I can’t imagine that I have to fill any of you in on the gory details of l’affaire Lewinsky, since the media saturation level has begun to make the OJ Simpson trial look like a small claims case. Every tabloid in New York has Monica’s painted moonface staring up at me; every television station carries ForniGate (or one of the other feeble puns they’ve come up with) as their lead story. I turned on the television the night the story broke and I haven’t turned it off since – after all, Ted Koppel warned Nightline viewers in a grave tone of voice that they should prepare themselves for a frank discussion of oral sex. Let’s review. The words “oral sex” came out of Ted Koppel’s mouth. Does this alone make the story worth following? Awww yeah. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have some problems with the story, and with the coverage of the story.

As of this writing, I cannot decide whether President Clinton actually did receive a tongue lashing from Monica Lewinsky. I voted for Clinton twice, more because of the grimness of the alternatives than because I believed a single word out of his mouth. I also find Clinton attractive, in a sleazy, sordid, David Lynchian sugar-daddy barbecue-flavored Corn Nut kind of way. In fact, I had a sexual dream about Clinton once, in which I went to his hotel room and tried to fix his VCR, and he came up behind me and put his arms around me and started kind of dancing me around the room and kissing my neck, and I distinctly remember asking him, “What if Hillary comes in?” and he told me, “Don’t worry, she won’t come in. She never comes in.” Then I woke up. The next day, I made the mistake of telling a friend of mine about this dream, and she said, “Ewwwwww, Al Gore is much cuter,” and then we got into this huge debate about whether we would rather sleep with a high-ranking White House official that we knew for a fact had venereal diseases up the ying-yang or a high-ranking White House official that we suspected had rigor mortis.

Okay, medium-sized and highly disturbing digression that probably just gave my poor father a heart attack. Anyhow, I don’t know what I believe yet. On the one hand, I find it difficult to believe that anyone in our current cultural climate would act that stupidly and self-destructively, particularly when that person lives his life in a constant and unforgiving spotlight to begin with. Clinton has parked the pink Cadillac up a side street before. He has admitted as much. And he probably had the opportunity with Monica Lewinsky. But even if he did have the opportunity, why on earth would he want that helmet-haired heifer? The leader of the free world, who can theoretically have any woman he wants, has an affair with not a young and NUBILE twenty-one-year-old, but a two-time FAT CAMP GRADUATE with a fondness for berets and musical theater. How does that work? (I find Paula Jones’s accusations ludicrous for the same reason. If the governor of Arkansas really did tell his troopers to arrange his assignations, would he really give them orders like, “Git me one a them friendly gals with loose morals, the kind that MIGHT SUE ME after I get elected to the PRESIDENCY, maybe one a them TRAILER TRASH TYPES, and by the way, make sure she has snaggly teeth and a bad triple-process home perm and lots of thet thar Wet-n-Wild Tammy Faye makeup, cuz I really like that FRIZZY GERBIL WITH JET-LAG look, and by no means git me a PURTY gal, I LIKE THEM UGLY VINDICTIVE ONES”?) Does Monica Lewinsky really expect us to believe that Clinton would risk his presidency for HER?

I understand that Clinton’s story has some inconsistencies. Apparently, he met with her ten days before her deposition, and I can’t really come up with a reason why he would have a sit-down with a former intern if he hadn’t had something else with that former intern in the past. I can’t come up with a reason why Vernon Jordan would help Lewinsky get a job. I don’t know what Linda Tripp’s tapes say. But I do know two things.

First of all, I know that Monica Lewinsky has a weight problem, which leads to me believe that she has some issues – issues with approval and pleasing authority figures, and issues with her femininity and sexuality. These issues might lead her to bend to the will of a charismatic leader, even to submit to his sexual demands. But they might also lead her to fantasize about a charismatic leader; they might lead her to misinterpret the words and gestures of a charismatic leader, particularly one as inordinately fond of hugging everyone in sight as Clinton; they might lead her to exaggerate casual contact. These issues might make her seek out older people as friends – and frankly, her friendship with Linda Tripp strikes me as more bizarre than the sexual allegations. What twenty-four-year-old woman “hangs out” with a forty-eight-year-old woman? What twenty-four-year-old woman calls her forty-eight-year-old friend two or three times A DAY and divulges details of a top secret affair WITHOUT USING NAMES? Well, a twenty-four-year-old desperate to please authority figures might do that. A twenty-four-year-old who has struck up a friendship with the client of a former Nixon operative might easily find herself persuaded to check in regularly, to divulge more and juicier details, until she winds up living out a fantasy that her older friend has encouraged, might do that. This twenty-four-year-old wouldn’t.

This leads me to my second point (and my father’s second heart attack), namely that I once had an affair with a guy twice my age, and president or not, it just doesn’t play out this way. When a man has an affair with a much younger woman, the woman has the reins. Not only can Lolita waltz off with a man her own age any time she wants (well, maybe not in Lewinsky’s case, but whatever), but if the older man has a wife, Lolita can get him over the barrel even harder. In my case, the man did not have a wife, but he did have a ring through his nose engraved with my name – he did whatever I said; he paid for everything; he waited by the phone for me to call; he cheerfully tolerated my most princessy obnoxious behavior. He had to – he didn’t look like Woody Allen or anything, but I could have easily replaced him with a younger model, and we both knew it. Now, if Monica Lewinsky really did carry on with Clinton, she would have gotten herself a better billet than the Pentagon. Or else. And maybe, just maybe, she decided to get herself a better billet regardless.

In my mind, most of the evidence suggests – at least to me – that Lewinsky and Tripp and Tripp’s oh-so-scrupulous agent Lucianne Goldberg saw their opening and they went for it. But the evidence also suggests that Kenneth Starr needs to find the world’s biggest stepladder and GET OVER HIMSELF. Maybe I missed something, but I thought that Starr was appointed Special Prosecutor in order to investigate Whitewater, but apparently he also gets to look into everything from the Paula Jones case to Lewinsky’s allegations to whether the Clintons remembered to give Buddy and Socks a flea dip. Um, Ken? MIND YOUR OWN GODDAMN BUSINESS, YOU SLAVERING SELF-IMPORTANT DRONE. I don’t know how this guy got the job, but somebody needs to take it away from him before he accuses Clinton of murdering JonBenet, covering up the UFO landing in Roswell, and fixing the 1919 World Series. Starr seems determined to prove that Clinton fucked up somehow, and I think he plans to lift up every single solitary rock until he finds a bug that can nail Bill’s ass to the wall. What a wonderful country, America, where the Chief Executive is guilty until proven innocent.

And what if he did it? What if William Jefferson Clinton did receive oral favors from Monica Lewinsky? Well, that makes him a pig. Nothing more, nothing less. If he told her to lie about it under oath, that makes him a criminal, but dipping his wick in a different vat of wax doesn’t make him a crook. It doesn’t make him any less capable of running the country (although, in the event of nuclear attack, he might have some difficulty sprinting for the safety of Air Force One with his pants around his ankles), and it doesn’t make him much different from a lot of men in this country. Unfortunately, Kenneth Starr equates “kind of disgusting” with “felonious.” But if he did do it, I would love to know what the hell is going through Hillary’s mind. They probably have some sort of arrangement whereby he gets to bag ugly interns and she gets to . . . she gets to . . . what does Hillary get to do? Have her hair redone every few weeks? Talk about health care on C-SPAN2? Maybe she suggests the legislation and then Bill drafts it or something. And people call me cynical. I hope not, because if people look up to this woman as a symbol of strength and she actually represents the depths of cynicism, something has gone seriously wrong. If the press believes that the Clintons’ marriage constitutes anything close to anyone else’s business, something has gone seriously wrong. If the President and the First Lady have to maintain a facade of marriage in order to please a morally tyrannical (and hypocritical) public, when in fact they haven’t had sex WITH EACH OTHER in years, something has gone seriously wrong.

One final thought: if Clinton did it, he should admit it. Immediately. After all, if he didn’t tell Monica to lie, he didn’t commit a crime, and if he didn’t commit a crime, he should fight Ken Starr to the last round of powder. He shouldn’t have had an intern between his legs, but he shouldn’t have his tail there either.

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