Berlant spent a couple years co-editing “Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest” (NYU Press) with Duggan, an associate professor of American studies and history at New York University and a longtime scholar and activist around issues of sexual politics. The book contains 18 essays that link the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to patterns in American and global public life. Highlights include “Moniker,” which looks at the incident through a prism of Monica Lewinsky’s Jewishness; “The Face That Launched a Thousand Jokes,” a study of why Americans were so quick to make fun of Linda Tripp; and “Sex of a Kind,” in which the author revisits the discomfort broadcast journalists clearly felt when discussing the more tawdry details of the story.
NEWSWEEK’s B. J. Sigesmund asked Berlant to page through the book and provide quick summaries of its sometimes funny, sometimes incendiary, sections.
NEWSWEEK: Before we get to the individual chapters of your book, tell us how people reacted when you told them you were working on a book of essays about the scandal.
Lauren Berlant: There tended to be two responses. One was to be excited. Everyone had to have an opinion about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. It allowed them to restate their opinion. On the other hand, because it was a scandal about people’s disappointment in the political process on a number of levels, some people didn’t know why academics would want to spend time on something so banal and trivial. The topic raises ambivalence as much as the crisis did.
How did you approach the book?
We started with a question: What was this scandal a case of? All the essays try to answer that question. Central to our project was the thought that the ways the media talked about sexuality and judged sexuality in terms of [Bill] Clinton, Hillary [Clinton], Monica, and Paula Jones were narrow and unself-questioning. We thought it was important to reexamine the question of what sex means in the public sphere.
Clinton and his policies are examined in many of the essays.
Bill Clinton is a man of enormous contradictions. The essays in the book not only open up questions of how it’s possible to think about sexuality, but they also try to address the contradictions expressed by the scandal. For example, when the right talked about Clinton in terms of sexual morality, they characterized him as their opposite. But when it came to questions of policy issues related to economics and the military, there was much more continuity than difference.
What was the most important moment in the whole drama, in your mind?
The [press] conference in which he said he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” I watched it at the actual time. I knew immediately that the shaking of the finger was a bad idea. It was oppressive and overdramatic. I just knew that was a mistake.
How so?
The relationship between “that woman” and the finger meant he was going to take her down. He was going to use a strategy of diminishing her in order to save himself. It might seem that he was simply and pathetically trying to cover his increasingly voluminous shame. But at the same time, he wasn’t wrong to think that the media would not have been able to deal rationally with any other kind of response from him. Because they were always looking for waffling, he had to resort to hyperbole.
Your book has very harsh essays devoted to the media coverage of the scandal.
The magnifying glass of the media made the stereotypes even louder. In the end, it was bad for women, bad for feminists and bad for arguments for a less repressive America. It intensified stereotypes against Southern white people, Jewish people, people of color and working classes of all races.
In the book’s introduction, you write that “the analytic challenge posed by the scandal is that so much of its implication seems ‘obvious.’ On the other hand, the whole thing defies common sense.” What do you mean?
Because this is a scandal about sex and lies, it seems, from some perspectives, that there’s no mystery to who did what to whom. The only question would be what you thought about the event. On the other hand, so many different interests and ideologies were animated by the scandal that many events seemed just amazing as we watched them unfold. For example, and Eli Zaretsky talks about this in his essay [“The Culture Wars of the 1960s and the Assault on the Presidency: The Meaning of the Clinton Impeachment”]: it’s widely thought that the public still esteemed Bill Clinton, even if they thought he was morally compromised. And the fact that the public was said to be against impeachment seemed to make no difference from the point of view of the political process. That’s an example of something that defies common sense. That’s what we tried to examine in the book.
Let’s talk about a few chapters in particular. This one’s sure to get some attention. It’s about Linda Tripp and it’s called “The Face That Launched a Thousand Jokes.”
That essay asks why it is that Linda Tripp’s face became an occasion for moralizing and joking. And in particular, it asks why people are so averse to the ugly. The author, Laura Kipnis, is especially interested in ugliness.
Chapter 5 is about a porno film.
Yes, central to this essay [“The Door Ajar: The Erotics of Hypocrisy in the White House Scandal,” by Simone Weil Davis] is a pornographic film titled, “Deep Throat 5: The Quest,” whose subtitle is “Slick Willy Rides Again.” The author asks what’s behind the pornographic interpretation of Clinton’s sexuality? Is it a hunger for an untarnished presidency, or a dig at sexual hypocrisy?
I watched a lot of TV news during the scandal, so I laughed a lot reading “Sex of a Kind” by Sasha Torres.
Yes, this is a brilliant essay. It does two things. It tells the history of the TV code that regulates the “hard news,” which says TV news should appear to be “rational, neutral and disembodied.” And then it hilariously narrates the discomfort of the broadcasters who suddenly had to sound like gossip scandal sheets.
What about “Moniker” by Marjorie Garber? Great title for a chapter.
Hee-hee. Another great essay. It tells the history of the American fascination with Jewish female sensuality and loudness, which Monica and Monica’s body represented.
What does Chapter 15 tell us about the Starr Report that we don’t already know?
Ann Cvetkovich’s essay [“Sexuality’s Archive: The Evidence of the Starr Report”] asks, “What’s the relationship between one’s sex life and the rest of one’s life?” She uses the open doors of Clinton’s office-as he was having sexual encounters with Monica-as a way of tracking that problem.
Last question. Would you like to meet Monica?
No. I’m interested in studying her. What would meeting her tell me? She’s nice. She’s not nice. She’s smart. She’s not smart. Like Paula Jones, she was a figure in a political battle that didn’t have a lot to do with her.
title: “An Affair To Remember” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-21” author: “Veronica Blum”
For the police, Condit’s admission was a major breakthrough. Though law-enforcement officials had repeatedly said that they had no evidence linking Condit to Levy’s disappearance or to any crime, they were convinced Condit was being evasive about his relationship with Levy–and that made them suspicious of what else he might not be telling them. Investigators finally concluded they needed to confront Condit directly about the nature of his “friendship” with Levy. They hoped the answer might shed light on her whereabouts and state of mind–critical clues that might help them solve the case. Now, says Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer, the authorities are “very comfortable” with Condit’s answers in the 90-minute interview, and insist he is not a suspect.
Why did the congressman finally relent? His hand was forced by an intense, carefully orchestrated pressure campaign led by the Levys–and later joined by law enforcement–that may have left him with no place to hide.
Condit’s surprise confession ended a week of intense warfare between the congressman and Chandra’s parents. Once publicly respectful toward Condit, the Levys had turned on him in recent weeks, berating him in interviews for not speaking out about his relationship with their daughter. Not satisfied with the slow progress of the police investigation, the Levys turned up the heat further. Aided by a savvy Washington lawyer, Billy Martin, and a powerhouse PR firm, Porter Novelli, the family went on the assault, depicting Condit as a man with secrets to hide. The Levy camp helped fan the story of Anne Marie Smith, a 39-year-old flight attendant who said she, too, had had an affair with Condit. Smith claimed that Condit’s lawyers tried to get her to sign an affidavit swearing that she and Condit were not lovers–but that she refused. (Condit denies asking Smith to mislead authorities.)
Then, last week, Chandra’s aunt Linda Zamsky came forward with another shocker, telling investigators that Chandra had long ago confided all about her relationship with Condit. She said Condit had taken great care to conceal their meetings. When Chandra came to see him, he warned her never to allow anyone to see her getting off the elevator at his floor. When they went out to dinner together, usually in the Virginia suburbs, she would have to leave his apartment first and hail a cab. Then, a few minutes later, he would race out of the building, face hidden under a baseball cap, and duck into the waiting taxi. Through Zamsky, the Levys once again called on Condit to give “any information he may have that can help investigators.” In yet another high-profile move, the family hired Hollywood PR man Michael Levine to set up a $100,000 reward fund–hitting up movie stars for money to boost the visibility of the case.
Condit, in hiding from the pack of reporters who relentlessly trailed him, defiantly refused to discuss Levy. Sources close to the congressman described him as being in a state of “denial” about the scandal closing in around him. Condit rebuffed pleas from close political advisers to acknowledge the affair. “He absolutely refuses to comment on something that he believes should be protected by his zone of privacy,” said one source. Not to be outgunned by the Levys, Condit hired a power team of his own, including top-dollar defense attorney Abbe Lowell and PR whiz Marina Ein, to spin his side of the story.
The stonewalling so irritated the D.C. cops that they, too, worked on ways to rattle Condit into talking. Late last week police officials loudly proclaimed that they weren’t happy with Condit’s responses in the first two interviews, and cautioned that if he didn’t come forward, they would call him in for a third. “We are not satisfied,” warned Gainer. Investigators also hinted that they would demand access to Condit’s apartment to conduct a full-scale forensic search. (Investigators have already extensively searched Levy’s apartment and shipped off bags of evidence, including bed linens, to the FBI crime lab.)
The police were also ready with more formidable tools of intimidation. Though the authorities continued to classify Levy’s disappearance as a missing-persons case, and not a crime, last month the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington used a sitting grand jury to subpoena telephone, bank and other records. The office also assigned a veteran homicide prosecutor, Heidi Pasichow, to oversee the investigation. All this activity sent a signal to Condit: if he didn’t play ball, he might find himself called to testify before the grand jury–under oath.
Condit apparently got the message. The police were relieved at his decision to admit to the affair. Now comes the much harder part. Investigators admit that Condit’s revelation leaves them no closer to figuring out what happened to Chandra Levy. To handle the many possible scenarios police are exploring, investigators have broken into teams, each pursuing a different path. Last week the police all but ruled out suicide, believing it unlikely that Levy’s body would have gone undiscovered for so long. “The odds of her taking her own life diminish as time goes on, because you can’t kill yourself and then bury yourself,” said Police Chief Charles Ramsey.
A more likely theory: that Levy was the victim of a violent street crime. There is no shortage of them in Washington, and the police have sometimes mishandled such cases. Just last month prosecutors tried four men for grabbing Vidalina Semino, a 54-year-old hotel waitress, off the street as she walked to her car not far from Chandra’s neighborhood. According to police, the men forced Semino into the trunk of their car and then, after stealing her ATM card, shot her and dumped her body in the woods several miles away. The police investigation did not go smoothly. At first, one of the officers misidentified Semino as being black, delaying identification of the body and stalling the probe. They then arrested the wrong man, who sued the city for $60 million. (In the end, two of the men were convicted; the cases of the other two ended in mistrial.) In another recent case, police arrested the wrong man in the murder of a Gallaudet University student and overlooked key evidence in the case. As police struggled to solve the murder, NEWSWEEK has learned, Ramsey called a top FBI official and asked for help. “I don’t have confidence in my department’s ability to handle this,” he told the Feds. (Assistant Chief Gainer says those problems have been corrected.)
Ramsey didn’t wait nearly as long to ask the FBI for help in finding Chandra Levy. So far, though, the Feds haven’t had any more luck than the locals in cracking the case. “The real issue is the body,” says one law-enforcement source. “We have no clues. This case may not break until someday, somebody will be out walking in the woods or out fishing, and they’ll find what we’re looking for.” All of Washington may be working overtime trying to find Chandra, but the cold truth is that even Condit’s admission isn’t likely to end the Levy family’s nightmare any time soon.
