Views You Can Use!
The newsweeklies are choosing up sides in Flytrap. Time is Monica's
Magazine. Ms. Lewinsky's increasingly creepy mouthpiece, William Ginsburg,
cooperates with Time reporters--witness this week's long, generally
sympathetic piece on "Monica's World," which portrays Ginsburg as her
"surrogate dad" and describes, presumably on some authority, the ex-interns own
thoughts (e.g., "You didn't do anything wrong!"). But Ginsburg has frosted
Newsweek , which is perceived to be in Linda Tripp's camp. A short
critical Newsweek piece on Ginsburg and his "appetite for the high life"
notes that he "declined ... to talk to Newsweek ".... Newsweek ,
meanwhile, is Paula's Magazine. Indeed you could plot the array of competing
newsmagazine allegiances:
Newsweek
Linda Tripp
Paula Jones
Kathleen Willey
Vernon Jordan
Time
Monica Lewinsky
Bill Clinton
Julie Steele
Vernon Jordan
There's nothing necessarily sinister about these match-ups. It's a natural
ecological phenomenon. If one mag has locked up the sources in one camp--the
journalists' supply of food, as it were--it's only sensible for a competing mag
to quickly secure the competing food source. Readers should simply be aware, as
they weigh what they are told, that each magazine has an incentive to
please--or at least not totally piss off--its primary allies....
Which is not to say that Newsweek still won't try to throw Ginsburg a
few bones in the hope of gaining his cooperation, or that Time won't
skillfully let him make a fool of himself. In "Monica's World," for example,
Ginsburg says of his client: "I was there at the beginning. I kissed that
girl's inner thighs when she was six days old--I said 'Look at those little
polkas '." What's that all about? Chatterbox is getting Freudian
overload ... Ginsburg is also heard boasting "I truly am the avuncular Mr.
Ginsburg," and he condescendingly predicts that "the American people will let"
President Clinton "limp to the end of his term." Mighty avuncular of you, Mr.
G!
WOULD YOU BELIEVE HE LUSTED IN HIS HEART?:
Slate's
editors are among those who have been privileged to receive the White House
trial-balloon explanation of Clinton's "complicated" friendship with Monica
Lewinsky. You know, he may have had an ... er, avuncular , implicitly
sexual and probably inappropriate relationship that was, alas, never actually,
physically consummated ... Call it the "modified limited hangout" strategy
...
CHATTERDUMP: Oliver North, running for president? Yes! declare
Republican rumormongers ... And people say Chatterbox has no right-wing
sources! ... Why is Kenneth Starr wasting time waging a big fight with Clinton
aide Bruce Lindsey over whether Lindsey's testimony is protected by "executive
privilege"? Does anybody really think that even if Lindsey is required to
answer every question, he'll actually incriminate Clinton? At best, he'll say
"I don't recall"... A joke that produces consistent hilarity at Washington
parties: Why did Clinton have to get blowjobs from Monica Lewinsky? Because Sid
Blumenthal hadn't joined his staff yet! ... But seriously, Chatterbox wants to
defend "Grassy Knoll" Blumenthal against those who trash him for giving advice
to his friends the Clintons while he was still a writer for The New
Yorker . Blumenthal was writing for an opinionated magazine, after all, if
not for a New Republic -style "magazine of opinion." He gave his opinions
to his readers. He gave his opinions to the Clintons. Where's the conflict? If
the Clintons call to get Chatterbox's advice, they'll get it!... The problem,
in principle, would come if Blumenthal was giving different opinions to the
Clintons and to his readers (something he's not accused of) or if Blumenthal's
readers were somehow misled into thinking they were getting a dispassionate
perspective. But any New Yorker subscriber who didn't realize that
Blumenthal was massively ego-invested in the Clintons' success just wasn't
paying attention ... Chatterbox hopes this stout defense won't stop Blumenthal
from ordering the Clinton critic-intimidation team to investigate Chatterbox's
private life. What fun! What publicity! ... For the record, Chatterbox has
never done anything avuncular, though it tried once in college ...
