FRIday, MARCH 1, 2002
The portly pepperpot is back
It's probably a leap of logic requiring a degree of Byzantine thinking to blame Monica Lewinsky for what happened on Sept. 11, but there is a school of thought that says America's most famous intern since Dr. John Carter of "ER" contributed to the problem.
At the very least, we can say Lewinsky violated the Hippocratic Oath -- the part that says first, do no harm.
Editor's note: Mike, since when are White House interns bound by the Hippocratic Oath?
Publisher's note: Forget it, he's off on one of his rants.
No, Lewinsky wasn't a doctor. What she was -- and is -- is one of those people who became a celebrity because we seem to have forgotten the difference between famous and infamous. The only reason we even know her name is because Bill Clinton was too weak to control his urges and there were plenty of folks who hated him enough to make sure we all got a blow-by-blow description.
I'm not sure if Lewinsky ever even read a book, except maybe wistful glances while skimming "Thin Thighs in 30 Days," but because she was America's most famous slattern -- a slightly more couth way of saying "slut" -- she "wrote" a No. 1 best seller.
That's bad enough, but if she had had the good sense to go away at that point, we probably could eventually have forgotten her. But no. This week Lewinsky is all over HBO with a television special, "Monica in Black and White," in which she finally gets to tell her side of the story.
As if I care what she had to say.
"I do have remorse," she says. "But when I talk about my remorse, it seems very self-centered to people.
Hey, Monica. I've got five words for you. Get thee to a nunnery.
Editor's note: Mike, with all the problems historians are having with plagiarism lately, shouldn't you attribute that quote?
All right, all right. I stole it from Shakespeare. Henry IV, to be exact. But it applies here every bit as much as it did when the Bard of Avon wrote it. By the way, if Willie was the Bard of Avon, was his wife an Avon lady?
Actually, the HBO special comes across as something of a valentine to Lewinsky, with few tough questions and an audience that is friendly if not enraptured.
"This is really neat and special for me," she says.
Gee whillikers, Monica. It's awfully neat and special for us too.
If one thing is apparent in all this, it's that she still doesn't seem to see how big an effect her sexual escapades had on the country. She basically wiped out the final two years of the Clinton administration, which might please Rush Limbaugh but which certainly wasn't good for the country.
One example was a report from Vice President Al Gore in 1997 warning that our nation's airports were sadly unprepared to deal with potential terrorist attacks. Nothing ever was done with that report; the president was too busy defending himself from Ken Starr and the folks who wanted to remove him from office for what happened with Lewinsky.
Now that may be a fairly tenuous link to Sept. 11, and as much as I dislike Starr, I really can't blame him for what happened. Still, there's no denying that Clinton had to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours on trying to remain in office. Even half of those hours devoted to more important issues than the stained blue dress would have been good for the country.
All that is in the past now, and there's nothing that can be done about any of it. The right may still love bashing Clinton for his globe-trotting, celebrity-schmoozing lifestyle, but the fact is our 42nd president is only slightly more relevant to the political debate these days than Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter.
Yet as disinterested as I am in hearing about Clinton and what he's doing, I'm even less interested in seeing Monica's porcine face and her blowsy body on television. She had it exactly right a year or two ago when she said she doubted she could ever have a normal relationship, because how could a young man ever bring Monica Lewinsky home to meet his parents?
So why does she keep seeking rehabilitation in the eyes of the public? Is she channeling the spirit of Richard Nixon?
I'll tell you the venue in which I would be interested in seeing Monica perform. The Fox network announced this week that it was going to televise a card of celebrity boxing matches. Danny Bonaduce (Danny Partridge) would battle Barry Williams (Greg Brady) in a three-round fight, and Amy Fisher would go at it with Tonya Harding in another one.
The executive making the announcement said there would be one more fight on the card that had not yet been scheduled, and I'm thinking this would be the proper way for Monica Lewinsky to make another television appearance.
She could fight L.T.
Editor's note: Lawrence Taylor? The former all-pro linebacker? He'd kill her. That's too much even for Fox.
No, but I like the way you think. The L.T. I had in mind was Linda Tripp. In her HBO special, Lewinsky called her friendship with Tripp "a sick relationship," so it's obvious there's more than a little hostility between the woman the New York Post called the "portly pepperpot" and the woman who ratted her out to Ken "The Porno" Starr.
That's a fight I would pay to see. Forget Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. I want Monica and Linda in a WWF-style cage match, with only one winner. To the winner goes that bizarre sort of celebrityhood we seem to treasure these days.
The loser marries O.J.
