congressman pressured her to write two more letters to her father and teacher saying that she lied about the natures of their relationship and the two of them were just friends.

 She told Weiner that she would do this, and she sent them to bogus email addresses and sent a copy to Weiner.

 'After I told my teacher about the relationship, [Weiner] wanted me to email my dad and my teacher and tell them that was I said was false,' she said. 'That the conversations were appropriate and were never inappropriate, and he was very helpful.'

 Weiner sent DailyMail.com a copy of the letter he believed she sent to her teacher.

 The girl said she continued to talk to Weiner until July.

 'After seeing what he did with his son having him in the picture that was released, I think that he's very disgusting and he needs help,' she said.

 She said she never viewed him as her 'boyfriend', and that he made this clear by talking to her about his relationships with other women.

 'He talked about women he would meet up with and have sex with, women he would meet at the gym, women he would chat with online,' she said.

 'He would also talk about going to different gyms, and getting different gym memberships, just to go watch 18-year-olds work out that would go to NYU and different schools in New York,' she added.

 In August, the New York Post reported on sexual chats between Weiner and a 40-year-old woman, during which the former congressman sent her provocative shirtless photos of him while his four-year-old son was curled up next to him in bed

 After the girl tells Weiner that Skype will have to wait because her parents would hear, Weiner says 'No prob baby'

 When the girl says that she'll 'work out all of the time' if it 'turns you on', Weiner tells her that her 'body is pretty insane'

 However, she said he never mentioned relationships with other underage girls.

 'I actually asked him if he talked to other minors and he said not that he knew of, which is the risk that he kind of takes when he's talking to women on the internet,' she said.

 The girl's father said he was horrified when he learned 51-year-old Weiner had been speaking with his daughter over Skype.

 'I couldn't stomach that,' he said. 'That really was the worst part I think, was knowing that inappropriate behavior was available to my daughter by this man.'

 He said if he ever met Weiner: 'There wouldn't be any words. There would be no words. I hope I never come in contact with him. I'll be in jail if I come into contact with him.'

 While the girl said she does not regret the relationship, her father said the experience has changed her.

 'She's gone through some depression, we've sought counselling and been able to help her work through it,' he said.

 'She's a bright girl, very smart, so this has somewhat dulled the light that she had previous to this…it's gut-wrenching to see somebody take that away.'

 HOW I FELT: THE LETTER THE 15-YEAR-OLD SENT TO WEINER The teen wrote this letter to Anthony Weiner after her interview with DailyMail.com. Weiner gave it to DailyMail.com to publish, which he says indicates that he 'could have been the subject of a hoax.' The teen told us why she wrote it, saying: ' A few months ago Anthony asked me why I wanted to share my story, and I couldn't really give a good answer so I wanted to explain to him why I was doing it.' 'Don't be ashamed of your story. It will inspire others.' This quote lingered in my mind as my posture was consciously congruent to the hard back of my chair. The air was stale. All eyes were on me. My father's eyes wanted me to lie. At that moment, I had the moral backbone of an eclair. Why was I here? I didn't personally know Anthony Weiner. I felt myself hover over my own body. I was watching myself from above. I was not the same girl that I was when I walked into the hotel. Who was I becoming? Did I just sell my soul to the devil at fifteen? We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war's a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that we'd all be millionaires and movie Gods. But we won't. And I'm learning that fact as my lips move. Fear blocked every rational thought. After leaving the hotel, I attempted to justify my every action. It wasn't a difficult task. Anthony continues to make the same mistake and expects a different result each time, he needs to learn his lesson. His wife is already leaving him, what I have done will not tear him apart. He fell in love with something and is letting it kill him. He needs to let go. The list continued to grow. Afterwards, I began to cry. I felt physically ill. I made the decision to not go to school the next day, I felt guilty, guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain- it's roots run too deep into private and long- standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you. I messaged Anthony. He was trying to play victim... AGAIN! He treats me like I'm an invalid. I never call him out. I am used to his manipulative techniques, I know them very well. I used them long before he tried them on me. I see myself in him. I continue to talk to men online. My parents were not surprised that I contacted him. My dad started rattling off all the other occupations of these other guys.. First it was the teacher.. Yada, yada, yada.. They asked me when I would ever stop this kind of behavior. Why did Anthony and I do these ridiculous things? The only difference was that I didn't have to send out a press release every time that I did something like this. I was losing my soul. If you're losing your soul & you know it, then you still have a soul to lose. 'Apology': Why did I message you? I saw that your direct messages were open. I thought you had fallen off the face of the earth. I assumed you would have deleted your twitter for your wife's sake. I had watched a video of you that same night. I was studying you- for a book of course.You were my Hannibal Lecter. I wanted to know what made you tick. As we chatted, I pretended to not know EVERYTHING about you. I didn't want to appear suspicious. Why did you message me? I asked you the other day, you didn't return the question. You never do. You don't care enough about other people. 'It had been my job to get into Anthony's brain, but after nine months, I realized he didn't know a thing about me. I approached him at our post-campaign party and asked, 'Do you know I'm a single mom?' I wanted acknowledgment of what my family and I had sacrificed. He didn't know. 'You must feel good about yourself, accomplishing all of this,' he said, missing my point. Then the conversation turned back to him: 'I'm 50 years old, and I need to find a new career.' I smiled, same old Anthony. I said good night, and I haven't seen him since.' ( Provenz, Jessica. 'I Was Anthony Weiner's Longest-Serving Campaign Staffer. This Is What His Mayoral Run Was Really Like.' Daily Intelligencer. N.p., 2016. Web. 08 Sept. 2016. ) It doesn't just stop here, you did this with me on a numerous amount of occasions. You didn't inspect the emails to my teacher and my father. I made two fake emails. I used a ten minute mail, and created a Gmail. You believed me. I talked to you about committing suicide. You didn't try to stop me. I confided in you. I told you about older men taking advantage of me. You called me a liar. I offered proof. You rejected. It's like you don't want to know the answer to things. I believe that you don't go to therapy for that reason. Why do you continue to sext? Is it an addiction? Is it something psychological? Your brother was addicted to drugs. Does addiction run in your family? I can't fully grasp why I do it. I know that it's nice to feel worshipped. Sydney listed you as one of her heroes. You took advantage of her young, naive mind. She was infatuated with you.You should be glad that I am one of the most disensitized teenagers. I don't think I could ever been in love with someone I met over the internet. I did, however, enjoy listening to your podcasts, watching interviews, C-Span, etc. Talking to you helped me write my book about you. I was obsessed with you, the way one obsesses over a character in a book . One day you're going to mess with the wrong teenager, that has the wrong set of parents. Do yourself a favor and try to prevent that. It doesn't matter that you sext. It matters that you sext women you don't know. You tell me that you're in enormous pain (not sure if you're being honest, or playing victim), you read books such as 'So You've been publicly shamed'. It seems as if you have let these scandals consume you. Why do you let these women brand you with scandals. You WEAR your scandal. You were great at trying to change the world around you, why not try to change yourself?? You were a pleasant guy to talk to when you meditated. We fall in love with things, and we let it kill us. You don't have to do that. You're married to sexting and your wife is married to Clinton. If HRC jumped off of a bridge, your wife would be chasing after her, clutching Hillary's purse and jumping with her. Your image is going to affect your son, even Hugh Hefner has children. If you and your wife are truly being sincere about being dedicated to your son's best interest, pay attention to him. Don't photograph him as you sext. Don't give HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON ALL OF YOUR ATTENTION! You're ruining his life before it has even begun. STOP MANIPULATING PEOPLE!!!! You asked me to lie to my teacher, my father, Sydney Leathers, and anyone that asked about this story. It's sick. You only care about yourself. You play victim ALL OF THE TIME. You attempted to make me feel bad about telling my teacher. You pretended that you were my friend. You said 'I trusted you.I skyped you. I told you that my dad was in the hospital. I sent you pictures of my son.' yada, yada, yada. How many women have seen pictures of your kid??? Every woman in your life? STOP MAKING PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR YOUR SCANDALS. It's not their fault you make the same mistakes. I am worried about you. You are messaging anyone that flirts with you online. I am 15 years old. You got catfished by a dude! It will only get worse. It's time to retire. I want you to know that I'm not releasing the story for money. I am doing this to teach you a lesson. I want you to get help. I don't care if you hate me. I don't hate you, I care about you very much. I think this story will help you become a better person. I hope at least. I am also worried about myself. I talk with a lot of men online. I am fifteen years old! I catfish people, including you. I think it's time that I retire too. I think that by releasing this story I am teaching myself a lesson as well. I need to get help. I hate myself. I am trying to make this story into something positive. In order for a flashlight to work properly it requires a battery. The battery requires a negative and a positive, the negative is always larger.. It doesn't have to be that way. Sorry, I'm not sorry. I wish you the best!

 At one point, when Weiner questions them talking, the girl says she could give him '100 good reasons as to why we should keep talking' |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Anthony Weiner's sexting wrecked his political career, his comeback attempt, his media career, and his marriage—and now even his freedom could be at stake. The AP reports that the former congressman's alleged online relationship with a 15-year-old girl is being investigated by authorities in New York and in North Carolina, where the girl lives. A spokeswoman for the US attorney's office in North Carolina says they've "begun investigative efforts," and sources tell CNN that prosecutors in New York have already subpoenaed the 52-year-old's phone records and other communication. An FBI task force in New York is also looking into the matter, a law enforcement source says. According to the Daily Mail, which first reported Weiner's communication with the underage girl, Weiner's explicit messages included one where he told the high school sophomore he would "make her limp for a week." The girl says Weiner—who allegedly called himself "T Dog" this time instead of "Carlos Danger"—asked her to undress and touch herself, and the New York Daily News notes that encouraging a child under 17 to "engage in a sexual performance" can carry a 15-year sentence in New York. Weiner has admitted communicating with the girl and demonstrating "terrible judgment" online, but he also claims to have been "the subject of a hoax."


– In a new Vanity Fair essay, Monica Lewinsky reflects on her scandal with former President Clinton 20 years ago, opening with a chance encounter in late 2017 that rattled her. While at a Manhattan restaurant, she ran into none other than Kenneth Starr, the special investigator who turned her into a household name in 1998. This, surprisingly, was the first time Lewinsky had ever met him, and she describes his demeanor as "somewhere between avuncular and creepy." He asked multiple times if she was "doing OK" and kept touching her arm and elbow, "which made me uncomfortable." Then Lewinsky told him, in what she later realized was an attempt to elicit an apology, “Though I wish I had made different choices back then, I wish that you and your office had made different choices, too." Starr didn't apologize, however. He merely said, "I know. It was unfortunate." The anecdote precedes Lewinsky's revelation that she was diagnosed with PTSD several years ago, and she suggests the nation suffered a similar kind of trauma. "Both clinically and observationally, something fundamental changed in our society in 1998, and it is changing again as we enter the second year of the Trump presidency in a post-Cosby-Ailes-O’Reilly-Weinstein-Spacey-Whoever-Is-Next world," she writes. The nation lost its "capacity for mercy, measure, and perspective," and bitter partisan differences "settled in." Lewinsky adds that while she has previously described her relations with Clinton as consensual, she has come to realize that assessment is "complicated," given the "power imbalances" at play. She also reveals that a leader of the #MeToo movement expressed a sentiment in a private exchange that "undid" her: "I'm sorry you were so alone." (Read the full essay.)

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How do I know him? Where have I seen him? The Man in the Hat looked familiar, I thought, as I peered over at him a second time. It was Christmas Eve 2017. My family and I were about to be seated at a quaint restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village. We had just come from Gramercy Park—on the one night each year when the exclusive park (accessible only to nearby residents with special keys) opens its gates to outsiders. There had been carols. People had sung with abandon. In short, it was a magical night. I was happy. Amid the glow of candles and soft lighting, I strained to look again at the Man in the Hat. He was part of a small group that had just exited the main dining room. They were now gathering their belongings, likely vacating what was to be our table. And then it clicked. He looks just like . . . no, couldn’t be. Could it? A student of Karma, I found myself seizing the moment. Whereas a decade ago I would have turned and fled the restaurant at the prospect of being in the same place as this man, many years of personal-counseling work (both trauma-specific and spiritual) had led me to a place where I now embrace opportunities to move into spaces that allow me to break out of old patterns of retreat or denial. At the same moment I stepped toward the Man in the Hat and began to ask, “You’re not . . . ?,” he stepped toward me with a warm, incongruous smile and said, “Let me introduce myself. I’m Ken Starr.” An introduction was indeed necessary. This was, in fact, the first time I had met him. I found myself shaking his hand even as I struggled to decipher the warmth he evinced. After all, in 1998, this was the independent prosecutor who had investigated me, a former White House intern; the man whose staff, accompanied by a group of F.B.I. agents (Starr himself was not there), had hustled me into a hotel room near the Pentagon and informed me that unless I cooperated with them I could face 27 years in prison. This was the man who had turned my 24-year-old life into a living hell in his effort to investigate and prosecute President Bill Clinton on charges that would eventually include obstruction of justice and lying under oath—lying about having maintained a long-term extramarital relationship with me. Ken Starr asked me several times if I was “doing O.K.” A stranger might have surmised from his tone that he had actually worried about me over the years. His demeanor, almost pastoral, was somewhere between avuncular and creepy. He kept touching my arm and elbow, which made me uncomfortable. I turned and introduced him to my family. Bizarre as it may sound, I felt determined, then and there, to remind him that, 20 years before, he and his team of prosecutors hadn’t hounded and terrorized just me but also my family—threatening to prosecute my mom (if she didn’t disclose the private confidences I had shared with her), hinting that they would investigate my dad’s medical practice, and even deposing my aunt, with whom I was eating dinner that night. And all because the Man in the Hat, standing in front of me, had decided that a frightened young woman could be useful in his larger case against the president of the United States. Understandably, I was a bit thrown. (It was also confusing for me to see “Ken Starr” as a human being. He was there, after all, with what appeared to be his family.) I finally gathered my wits about me—after an internal command of Get it together. “Though I wish I had made different choices back then,” I stammered, “I wish that you and your office had made different choices, too.” In hindsight, I later realized, I was paving the way for him to apologize. But he didn’t. He merely said, with the same inscrutable smile, “I know. It was unfortunate.” It had been nearly 20 years since 1998. The next month would mark the 20th anniversary of the Starr investigation expanding to include me. The 20th anniversary of my name becoming public for the first time. And the 20th anniversary of an annus horribilis that would almost end Clinton’s presidency, consume the nation’s attention, and alter the course of my life. By Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Getty Images.

 If I have learned anything since then, it is that you cannot run away from who you are or from how you’ve been shaped by your experiences. Instead, you must integrate your past and present. As Salman Rushdie observed after the fatwa was issued against him, “Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” I have been working toward this realization for years. I have been trying to find that power—a particularly Sisyphean task for a person who has been gaslighted. To be blunt, I was diagnosed several years ago with post-traumatic stress disorder, mainly from the ordeal of having been publicly outed and ostracized back then. My trauma expedition has been long, arduous, painful, and expensive. And it’s not over. (I like to joke that my tombstone will read, MUTATIS MUTANDIS—“With Changes Being Made.”) I’ve lived for so long in the House of Gaslight, clinging to my experiences as they unfolded in my 20s. But as I find myself reflecting on what happened, I’ve also come to understand how my trauma has been, in a way, a microcosm of a larger, national one. Both clinically and observationally, something fundamental changed in our society in 1998, and it is changing again as we enter the second year of the Trump presidency in a post-Cosby-Ailes-O’Reilly-Weinstein-Spacey-Whoever-Is-Next world. The Starr investigation and the subsequent impeachment trial of Bill Clinton amounted to a crisis that Americans arguably endured collectively—some of us, obviously, more than others. It was a shambolic morass of a scandal that dragged on for 13 months, and many politicians and citizens became collateral damage—along with the nation’s capacity for mercy, measure, and perspective. Certainly, the events of that year did not constitute a war or a terrorist attack or a financial recession. They didn’t constitute a natural catastrophe or a medical pandemic or what experts refer to as “Big T” traumas. But something had shifted nonetheless. And even after the Senate voted in 1999 to acquit President Clinton on two articles of impeachment, we could not escape the sense of upheaval and partisan division that lingered, settled in, and stayed. Maybe you remember or have heard stories about how “the scandal” saturated television and radio; newspapers, magazines, and the Internet; Saturday Night Live and the Sunday-morning opinion programs; dinner-party conversation and watercooler discussions; late-night monologues and political talk shows (definitely the talk shows). In The Washington Post alone, there were 125 articles written about this crisis—in just the first 10 days. Many parents felt compelled to discuss sexual issues with their children earlier than they might have wanted to. They had to explain why “lying”—even if the president did it—was not acceptable behavior. The press was navigating unexplored terrain, too. Anonymous sources seemed to emerge almost daily with new (and often false or meaningless) revelations. There was a new commingling of traditional news, talk radio, tabloid television, and online rumor mills (fake news, anyone?). With the introduction of the World Wide Web (in 1992-93) and two new cable news networks (Fox News and MSNBC in 1996), the lines began to blur between fact and opinion, news and gossip, private lives and public shaming. The Internet had become such a propulsive force driving the flow of information that when the Republican-led Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives decided to publish Ken Starr’s commission’s “findings” online—just two days after he had delivered them—it meant that (for me personally) every adult with a modem could instantaneously peruse a copy and learn about my private conversations, my personal musings (lifted from my home computer), and, worse yet, my sex life. Americans young and old, red and blue, watched day and night. We watched a beleaguered president and the embattled and often disenchanted members of his administration as they protected him. We watched a First Lady and First Daughter move through the year with grit and grace. We watched a special prosecutor get pilloried (though some thought he deserved it). We watched an American family—my family—as a mother was forced to testify against her child and as a father was forced to take his daughter to be fingerprinted at the Federal Building. We watched the wholesale dissection of a young, unknown woman—me—who, due to legal quarantine, was unable to speak out on her own behalf. How, then, to get a handle, today, on what exactly happened back then?

 One useful viewpoint is that of cognitive linguist George Lakoff. In his book Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t, Lakoff observes that the connective fiber of our country is often best represented through the metaphor of family: e.g., “our Founding Fathers,” “Uncle Sam,” the concept of sending our sons and daughters to war. Lakoff goes on to argue that, “for conservatives, the nation is conceptualized (implicitly and unconsciously) as a Strict Father family and, for liberals, as a Nurturant Parent family.” Addressing the scandal itself, he asserts that Clinton was widely perceived as “the naughty child” and that, in line with the filial metaphor, “a family matter [had turned] into an affair of state.” Thus, in many ways, the crack in the foundation of the presidency was also a crack in our foundation at home. Moreover, the nature of the violation—an extramarital relationship—struck at the heart of one of humanity’s most complicated moral issues: infidelity. (You’ll forgive me if I leave that topic right there.) The result, I believe, was that in 1998 the person to whom we would typically turn for reassurance and comfort during a national crisis was remote and unavailable. The country, at that stage, had no consistent, Rooseveltian voice of calm or reason or empathy to make sense of the chaos. Instead, our Nurturer in Chief, because of his own actions as much as the subterfuge of his enemies, was a figurative “absent father.” As a society, we went through this together. And ever since, the scandal has had an epigenetic quality, as if our cultural DNA has slowly been altered to ensure its longevity. If you can believe it, there has been at least one significant reference in the press to that unfortunate spell in our history every day for the past 20 years. Every. Single. Day. The fog of 1998 has lodged in our consciousness for many reasons. The Clintons have remained pivotal political figures on the global stage. Their disparagement has been vigorously abetted by “this vast right-wing conspiracy,” as Hillary Clinton famously put it. And the Clinton presidency segued into a bitter electoral deadlock: the contested Bush v. Gore showdown, which would usher in an era so turbulent that it would leave the lessons of the Clinton years altogether murky. In succession came the unthinkable (the attacks of September 11, 2001), protracted conflicts (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), the Great Recession, a state of perpetual gridlock in Washington, and then the daily bedlam central to Trumpism. No matter how these subsequent events dwarfed the impeachment and subsumed our attention, maybe, just maybe, the long, unimpeded derivation of this drama, ever since, is partly the result of 1998 having been a year of unremitting crisis that we all endured but never actually resolved—a low-grade collective trauma, perhaps? I discussed this idea with psychologist Jack Saul, founding director of New York’s International Trauma Studies Program and author of Collective Trauma, Collective Healing. “Collective trauma,” he told me, “usually refers to the shared injuries to a population’s social ecology due to a major catastrophe or chronic oppression, poverty, and disease. While the events of 1998 in the United States do not fit neatly into such a definition, they may have led to some of the features we often associate with collective traumas: social rupturing and a profound sense of distress, the challenging of long-held assumptions about the world and national identity, a constricted public narrative, and a process of scapegoating and dehumanization.” Until recently (thank you, Harvey Weinstein), historians hadn’t really had the perspective to fully process and acknowledge that year of shame and spectacle. And as a culture, we still haven’t properly examined it. Re-framed it. Integrated it. And transformed it. My hope, given the two decades that have passed, is that we are now at a stage where we can untangle the complexities and context (maybe even with a little compassion), which might help lead to an eventual healing—and a systemic transformation. As Haruki Murakami has written, “When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Who were we then? Who are we now?

 ‘I’m so sorry you were so alone.” Those seven words undid me. They were written in a recent private exchange I had with one of the brave women leading the #MeToo movement. Somehow, coming from her—a recognition of sorts on a deep, soulful level—they landed in a way that cracked me open and brought me to tears. Yes, I had received many letters of support in 1998. And, yes (thank God!), I had my family and friends to support me. But by and large I had been alone. So. Very. Alone. Publicly Alone—abandoned most of all by the key figure in the crisis, who actually knew me well and intimately. That I had made mistakes, on that we can all agree. But swimming in that sea of Aloneness was terrifying. Isolation is such a powerful tool to the subjugator. And yet I don’t believe I would have felt so isolated had it all happened today. One of the most inspiring aspects of this newly energized movement is the sheer number of women who have spoken up in support of one another. And the volume in numbers has translated into volume of public voice. Historically, he who shapes the story (and it is so often a he) creates “the truth.” But this collective rise in decibel level has provided a resonance for women’s narratives. If the Internet was a bête noire to me in 1998, its stepchild—social media—has been a savior for millions of women today (notwithstanding all the cyberbullying, online harassment, doxing, and slut-shaming). Virtually anyone can share her or his #MeToo story and be instantly welcomed into a tribe. In addition, the democratizing potential of the Internet to open up support networks and penetrate what used to be closed circles of power is something that was unavailable to me back then. Power, in that case, remained in the hands of the president and his minions, the Congress, the prosecutors, and the press. There are many more women and men whose voices and stories need to be heard before mine. (There are even some people who feel my White House experiences don’t have a place in this movement, as what transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross abuse of power.) And yet, everywhere I have gone for the past few months, I’ve been asked about it. My response has been the same: I am in awe of the sheer courage of the women who have stood up and begun to confront entrenched beliefs and institutions. But as for me, my history, and how I fit in personally? I’m sorry to say I don’t have a definitive answer yet on the meaning of all of the events that led to the 1998 investigation; I am unpacking and reprocessing what happened to me. Over and over and over again. For two decades, I have been working on myself, my trauma, and my healing. And, naturally, I have grappled with the rest of the world’s interpretations and Bill Clinton’s re-interpretations of what happened. But in truth, I have done this at arm’s length. There have been so many barriers to this place of self-reckoning. The reason this is difficult is that I’ve lived for such a long time in the House of Gaslight, clinging to my experiences as they unfolded in my 20s and railing against the untruths that painted me as an unstable stalker and Servicer in Chief. An inability to deviate from the internal script of what I actually experienced left little room for re-evaluation; I cleaved to what I “knew.” So often have I struggled with my own sense of agency versus victimhood. (In 1998, we were living in times in which women’s sexuality was a marker of their agency—“owning desire.” And yet, I felt that if I saw myself as in any way a victim, it would open the door to choruses of: “See, you did merely service him.”) What it means to confront a long-held belief (one clung to like a life raft in the middle of the ocean) is to challenge your own perceptions and allow the pentimento painting that is hidden beneath the surface to emerge and be seen in the light of a new day. ||||| How do I know him? Where have I seen him? The Man in the Hat looked familiar, I thought, as I peered over at him a second time. It was Christmas Eve 2017. My family and I were about to be seated at a quaint restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village. We had just come from Gramercy Park—on the one night each year when the exclusive park (accessible only to nearby residents with special keys) opens its gates to outsiders. There had been carols. People had sung with abandon. In short, it was a magical night. I was happy. Amid the glow of candles and soft lighting, I strained to look again at the Man in the Hat. He was part of a small group that had just exited the main dining room. They were now gathering their belongings, likely vacating what was to be our table. And then it clicked. He looks just like . . . no, couldn’t be. Could it? A student of Karma, I found myself seizing the moment. Whereas a decade ago I would have turned and fled the restaurant at the prospect of being in the same place as this man, many years of personal-counseling work (both trauma-specific and spiritual) had led me to a place where I now embrace opportunities to move into spaces that allow me to break out of old patterns of retreat or denial. At the same moment I stepped toward the Man in the Hat and began to ask, “You’re not . . . ?,” he stepped toward me with a warm, incongruous smile and said, “Let me introduce myself. I’m Ken Starr.” An introduction was indeed necessary. This was, in fact, the first time I had met him. I found myself shaking his hand even as I struggled to decipher the warmth he evinced. After all, in 1998, this was the independent prosecutor who had investigated me, a former White House intern; the man whose staff, accompanied by a group of F.B.I. agents (Starr himself was not there), had hustled me into a hotel room near the Pentagon and informed me that unless I cooperated with them I could face 27 years in prison. This was the man who had turned my 24-year-old life into a living hell in his effort to investigate and prosecute President Bill Clinton on charges that would eventually include obstruction of justice and lying under oath—lying about having maintained a long-term extramarital relationship with me. Ken Starr asked me several times if I was “doing O.K.” A stranger might have surmised from his tone that he had actually worried about me over the years. His demeanor, almost pastoral, was somewhere between avuncular and creepy. He kept touching my arm and elbow, which made me uncomfortable. I turned and introduced him to my family. Bizarre as it may sound, I felt determined, then and there, to remind him that, 20 years before, he and his team of prosecutors hadn’t hounded and terrorized just me but also my family—threatening to prosecute my mom (if she didn’t disclose the private confidences I had shared with her), hinting that they would investigate my dad’s medical practice, and even deposing my aunt, with whom I was eating dinner that night. And all because the Man in the Hat, standing in front of me, had decided that a frightened young woman could be useful in his larger case against the president of the United States. Understandably, I was a bit thrown. (It was also confusing for me to see “Ken Starr” as a human being. He was there, after all, with what appeared to be his family.) I finally gathered my wits about me—after an internal command of Get it together. “Though I wish I had made different choices back then,” I stammered, “I wish that you and your office had made different choices, too.” In hindsight, I later realized, I was paving the way for him to apologize. But he didn’t. He merely said, with the same inscrutable smile, “I know. It was unfortunate.” It had been nearly 20 years since 1998. The next month would mark the 20th anniversary of the Starr investigation expanding to include me. The 20th anniversary of my name becoming public for the first time. And the 20th anniversary of an annus horribilis that would almost end Clinton’s presidency, consume the nation’s attention, and alter the course of my life. By Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Getty Images.

 If I have learned anything since then, it is that you cannot run away from who you are or from how you’ve been shaped by your experiences. Instead, you must integrate your past and present. As Salman Rushdie observed after the fatwa was issued against him, “Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” I have been working toward this realization for years. I have been trying to find that power—a particularly Sisyphean task for a person who has been gaslighted. To be blunt, I was diagnosed several years ago with post-traumatic stress disorder, mainly from the ordeal of having been publicly outed and ostracized back then. My trauma expedition has been long, arduous, painful, and expensive. And it’s not over. (I like to joke that my tombstone will read, MUTATIS MUTANDIS—“With Changes Being Made.”) I’ve lived for so long in the House of Gaslight, clinging to my experiences as they unfolded in my 20s. But as I find myself reflecting on what happened, I’ve also come to understand how my trauma has been, in a way, a microcosm of a larger, national one. Both clinically and observationally, something fundamental changed in our society in 1998, and it is changing again as we enter the second year of the Trump presidency in a post-Cosby-Ailes-O’Reilly-Weinstein-Spacey-Whoever-Is-Next world. The Starr investigation and the subsequent impeachment trial of Bill Clinton amounted to a crisis that Americans arguably endured collectively—some of us, obviously, more than others. It was a shambolic morass of a scandal that dragged on for 13 months, and many politicians and citizens became collateral damage—along with the nation’s capacity for mercy, measure, and perspective. Certainly, the events of that year did not constitute a war or a terrorist attack or a financial recession. They didn’t constitute a natural catastrophe or a medical pandemic or what experts refer to as “Big T” traumas. But something had shifted nonetheless. And even after the Senate voted in 1999 to acquit President Clinton on two articles of impeachment, we could not escape the sense of upheaval and partisan division that lingered, settled in, and stayed. Maybe you remember or have heard stories about how “the scandal” saturated television and radio; newspapers, magazines, and the Internet; Saturday Night Live and the Sunday-morning opinion programs; dinner-party conversation and watercooler discussions; late-night monologues and political talk shows (definitely the talk shows). In The Washington Post alone, there were 125 articles written about this crisis—in just the first 10 days. Many parents felt compelled to discuss sexual issues with their children earlier than they might have wanted to. They had to explain why “lying”—even if the president did it—was not acceptable behavior. The press was navigating unexplored terrain, too. Anonymous sources seemed to emerge almost daily with new (and often false or meaningless) revelations. There was a new commingling of traditional news, talk radio, tabloid television, and online rumor mills (fake news, anyone?). With the introduction of the World Wide Web (in 1992-93) and two new cable news networks (Fox News and MSNBC in 1996), the lines began to blur between fact and opinion, news and gossip, private lives and public shaming. The Internet had become such a propulsive force driving the flow of information that when the Republican-led Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives decided to publish Ken Starr’s commission’s “findings” online—just two days after he had delivered them—it meant that (for me personally) every adult with a modem could instantaneously peruse a copy and learn about my private conversations, my personal musings (lifted from my home computer), and, worse yet, my sex life. Americans young and old, red and blue, watched day and night. We watched a beleaguered president and the embattled and often disenchanted members of his administration as they protected him. We watched a First Lady and First Daughter move through the year with grit and grace. We watched a special prosecutor get pilloried (though some thought he deserved it). We watched an American family—my family—as a mother was forced to testify against her child and as a father was forced to take his daughter to be fingerprinted at the Federal Building. We watched the wholesale dissection of a young, unknown woman—me—who, due to legal quarantine, was unable to speak out on her own behalf. How, then, to get a handle, today, on what exactly happened back then?

 One useful viewpoint is that of cognitive linguist George Lakoff. In his book Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t, Lakoff observes that the connective fiber of our country is often best represented through the metaphor of family: e.g., “our Founding Fathers,” “Uncle Sam,” the concept of sending our sons and daughters to war. Lakoff goes on to argue that, “for conservatives, the nation is conceptualized (implicitly and unconsciously) as a Strict Father family and, for liberals, as a Nurturant Parent family.” Addressing the scandal itself, he asserts that Clinton was widely perceived as “the naughty child” and that, in line with the filial metaphor, “a family matter [had turned] into an affair of state.” Thus, in many ways, the crack in the foundation of the presidency was also a crack in our foundation at home. Moreover, the nature of the violation—an extramarital relationship—struck at the heart of one of humanity’s most complicated moral issues: infidelity. (You’ll forgive me if I leave that topic right there.) The result, I believe, was that in 1998 the person to whom we would typically turn for reassurance and comfort during a national crisis was remote and unavailable. The country, at that stage, had no consistent, Rooseveltian voice of calm or reason or empathy to make sense of the chaos. Instead, our Nurturer in Chief, because of his own actions as much as the subterfuge of his enemies, was a figurative “absent father.” As a society, we went through this together. And ever since, the scandal has had an epigenetic quality, as if our cultural DNA has slowly been altered to ensure its longevity. If you can believe it, there has been at least one significant reference in the press to that unfortunate spell in our history every day for the past 20 years. Every. Single. Day. The fog of 1998 has lodged in our consciousness for many reasons. The Clintons have remained pivotal political figures on the global stage. Their disparagement has been vigorously abetted by “this vast right-wing conspiracy,” as Hillary Clinton famously put it. And the Clinton presidency segued into a bitter electoral deadlock: the contested Bush v. Gore showdown, which would usher in an era so turbulent that it would leave the lessons of the Clinton years altogether murky. In succession came the unthinkable (the attacks of September 11, 2001), protracted conflicts (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), the Great Recession, a state of perpetual gridlock in Washington, and then the daily bedlam central to Trumpism. No matter how these subsequent events dwarfed the impeachment and subsumed our attention, maybe, just maybe, the long, unimpeded derivation of this drama, ever since, is partly the result of 1998 having been a year of unremitting crisis that we all endured but never actually resolved—a low-grade collective trauma, perhaps? I discussed this idea with psychologist Jack Saul, founding director of New York’s International Trauma Studies Program and author of Collective Trauma, Collective Healing. “Collective trauma,” he told me, “usually refers to the shared injuries to a population’s social ecology due to a major catastrophe or chronic oppression, poverty, and disease. While the events of 1998 in the United States do not fit neatly into such a definition, they may have led to some of the features we often associate with collective traumas: social rupturing and a profound sense of distress, the challenging of long-held assumptions about the world and national identity, a constricted public narrative, and a process of scapegoating and dehumanization.” Until recently (thank you, Harvey Weinstein), historians hadn’t really had the perspective to fully process and acknowledge that year of shame and spectacle. And as a culture, we still haven’t properly examined it. Re-framed it. Integrated it. And transformed it. My hope, given the two decades that have passed, is that we are now at a stage where we can untangle the complexities and context (maybe even with a little compassion), which might help lead to an eventual healing—and a systemic transformation. As Haruki Murakami has written, “When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Who were we then? Who are we now?

 ‘I’m so sorry you were so alone.” Those seven words undid me. They were written in a recent private exchange I had with one of the brave women leading the #MeToo movement. Somehow, coming from her—a recognition of sorts on a deep, soulful level—they landed in a way that cracked me open and brought me to tears. Yes, I had received many letters of support in 1998. And, yes (thank God!), I had my family and friends to support me. But by and large I had been alone. So. Very. Alone. Publicly Alone—abandoned most of all by the key figure in the crisis, who actually knew me well and intimately. That I had made mistakes, on that we can all agree. But swimming in that sea of Aloneness was terrifying. Isolation is such a powerful tool to the subjugator. And yet I don’t believe I would have felt so isolated had it all happened today. One of the most inspiring aspects of this newly energized movement is the sheer number of women who have spoken up in support of one another. And the volume in numbers has translated into volume of public voice. Historically, he who shapes the story (and it is so often a he) creates “the truth.” But this collective rise in decibel level has provided a resonance for women’s narratives. If the Internet was a bête noire to me in 1998, its stepchild—social media—has been a savior for millions of women today (notwithstanding all the cyberbullying, online harassment, doxing, and slut-shaming). Virtually anyone can share her or his #MeToo story and be instantly welcomed into a tribe. In addition, the democratizing potential of the Internet to open up support networks and penetrate what used to be closed circles of power is something that was unavailable to me back then. Power, in that case, remained in the hands of the president and his minions, the Congress, the prosecutors, and the press. There are many more women and men whose voices and stories need to be heard before mine. (There are even some people who feel my White House experiences don’t have a place in this movement, as what transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross abuse of power.) And yet, everywhere I have gone for the past few months, I’ve been asked about it. My response has been the same: I am in awe of the sheer courage of the women who have stood up and begun to confront entrenched beliefs and institutions. But as for me, my history, and how I fit in personally? I’m sorry to say I don’t have a definitive answer yet on the meaning of all of the events that led to the 1998 investigation; I am unpacking and reprocessing what happened to me. Over and over and over again. For two decades, I have been working on myself, my trauma, and my healing. And, naturally, I have grappled with the rest of the world’s interpretations and Bill Clinton’s re-interpretations of what happened. But in truth, I have done this at arm’s length. There have been so many barriers to this place of self-reckoning. The reason this is difficult is that I’ve lived for such a long time in the House of Gaslight, clinging to my experiences as they unfolded in my 20s and railing against the untruths that painted me as an unstable stalker and Servicer in Chief. An inability to deviate from the internal script of what I actually experienced left little room for re-evaluation; I cleaved to what I “knew.” So often have I struggled with my own sense of agency versus victimhood. (In 1998, we were living in times in which women’s sexuality was a marker of their agency—“owning desire.” And yet, I felt that if I saw myself as in any way a victim, it would open the door to choruses of: “See, you did merely service him.”) What it means to confront a long-held belief (one clung to like a life raft in the middle of the ocean) is to challenge your own perceptions and allow the pentimento painting that is hidden beneath the surface to emerge and be seen in the light of a new day. |||||


– After months of painstaking work in the sands of California, archaeologists have managed to restore a sphinx and other relics from a lost age—1920s Hollywood. The sphinx, one of 21 used in Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 movie The Ten Commandments, has been restored after it was excavated from California's Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. DeMille left an enormous set buried there, but what the San Luis Obispo Tribune calls the "Lost City of DeMille" started to be uncovered as sands shifted in the 1990s. The relic goes on display at a nearby cultural center today, and LiveScience notes that in humid conditions, working with the plaster sphinx archaeologists call Nora wasn't easy and she's not quite as good as new: There's a bullet hole in her stomach, as well as graffiti reading "May 1930," and her head—along with the rest of her top half—is still in the sands. Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center Executive Director Doug Jenzen tells the Tribune that after the first sphinx they tried to remove crumbled, they spotted what looked like a "giant white buffalo wing" sticking out of the sand and found Nora. He notes that other artifacts on display, including tobacco tins and "cough syrup" bottles that probably held bootleg liquor, show that a lot of people had a "pretty good time" making the silent film. Also on display: a blackened piece of toast from the film camp. "It's definitely not edible anymore," Jenzen says. The 10.5-foot-long sphinx body, the toast, and a sphinx head found during a previous excavation will be unveiled at a 1920s-themed party tonight, reports the Lompoc Record. (Relics from a much earlier age were torched during a Burning Man festival in Israel.)

Expand this summary.

The Roaring ’20s are coming back to the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center tonight, June 12, for a gala to unveil the body of a sphinx excavated from the long-buried set of Cecil B. DeMille’s epic silent film “The Ten Commandments.”

 Just 50 tickets were available at press time for the 1920s-themed event from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., when an all-new exhibit of artifacts, photographs and information about the movie will be opened at the center.

 Guests are invited to dress in 1920s fashions for the unveiling that will give attendees a chance to see the body of the sphinx, which is the centerpiece of the new permanent exhibit, courtesy of the Santa Barbara Foundation, before it opens to the general public, a Dunes Center spokesman said.

 But those who can’t make it to the unveiling tonight will get a second chance for an exclusive look at the sphinx at a Brunch With the Sphinx on Saturday.

 During tonight’s gala unveiling, “special announcements that will transform the public’s perception of the Dunes Center” will also be made, said Doug Jenzen, executive director.

 The gala will include jazz music by Sammy Labatista, light 1920s-inspired fare by A Passion for Food, 1920s-inspired cocktails and a chance to mingle with the archaeologists that excavated the set of “The Ten Commandments.”

 The first giclée in Steve Thomas’ “See America” series will be auctioned off during the gala.

 Just Looking Gallery in San Luis Obispo collaborated with the Dunes Center on a special limited-edition art release as part of the “See America” series of art deco-inspired travel posters relating to the dunes.

 The first in the series features a sphinx from “The Ten Commandments” perched near the ocean in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes and is now available for purchase, Jenzen said.

 Tickets to the Roaring ’20s Gala Unveiling at $25 per person can be purchased at www.dunescenter.org. Proceeds will benefit the fund to revamp nature education exhibits in the Dunes Center.

 Brunch with the Sphinx from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, June 13, will feature a light self-serve breakfast. Tickets at $10 per person are also available on the website.

 For more information about purchasing the sphinx poster, visit www.justlookinggallery.com. ||||| A special 1920s-themed unveiling party will be held Friday, June 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the center. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online at dunescenter.org .

 The center at 1065 Guadalupe St. in Guadalupe is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

 The Ten Commandments exhibit featuring a sphinx body and other artifacts will be on display at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center starting Saturday, June 13.

 Less than a mile south of the Santa Barbara-San Luis Obispo county line sits a blue house with a secret: Inside rests a 92-year-old headless sphinx.

 The plaster sphinx is a set piece left over from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film epic, “The Ten Commandments,” which was filmed in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in 1923. And now it lives in the unassuming Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center in Guadalupe.

 The sphinx was recently removed from the dunes as part of a $120,000 excavation project and will be unveiled Friday in a new exhibit featuring the 10½-foot sphinx body, customized artwork, a separate sphinx head from a 2012 excavation and artifacts such as tobacco tins, bottles and photos from DeMille’s film set.

 Lost in time

 DeMille chose the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes for the prologue of “The Ten Commandments” because of its similarity to the Egyptian desert. He constructed 100-foot-tall gates, four 35-foot pharaoh statues and 21 sphinxes; a temporary city camp also set up shop near the set to house the workers.

 Though the camp was marketed as “wholesome” in contemporary newspaper articles, artifacts from the recent excavation show that workers still managed to sneak in contraband, Dunes Center Executive Director Doug Jenzen said.

 “In reality, it looks like everyone was having a pretty good time,” he said.

 Jenzen said a number of Guadalupe residents also were enlisted as extras for the movie — the center has several photos from the filming that it is asking locals to look through to identify relatives or friends.

 After filming concluded, DeMille left the gigantic set out in the dunes for unknown reasons, even though he was under contract with Santa Barbara County to return the dunes to the state they had been in before filming, Jenzen said.

 Some speculate that he went over budget and couldn’t afford to disassemble and truck the large sets back to Hollywood. Others say he simply didn’t want it being used again in other films (a common practice in the movie industry at the time).

 Whatever the reason, the “Lost City of DeMille” was left to be covered up by the sands of time.

 A ‘buffalo wing’ in the sand

 In 1990, shifting winds uncovered parts of the set, and local historical and conservancy groups began a 25-year excavation of the site.

 In 2012, the Dunes Center and San Luis Obispo-based archaeological firm Applied Earthworks Inc. uncovered parts of a giant sphinx head, which it took back to the center’s museum for restoration and display.

 Initially, the center planned to return to the site to remove the rest of the sphinx’s body once it obtained more funding, Jenzen said.

 When they returned in October 2014, however, Jenzen and his team found that the winds had moved the sand and exposed the plaster statue to the elements, spreading pieces everywhere and making it difficult to handle them. When they attempted to pull the statue from the sand, the pieces crumbled, he said.

 “It’s just so sad when that happens; it just crumbles in your hands,” Jenzen said. “And then it’s frustration. It’s just a roller coaster of emotion.”

 Luck was on their side, however, when Jenzen and Burbank-based art restorer Amy Higgins noticed what looked like a “giant white buffalo wing” in the sand, he said.

 “It was just sticking out of the sand,” Jenzen said. “We pointed it out to the archaeologist and were like, ‘Hey, what is this thing?’ ”

 After some excavation, the group uncovered “Nora,” a roughly 101⁄2-foot section of one of the 21 original sphinx statues that was soon named after Jenzen’s late grandmother. A portion of Nora’s back leg had been sticking out of the sands — the “buffalo wing” Jenzen and Higgins had spotted.

 Nora on view

 Nora looks a little worse for wear compared with the shining white spectacle she once was. Through the cracks and plaster, a bullet hole is evident in her stomach, as well as some graffiti that says, “May 1930.” Her head and front legs are still somewhere under the dunes.But that doesn’t lessen the excitement for Higgins, who has spent the past year painstakingly piecing Nora back together for the exhibit.

 “I hesitate to say we’ve ‘restored’ her,” Higgins said as she pulled back a plastic tarp covering the sphinx body last week. “Restore implies that you are going to see something looking brand new, like we would take it back to its primo condition in 1923, but that’s not what we wanted to do here. We wanted it to look like an artifact.”

 The rest of Nora may still be underneath the sands, and Jenzen said he hopes to get back out there in October and excavate the top half of the sphinx before it can be exposed to the air like the other excavated sphinx.

 To do that, the Dunes Center is looking for about $85,000 to fund the next phase of excavation.

 In the meantime, Nora and several other artifacts from the site — including tobacco tins, “cough syrup” bottles, a piece of preserved burnt toast from the film camp, the 2012 restored sphinx head and several photos from the film set — will be on display at the Dunes Center starting Saturday. The new exhibit will also feature art-deco themed travel posters created by artist Steve Thomas.

 The center will hold a 1920s-themed unveiling party for the new exhibit on Friday.

 “It’s really great,” Jenzen said of the project. “Even though (the set) is a replica of Ancient Egypt, it’s, you know, our own local version of Ancient Egypt. It’s a piece of the local history.” ||||| After spending more than 90 years in the sandy dunes of Guadalupe, California, a majestic plaster Hollywood sphinx, created for the 1923 blockbuster silent film "The Ten Commandments," is making its 21st century debut.

 Researchers excavated the fragile plaster of Paris sphinx from the dunes in 2014, and let it dry for several months before art restorers used Elmer's Glue to piece it back together. It's now housed at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center in Southern California, and goes on display for the public tomorrow evening (June 12).

 "It's been pretty phenomenal," said Doug Jenzen, the executive director of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center. "We're putting the final touches on the exhibit right now." [See Photos of the Old and Refurbished Hollywood Sphinxes]

 The sphinx and its companions were the brainchild of director Cecil B. DeMille and his film crew. The silent movie had an enormous set to show the grandeur of Pharaoh's City, which was lined with 21 regal sphinxes, each standing 35 feet (11 meters) tall when they were on their pedestals.

 Artifacts left by the crew suggest they had a good time on the set while making the movie. Archaeologists found tobacco tins and medicine bottles — the latter likely a ruse that carried moonshine because "The Ten Commandments" was filmed during America's Prohibition Era (1920-1933), when alcohol wasn't allowed, Jenzen said.

 After filming ended, the crew apparently left the movie set to the elements. The statues were weathered by the rain, fog and wind and eventually buried by the sand on the ever-shifting dunes.

 "In the process of putting [the sphinx] back together, the art restorer also found graffiti on it that said 'May 1930,'" Jenzen told Live Science. "It corresponds to all of the photos we have of people in the 1930s going out to the dunes and posing with these Egyptian statues that are sticking out of the sand."

 The researchers also found evidence that people used the sphinxes for target practice, Jenzen said. They also uncovered a burned piece of toast, likely from an uneaten 1920s sandwich.

 "Somehow this piece of toast made it through the elements of being exposed," Jenzen said. "It's definitely not edible anymore."

 Sphinx restoration

 Artifacts stay better preserved under dry desert conditions. But Guadalupe is naturally humid, giving researchers a unique challenge.

 "The minute the plaster statuary is exposed to the humidity in the air, it turns to mush and crumbles," Jenzen said. "So you need to have a team of people there who are able to pull the sand away and excavate it all simultaneously."

 The team works to repair damage from more than nine decades in the desert. Credit: Dunes Center, Guadalupe, CA.

 But hiring a large crew of people is expensive; the small team involved only had time to excavate part of the sphinx — half of its chest and hind legs. [Photos: Uncovering Sphinxes from 1923 'The Ten Commandments']

 They also excavated it in a very California-like way. They wrapped the plaster in foam and pillows to protect it, and the placed it on plywood that had surfboards underneath it.

 "The surfboards acted as sleds," Jenzen said. "It's an ecologically sensitive area and we couldn't have any cars or vehicles on it."

 They let the partial sphinx sit inside for several months, letting it dry out and shrink to its original size. Then, restorers spent about five weeks piecing the chucks together with Elmer's Glue, largely because it's reversible, said Amy Higgins, an art restorer who worked on the sphinx.

 The sphinx was in about 50 pieces, and she called "the fragility of it" the most challenging part. But now it sits about 10.5 feet long, 4.5 feet high and 3.5 feet deep, (3.2 by 1.4 by 1 meters).

 In the meantime, researchers took a trip to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, and ended up looking through about 1,500 photographs that DeMille had taken of the set so they would have a better idea of the sphinxes' production, Jenzen said.

 "There's one picture that we found, it's kind of funny. It's a bunch of guys going to work one morning out in the dune, and the whole dune was just littered with sphinx parts."

 The new exhibit will show photos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the sphinx body, and a sphinx face and paw.

 After seeing the exhibit, enthusiasts may also want to see "The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille," a new movie about the making of the movie by Peter Brosnan, Jenzen said. They can also see a paw of another sphinx that the researchers mailed to the U.S. Department of the Interior's POP! Exhibit in Washington, D.C., he added.

 Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. |||||


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I'm sure you remember having staring contests with your friends as a kid. For whatever reason, our nine-year-old selves thought it was great fun to lock eyes with other kids for long stretches of time and just sit there. Silently. The first person to break eye contact lost the game, which meant it was so tempting to look in every other direction. What if you missed something major while staring at that weird kid from your science class? Like an ice cream truck? Or a new episode of SpongeBob SquarePants ? Or Santa Claus coming to your house IRL and hand-delivering your presents? All these thoughts ran through your mind during staring contests, but you stuck to your guns and emerged victorious. (Unless you were me, of course. I lost staring contests every time.)

 Gigi Hadid , on the other hand, is a staring champ. She is a top model after all; "smizing" is kind of a requirement for the gig. If you don't believe me, though, behold this video of Hadid literally staring into a camera for four consecutive minutes. It'll shake your fourth grade self to the core. Hadid truly is the queen of eye contact.

 And she's also one of Glamour 's 2017 Women of the Year ; she joins an impressive class that includes Nicole Kidman, Solange Knowles, Patty Jenkins, and Maxine Waters. Be sure to watch the live stream of the Women of the Year Summit, which takes place on November 13, to learn more.

 Related Stories:

 Gigi Hadid Just Revealed What's in Her New Maybelline Collection ||||| Published on Nov 1, 2017

 See your past, present, and future in Gigi Hadid's eyes. The supermodel was named one of Glamour's Women of the Year for 2017.

 Executive Video Producer/Director: Chiara Clemente, Sarah Lash, Tanya Selvaratnam

 Director of Photography: Lisa Rinzler

 Glamour Woman of the Year Gigi Hadid: http://bit.ly/2h0JrGH

 Gigi Hadid hasn’t just taken off—she’s taken over. At only 22, she’s racked up both commercial success (Victoria’s Secret, Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue, a collection with Maybelline New York) and industry cred (the cover of Vogue, walking the Tom Ford show). Ask anyone who knows her, and they will quickly praise Hadid for her incredible work ethic—and most of all her kindness. And while a previous generation of models typically kept quiet, Hadid, who studied criminal psychology for two years at New York City’s The New School before pursuing modeling full-time, understands the power of the audience she’s built and has spoken out about issues from gun control to human rights to women’s personal safety. “I want to be the person who always uses my platform to share what I’m passionate about,” she says. Her followers—36 million and counting on Instagram—are listening.

 Still haven’t subscribed to Glamour on YouTube? ►► http://bit.ly/2gYlQqe

 Gigi Hadid Stares at You For 4 Minutes | Glamour ||||| Glamour

 There’s a lot of talk in media these days about “pivoting to video,” the corporate-jargon catchphrase for what happens when a digital media organization lays off a bunch of journalists because it decides video is the future of web content and/or cheaper than paying writers. Glamour and parent company Condé Nast are no strangers to the attendant dilemma of figuring out how to adapt a business model that once worked well for print publications to a digital-first marketplace. In its latest salvo in the war for clicks, eyeballs, and engagement, Glamour appears to have skipped pivoting to video and invented a new tactic: pivoting to performance art. Now that longtime editor Cindi Leive is out the door, why aspire to be a fashion magazine when you can be a Marina Ambramović installation instead?

 The magazine posted a video to its website on Wednesday of Gigi Hadid staring into the camera for four minutes. If you’re thinking that surely there’s more to the video than that, let me stop you right there: There’s not. It is just Gigi, looking straight ahead, sometimes blinking and smiling, for a full four minutes. (And if you don’t know who Gigi Hadid is, in brief: She’s a model, member of Taylor Swift’s #squad, older sister to Bella “If Homeboy Comes Through in These …” Hadid, and a member of the Extended Kardashian Universe.)

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 Glamour touted the video as “weirdly mesmerizing,” adding that it slowed it down to heighten the eerie quality. “People should be putting this on their giant TVs during holiday parties instead of fireplace b-roll,” said Lauren Lumsden, executive producer at the magazine, in a statement. While I would love to attend a holiday party where a video of Gigi Hadid, or indeed any member of the Hadid family, plays in the background on an endless loop, I can’t echo the magazine’s contention that the video inspires any relaxing feelings or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. The blog post that accompanies the video calls Gigi Hadid a “staring champ,” but she doesn’t strike me as particularly talented at staring. For one thing, she blinks a bunch, so she’s not going to win any staring contests. There’s not much to read into her blank expression, though the woozy mood music playing over the video fills in some emotion. There’s not even a wind machine to change up how her hair is falling. The most exciting part of the video is a little over halfway through, when you think she’s going to open her mouth. She doesn’t. Classic fake-out. (Spoiler: At three minutes in, she really does open it, though! Nice!) I can name about 50 celebrities I would rather watch stare at the camera for four minutes, and in each of those cases, I would rather still watch the celebrity actually do something. Sorry, hypothetical Oscar Isaac video: We’re going to need some dialogue.

 The Gigi video is probably the result of some enterprising video editor pulling the footage out from a photo shoot and turning it into an inside joke among staffers, but it’s just as fun to imagine that the editors at Glamour were so devoid of ideas that they asked Hadid to sit there and do nothing for a while on camera. It’s a good representation of how clueless many magazines are about how to produce good videos for the web and how equally baffled they are by nontraditional stars like Hadid, who, though a model, has become stratospherically famous for “doing nothing,” and therefore need not—and perhaps cannot—entertain audiences with more conventional talents and charms. This is how backward our world is, now: A video of a Hadid doing nothing makes a weird sort of sense. Of course! Brilliant! |||||
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– "Watching Gigi Hadid stare at you for four minutes is weirdly mesmerizing." That's the conclusion Glamour comes to, at least, upon the release of a video it produced that features Hadid. Staring, and occasionally blinking, in slow motion. For four minutes and nine seconds. And that's it (though she does laugh near the end, prompting one person to comment on YouTube, "3:53 melted my heart and make my eyes wet?"). At Slate, Heather Schwedel looks at where this fits in to the buzzy "pivot to video" that's underway in the media world, with more and more publications dumping journalists and shifting their resources to producing video. Her conclusion: "This is how backward our world is, now: A video of a Hadid doing nothing makes a weird sort of sense. Of course! Brilliant!" Schwedel speculates that this started out as an inside joke born from photo-shoot footage, but writes, "It’s just as fun to imagine that the editors at Glamour were so devoid of ideas that they asked Hadid to sit there and do nothing for a while on camera." And she sees the whole thing as reflective of "how clueless many magazines are about how to produce good videos for the web." But, she concedes, maybe this is a "step up," at least compared with the "glorified slideshows" that have become a popular approach to creating cheap videos. At Man Repeller, Amelia Diamond writes that she did get sucked in by the video, but the credit may not go to Hadid. "Could you have watched anyone for this long with the right song? I think maybe I could have. It’s strangely voyeuristic."