Monica Lewinsky has written an essay in the new issue of Vanity Fair. She says: “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress.” She adds: “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”

She does say that the affair– yes, they had sex, even though Clinton said it was otherwise– was “between two consenting adults.”

Lewinsky writes how the episode changed her life. “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position…. The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.”

After the scandal, Lewinsky traveled and received a Master’s Degree from the London School of Economics.

But her history was always an issue on her resume. “I was never ‘quite right’ for the position. In some cases, I was right for all the wrong reasons, as in ‘Of course, your job would require you to attend our events.’ And, of course, these would be events at which press would be in attendance.” The result is that she’s “managed to get by (barely, at times) with my own projects, usually with start-ups that I have participated in, or with loans from friends and family.”

Well, this is special: the Motion Picture and TV Fund will not have their next “The Night Before” event at the Beverly Hills Hotel next February. They’re citing the owner’s anti-gay policies. But the Motion Picture Home is still a pretty bad facility with overpaid executives and not enough proper care. This is a good diversion for them. Hilarious.

Yes, the Sultan of Brunei, owner of the Dorchester Collection hotels, is anti-gay everything. That’s deplorable, of course. But it’s funny to hear overpaid Bob Beitcher ($800K a year) taking high moral ground. The home in Woodland Hills just went through a bruising period during which they sought to close their long term care facility. They forced residents out, and incited protests that went on for three years.

More recently they were the subject of a scathing report about conditions and health care in 2012 that has never been fully addressed.

But they’re very worried about where their photo op will be next February, and where celebrities can pick up their gift bags.

Now, a more important question: what happens to the Night of 100 Stars on Oscar night? Do they move too? And a dozen or more other events? Does all of Hollywood pull out of the BHH? And does the Sultan care?  The people at the Four Seasons must be jumping for joy!

As for “The Night Before”: go on over to the Beverly Hilton. The welcome mat is out!

Tonight: the embattled James Beard Foundation gives a bunch of awards to restaurateurs. On Friday, they handed out their journalism and media awards. I’m told the food was lousy, which is funny.

Not so funny: the Foundation is a not for profit, 501 c 3. Set up in memory of the famed chef James Beard in a townhouse on West 12th St., the Foundation lists its mission “to celebrate, nurture, and honor America’s diverse culinary heritage through programs that educate and inspire.”

Ten years ago, in 2004, the Foundation was embroiled in a huge scandal over misappropriation of funds. Members of the board resigned. It was a big mess.  The New York Times reported that “an internal audit had found that the former board president, Leonard F. Pickell Jr., had misused hundreds of thousands of dollars in foundation money.” Of $4.7 million in income, only $29,000 was used for scholarships. He was later convicted of fraud.

Susan Ungaro, former editor of Family Circle magazine, replaced Pickell in 2006.

The group’s Form 990 for 2012 suggests not much has changed.

These numbers should make everyone attending Monday night’s event a little queasy:

Total revenue in 2012 was $7 million.

Their expenses for 2012 came to a whopping $6.7 million

Salary of president Susan Ungaro: $335,910

Amount doled out in scholarships: $168,955.

Thirty eight culinary students received a total of $161,215 in scholarships. Two students divided $7,740 for travel and culinary study grants.

Another $70,000 was divided between the Mario Batali Foundation ($20,000) and one named for French legend Paul Bocuse ($50,648). Back in 2004, Batali admitted to the New York Times: “I vote on best chef Southeast with perhaps never having eaten at any of the contending chefs’ restaurants, which in truth results in little more than a popularity contest.”

Even the event planner for the 2012 James Beard Awards, David Bowen of Philadelphia, got more about twice as much as  the students; he received $296,000.

Indeed total salaries for 2012 broken down this way:

$628,746 to current officers.

Other salaries and wages: $1.5 million

Other employee benefits $242,767

Payroll taxes: 153,360

“Other”: $922,074. That’s almost a million dollars for unspecified something. Spatulas?

And the “other” didn’t include “office expenses.” They were listed as $400,836. That’s a lot of napkins.

The buzz didn’t last long. Michael Jackson‘s newest posthumous single, “Love Never Felt So Good,” is a flop. Tonight the single, released on May 1st, is at number 21 on iTunes. It got as high as number 4 and then dropped quickly. The single was supposed to be the signal charge for a marketing plan that launches the “Xscape” album on May 9th. It even featured a vocal by Justin Timberlake recorded 31 years after Jackson made the original demo with Paul Anka.

This could be a problem.

The “new” album consists of 8 tracks that Jackson never finished and never intended to be released. His estate took the tracks, and instead of going back to Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien, Jackson’s producer and engineer during his period of greatest success, they turned to a bunch of contemporary producers and artists. They also let John McClain, co-executor of the Jackson estate, have a hand in the production as well.

The result was a blip on the pop scene over the last four days. Most estates do not let their artist’s unreleased work be completed by anyone. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison– none of them have been subjected to that.We never had disco versions of their unreleased material. There was never John Mayer on tracks with Hendrix.

I can think of two instances where work was complemented or realized. One was the Beatles, with Yoko Ono’s permission, enhancing “Free as A Bird” and “Real Love” with the remaining Beatles. The other was Natalie Cole adding her voice and making a duet with her father, Nat King Cole, on “Unforgettable.”

If the Jackson estate had just released the demos as they were, it might have been interesting for an archive. Even if Paul Anka had been involved, since wrote the song with Jackson in 1983, that might have worked.

Instead, outside of the hard core fanatic Jackson fans, buyers didn’t flock to iTunes. They smelled something was up.

It’s interesting because a couple of years ago, the “Michael” album featured unreleased songs. Some of them were written and produced by Eddie Cascio. The fans refused to believe it was Michael’s voice. They killed the project even though it was their hero actually singing. There are other Cascio songs, and we may never hear them.

There were also legit unreleased tracks from the “Bad” anniversary album. They were terrific, and could have been promoted. They weren’t.

Three years ago, the Jackson estate announced a $200 million deal with Sony for Jackson records. So they’ve got to come up with something. But as I wrote in 2009, and still stands now, there isn’t that much in the vault. So “Xscape” was cooked up. With the single more or less rejected, it remains to be seen how the album– with its re-do of America’s “A Horse with No Name”– will be received.

Stand by.

The White House Correspondents Dinner is over, thank god. President Obama was very funny but hindered by technical problems. Joel McHale was not so funny. I don’t know how it played in the room, but on TV McHale was raunchy. Most of his jokes were strained groaners.

Worse: the coverage on CNN. Who were those people? The broadcast was just awful, as bad as Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin on New Year’s Eve. CNN’s efforts at comedy and camaraderie really don’t work. If they could get some sophisticated, funny people. Don Lemon keeps on insisting McHale was McHilarious. Eesh.

Cheers to Barbara Walters. She landed an interview with Donald Sterling‘s mistress, who calls herself “V Stiviano.” Then Walters lets her off the hook, asks few follow up questions. and misses many opportunities.

For one thing: who is this woman? Her name is not “V Stiviano.” That’s a corporate alias she uses for some kind of T shirt and baseball cap line. Her real name is Maria Perez or Monica Gallegos. Where is she from? How did she earn money before she met Sterling?

Second: Did she sell the tapes to TMZ? She said a friend did. How ridiculous. Walters asks nothing about the lawsuit filed by Rochelle Sterling against Stiviano on March 7th. Did that prompt the sale of the tapes? Why and how was Stiviano taping Sterling in the first place?

Walters asks one of her favorite questions: what are the biggest misconceptions about? One of Stiviano’s answers: that she’s a whore. Pretty much, that’s what Rochelle Sterling accuses her of in that lawsuit– of receiving from Sterling expensive cars, a condo, and $1.8 million. Walters ignores all that.

Walters retires in 2 weeks from ABC News. It may be just in time.

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EXCLUSIVE Get out the smelling salts! Alexa Ray Joel, ever a trooper, is coming back to Cafe Carlyle. Alexa fainted on her last night at the Cafe back on April 14th, cutting short her triumphant two week gig.An ambulance took her over to Lenox Hill Hospital.

Now the talented daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, I can tell you, will return to Cafe Carlyle from June 24th to June 28th and pick up where she left off. She could start with a cover of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy.”

As it turned out, Alexa’s fainting spell was much ado about nothing– just a common faint. But nerves and exhaustion will do that to you. She was otherwise very funny every night, and her musicianship comes naturally. She’s very gifted. If anything, she should be writing a Broadway musical. She can do it.

PS All those crazy stories about plastic surgery were ridiculous. She had her nose done. Big deal. Nothing else. Let’s get back to the music.

Hilarious and like something from what could be a sequel to “SoapDish”: James Scott, who’s the popular, young, British leading man/villain of “Days of Our Lives” has quit the soap after eight years. NBC must be wondering what the  heck is going on. Is this a contract negotiation?

What happened? Earlier this spring, Scott went to Peru, hung out with shamans, and smoked hallucinogenics. He revealed this in an interview in which he also called obsessed soap fans “fucking idiots.” Cue “Bungle in the Jungle”:

Scott told a soap opera site:

“I just got back from Peru. I spent six days in the jungles of Peru doing Ayahuasca with the shaman.  It was the single most positive experience of my life. Ayahuasca is this hallucinogenic.  I sat in a tent, in a hut, in the jungle, on the amazons with three shaman blowing tobacco smoke into my crown, realigning my chakras and my energy, while I hallucinated for four to six hours.  I mean, this is all hard to explain.  It’s very spiritual and very interesting.  This is a medicine that the people of South America have been using for years to have a relationship with a higher consciousness.  It sounds wacky when you say it, but it was truly the most important thing I have ever done.  I came back a very different person.”

The TODAY show recently did a piece on this LSD-like medicine (it’s legal in Brazil) after Lindsay Lohan talked about drinking Ayahuasca tea after a miscarriage. Rock star Sting wrote about trying Ayahuasca on a trip to Brazil years ago in his excellent memoir, “Broken Music”:

“Ayahuasca has brought me close to something, something fearful and profound and deadly serious.”

The start of a Ayahuasca trip involves immense physical pain, severe vomiting, and other unpleasantness. Then you have a lot of revelations. Apparently Scott’s was to walk away from a full time job as the star of a soap opera. Scott is not exactly Cary Grant, but on daytime he is. Maybe once the Ayahuasca wears off he’ll back at his station bedding blondes and doing dastardly things.

And these are the day of our lives! Indeed!