Word: washingtonization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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APRIL 1999 Monica is invited to attend the glitzy White House correspondents dinner in Washington as guest of Vanity Fair magazine, prompting official harrumphing about how much more dignified the occasion used to be. Old-timers grumble that in the old days, they not only didn't invite presidential mistresses to the dinner, but they didn't even write about them, even when they were famous movie actresses and Mafia go-betweens. Clinton threatens not to attend the dinner but relents at the last minute, after Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter promises to keep Monica under the table...
...story line--Linda tapes Monica, Linda plays tapes to Lucianne, Lucianne urges Linda to go to Kenneth Starr--Lucianne emerges as a type known to everyone, for better or worse. ONE WOMAN'S PLEASURE IS THE PRESIDENT'S PAIN: LUCIANNE GOLDBERG REVELS IN FRENZY SHE HELPED START, read a Washington Post headline early on in the scandal. "I'm not going to say that I did this because I'm some great Christian," she told the New Yorker during the scandal's first week. "I did it because it's f__ing fascinating! I love dish! I live for dish...
...press and the Washington establishment have been taking a beating for getting this one so totally wrong. But that's not fair. What about you? Suppose someone told you a year ago that the big story of 1998 would be a sex scandal involving the President and that it would reveal a great "disconnect" between Washington and the rest of the country. Then suppose you were asked to guess who was on which side. Put aside your own views on Presidents, oral sex, interns, perjury and so on. Would you have predicted that Washington would be outraged and the rest...
...what is that something we learned? Poor Sally Quinn had her head chopped off for trying to explain, in the Washington Post, why Washington was so outraged by the President's behavior. Her bold suggestion that Washington has moral standards offended almost everybody. An equally intriguing question is why the rest of the country hasn't been outraged. The easy explanation--so easy that someone (me, unfortunately) raced early on to offer it in these pages--is that we've become sophisticated or decadent (take your pick), like the French...
...language of politics can't describe or even acknowledge. They may think Hillary doesn't love him, or they may think all men have their brains in their crotch, or they may think Monica made it too easy, or they may have no theory at all. But while Washington boils the narrative down to issues--adultery, lies under oath--Americans who come to the story out of human interest rather than professional obligation are more likely to fill it out with details derived from their own life and the lives around them...