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OK, they were never actually on. In fact, the crazed Canuck comic-turned-MTV star has never dated the infamous former White House intern. But a tongue-in-cheek item in The Edmonton Sun that noted Green and Lewinsky had been spotted together at an L.A. party started a rumour that spread like lice in a submarine.
The item appeared in last week's Buzz Stop, The Sunday Sun's cheeky look back at entertainment news from the previous week. Under the heading "Monica Lewinsky and Tom Green an item?" the story said that comic actor Dan Redican had seen Green and Lewinsky at the backstage party after a Kids in the Hall live show in L.A.
We told you so!
In the short item, which ironically began, "This is how rumours get started, and Buzz Stop is only too happy to assist in the process," Redican mischievously said it appeared Green had "squired" Lewinsky to the event.
Talk about tossing a match onto a pile of dry lumber.
"It started in The Edmonton Sun and spread like wildfire," Green's manager Howard Lapides told The Sun yesterday.
During Green's appearance last week on CBS's The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn, Kilborn asked Green if he was dating Lewinsky, citing The Sun as the source of the information. Apparently thinking it was simply a joke, Green played along and cryptically denied comment.
The wink-wink "rumour" suddenly became transformed into fact as other media outlets picked up the story and repeated it as truth.
"It just went from there," said Lapides. "And now it's developed to a point where it's just not funny."
Green and Lewinsky "were not linked in any way, shape or form," he said.
Lapides said the Sun item, which was never meant to be taken seriously in the first place, was picked up by "a variety of U.S. major press outlets" including cable network MSNBC, and became the topic of hot discussion on the Internet.
The Canadian shock comic, who got his start on an Ottawa cable station and then the Comedy Network, even brought up the rumour himself in an e-mail newsletter to his fans, sent out yesterday.
"I guess some reporter from The Edmonton Sun saw me standing with Monica at the Kids in the Hall show and now all of a sudden I'm dating her," Green wrote in the e-mail.
"The reporter should have asked a few questions and gotten a few facts," wrote Green. (With all due respect to one of our favourite comedy exports, Green obviously didn't read the item, as it doesn't suggest a reporter was actually present at the party.)
Met previously
Green went on to explain that Lewinsky had dated a writer on MTV's The Tom Green Show a few times, and thus had met Green before. The night of the party, Lewinsky and her date met up with Green and others at the fete.
"Andy Dick (of NewsRadio fame) was with us, too," Green wrote. "I am also not dating him.
"Anyway, the only reason I'm trying to set the record straight is because I just met this girl a few weeks ago and I really like her ... and don't want her to get mad at me and think that I'm dating Monica."
It's not the first time in recent weeks that Green has fended off a false rumour. A persistent myth that the shock comic dressed up as Hitler and crashed a boy's bar mitzvah made the rounds in the media and on the Internet last month. Green insists the incident never happened and that he'd never stoop that low for a laugh.