Great Rewards for Bad Behavior

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 29, 1999 | by Jamie Dettmer

So the influence money can keep rolling on just like the great Mississippi without a serious snag ... and without an independent counsel in sight. And everyone is making money -- that is, everyone in the nation's elite chattering class. Just run down the list and see how a tawdry American tragedy -- the Lewinsky affair -- is being turned into handsome payoffs for the bright things in the media, politics and the law. Swarms of 24-hour instant "news" channels have been able to establish audiences on the back of their soap-opera coverage of "Sex in the Oval Office." Grand Washington law firms can expect bumper bonuses this Christmas and, down the legal feeding chain, out-of-work attorneys and former failed federal prosecutors don't need to advertise -- they can just wangle a spot on MSNBC's Inter-Night or CNBC's Rivera Live. Spin doctors never have been in greater demand. Newspapers are selling. Even lawmakers with radio faces are getting plenty of exposure on prime-time television.

Then, of course, there's Monica herself and Britain's literary semiprostitute Andrew Morton, Princess Diana's malleable-for-money biographer and now Lewinsky's glorified mouthpiece. "Our poor little Monica," as Lewinsky's hapless first lawyer, William Ginsburg, dubbed her inaccurately a year ago, has become a business in her own right (her manipulative mom must be over the moon) and has joined the media hit parade of circus performers such as Joey Buttafuoco, John Wayne and Lorena Bobbitt, Tonya Harding, et al. Hell, this is America of the 1990s, where miscreants with a tarty quirk and bizarre twists in their stories can expect reward and celebrity if they only listen to their spin doctors.

A New York Times article on Feb. 28 was instructive, explaining as it did the "selling of Monica," how she is being neatly packaged and molded both by the book Monica's Story and her advisers to assure she remains an entertainment property. Most of the media are happy to abide by the fiction -- the Times didn't even blow a raspberry. Any rebellious media outlets, of course, can kiss an "exclusive" goodbye. Monica is to be taken seriously -- the buzzwords are elegance and dignity. And talking with the obliging Barbara Walters in her first major TV interview, Lewinsky indeed looked like a million dollars -- what with a makeover that toned down her makeup, a major teeth-whitening job, slicked-back hair and a black pantsuit designed to cover the lumps. It was a pity, though, that actual words were required from her -- despite all the rehearsals and strategic cutting, they quickly undid the bid for elegance and dignity.

Take her gloss on showing off her thong underwear and baring her back-side to the president. According to Monica, it wasn't anything much. Just a "small, subtle flirtatious gesture." Subtle? Maybe on Manhattan Beach. With self-important jargon that seemed straight out of Overeaters Anonymous, she claimed to have learned a lot, dismissing her selfish, out-of-control behavior by emphasizing that "at this point, I was 23." Yes, she apologized to the first lady at the start, but during the rest of the two hours she showed scant sympathy for the wronged woman -- it didn't even occur to her how awful it must be for Hillary Rodham Clinton to learn that the president gave Monica a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the first gift Clinton gave to his wife during their courtship days.