A L S O+.T O D A Y

The big baby
By Joan Walsh
Forget "The Death of Outrage." If the right really wants to win the Culture War, it should pass out copies of "Monica's Story."

Starring Monica Lewinsky, as herself
By Liesl Schillinger
She was universally reviled -- until the public got a chance to hear her speak and, now, to read her version of events

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"The Handyman"
Reviewed by Ruth Henrich
In this L.A. novel, an unassuming handyman muddles his way to artistic genius while repairing the lives of lonely wives and other lost souls

T A B L E+T A L K

It's almost spring, and books about baseball are a hot topic in the Books section of Table Talk

B O O K C A S E

A new service
for book lovers

R E C E N T L Y

Journey to the center of a race
By Fetzer Mills, Jr.
Randall Kenan talks about the seven-year odyssey that led him from Martha's Vineyard to Alaska in search of the truth about black life in America
(02/24/99)

Writing on Air
By Geoff Edgers
David Halberstam talks about his new book, "Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made."
(02/18/99)

I know why the untuned Thunderbird pings
By Todd Lappin
Maya Angelou delivered the inspirational speech to the National Automobile Dealers Association. And guess what? It worked
(02/09/99)

Black but not like me
By Jill Nelson
A journalist slouches into a party celebrating the black elite -- whatever that is
(02/04/99)

"It's the Stupidity, Stupid"
By Harry Shearer
In this excerpt, Shearer wonders if we should hate the people who hate President Clinton
(01/29/99)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Browse the
Books feature archive

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MONICA'S NIGHTMARE | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4
- - - - - - - - - -

It's easy to dismiss Morton as a glorified scandalmonger, to see Princess Diana's confidant and biographer as a man who could never be worthy of the hallowed title "journalist." But during the Lewinsky scandal, how many members of the "respectable" media have acted as journalists -- that is, looked at what the facts are instead of what they've decided they are? On "Meet the Press," Morton endured the condescension of Russert as well as of Time's Michael Duffy. When Russert asked whether Lewinsky really believed, as she had told Britain's Channel 4, that she was the victim of a right-wing conspiracy, and Morton insisted that there was indeed such a conspiracy, Russert and Duffy, wearing the smirk that media insiders have worn since last January, shook their heads in disbelief at his naiveté. But having taken the popular media view that Clinton's own recklessness did him in (or, as Russert once put it, that the president was "evil"), they aren't about to question Starr's ties to Paula Jones' lawyers or the funding of her lawsuit by the right-wing Rutherford Institute. (It took months for the media to begin questioning Whitewater witness David Hale's ties to Richard Mellon Scaife's Arkansas Project.)

There are plenty of instances of that sort of laziness in "Monica's Story," and at least one of what amounts to treachery: Morton describes the false story that ran on the front page of the Washington Post on Jan. 21, 1998, in which Susan Schmidt reported that "sources" had claimed that Lewinsky could be heard on Tripp's tapes talking about how President Clinton and Vernon Jordan had directed her to lie under oath. That Schmidt had no independent confirmation of the claim didn't prevent the story from running. And Morton makes a very tight case that Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was the willing pawn -- or willing accomplice -- of Lucianne Goldberg and Linda Tripp. In this cozy instance of quid pro quo, Isikoff's sniffing out the Kathleen Willey story (which Jones' lawyers had conveniently alerted him to) dovetails with Tripp's discovering Lewinsky and Clinton's affair, the subsequent revival of a deal Tripp had discussed with Goldberg for a tell-all book and Goldberg's insistence that, for the sake of credibility and advance publicity, the book's revelations be teased in a national publication. (When Monica was scheduled to meet United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson for a job interview in his Washington hotel suite, Tripp, insisting she was being set up, persuaded her to change the meeting to the hotel dining room. Also in the dining room was a Newsweek reporter Isikoff had sent to verify Tripp's claim that Clinton was misusing his position to obtain a job for Lewinsky.)

It may be hard to think of someone who writes damsel-in-distress books as a muckraker. As in "Diana: Her True Story," Morton paints the picture of a passionate, romance-starved and naive young woman who undergoes a cruel education in power at the hands of an unfeeling man (Starr more than Clinton). At times Morton tries too hard to dispel Monica's negative public image -- he opens the book with a description of her quietly knitting a scarf in her new Beverly Hills apartment and closes with her talking about how much she misses the lover she nicknamed Handsome. Often Morton lapses into the language of a romance novel: "She was leaving the person she loved, the one man who had occupied her every waking moment and invaded her restless nights for the last two years -- the President of the United States." And in detailing Monica's blend of insecurity and neediness, he traffics in the fuzzy reassurances of self-help books. There is, as some of the negative reviews have noted in dismissing the book, an emphasis on Monica's predilection for bursting into tears and her preoccupation with her weight. But when Morton describes the young Monica feeling like an outsider in Beverly Hills because she wasn't thin and blond, it's hard not to see a harbinger of the revulsion that has often characterized the public's sentiment toward her. And if Morton didn't lay out the emotional state that propelled her into her affair with Clinton, he couldn't show her as the perfect trusting patsy for both Tripp and Starr.

N E X T+P A G E+| What man could resist her?