Monica Lewinsky: A Contemporary Queen Esther?
by Anne Roiphe
MONICA LEWINSKY won't have to perjure herself to admit that she's a
Jewish girl. That, at least, has already been admitted into evidence.
The remaining big question: Is this good for the Jews, or bad?
In some Jewish circles, Monica is being referred to as Queen Esther, who was the prettiest girl in Persia and won the beauty pageant, becoming the queen
of the realm. She whispered into the ear of her king words that undid
Haman, the enemy of the Jews. Single-handedly, though the hand might not have been the pertinent body part, she saved the community from tragic
disaster. So, to the Jewish right-wing, Monica Lewinsky is a real Purim
pussycat.
But if this were really so, Monica as Esther would have had to
tell Bill Clinton not to follow through on the Oslo peace accords and to soften his attitude toward Netanyahu-the-Good, who has the best interests of the Jewish people at heart as he tries, with might and main, to follow through on his promise to Daddy to stall the peace and drive the compromisers into the sea.
It is hard to imagine how Monica could have gotten the opportunity to
persuade the President of this version of events, given his reported
sexual preferences. But maybe she could have mumbled her message or left
it with Betty Currie.
The other part of the right-wing Esther analogy works if she brings us
Mr. Clinton's head in which case, she's more Judith than Esther. Judith, with her feminine wiles, got an invitation to the tent of an enemy
general, where, while he was passed out drunk, she cut off his head. The analogy serves the anti-Oslo Jewish claque only if you assume that
President Gore and subsequent regimes will be more rightist, less
pacific, more inclined to let the status-quo quo on in the turbulent
Middle East.
Biblical references aside, Monica Lewinsky is apt to enter
history, if not alongside Freud, Marx and Einstein then at least nearby, as a kind of Bathsheba who babbles to a wired friend. Come to think of
it, David may be Mr. Clinton's real role model. David, of course, played the harp, while our President plays the sax. David, it must be said,
didn't need a Kenneth Starr.
Monica Lewinsky is no Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman or Golda Meir, but
perhaps she is the Elle magazine version of the same. A Jewish female
politician for the era of talk shows, in a time when celebrity makes its own rules and, in order to get any respect, you have to have a sexual
secret so large it causes an earthquake when revealed. Monica Lewinsky
is a prime-time tell-all; at least, she will be as soon as her lawyer
cuts a deal. That is bad for the Democrats, but I'm not so sure it's bad for Jewish girls.
The public doesn't seem mad at her. How could they be? She is not an
ideologue, a conspirator of dark purposes. She s a chatty girl, excited
to be near the flames of power. It's almost adorable the way she glows
in the famous Presidential-hug tape. Her pleasure lies not in reforming
education or health care. Her good spirits are strictly personal: Wow,
look where I am and who just clasped me to his breast. If one thinks of her as a Democrat groupie, it all becomes clear. She is a kind of
Democrat-head with good connections.
One can certainly imagine her
popping out of the cake at the bar mitzvah party. She bubbles, she
exudes, she is plump and juicy and her teeth are very white, and as she
hops from car to plane, up the steps into her father's arms, we see her
as still an awkward, self-conscious girl, sexual and childish at the
same time, a vulnerable seductress, a long-in-the-tooth Lolita, a player sent out on the playing field before her bones have all matured, a
Private Benjamin before basic training, a bruised and slightly overripe
plum. She may be a harlot like Paula Jones, or a mistress like Gennifer
Flowers, but she looks like a naove latke, over her head in applesauce.
The public understands.
It could have been bad. We've just more or less fought off the slur of
the Jewish princess, and here comes a Jewish girl making such a
spectacle of herself that she might bring down an entire Administration. She lacks no creature comfort; she buys her hats at DKNY. But she's not
so much a girl of the department store as a girl of the State
Department. She expects to gain power not through her own hard work but
through her capacity to woo those in power. In that sense, she is just
an old-fashioned girl, like the one who married dear old Dad and
divorced him in the mid-70s.
Monica is the collective revenge of the
daughters pressured into going to law school when what they really
wanted was to stretch out on the casting couch. Instead of early
marriage to a man of promise, she takes an internship just about as far
as it can go. That makes her a 90s girl who wants the ear or some other
organ donation from the President instead of a diamond ring. So even by
the most prejudiced and cliched of standards, Ms. Lewinsky escapes (just barely) the label of Jewish Princess. In fact, she s not a princess at
all. She s a pea that the President was unfortunately able to feel under his mattress, or in close proximity.
Alan Dershowitz would likely think that Monica was good for the Jews.
Jews, not the self-hating kind, can be proud of her importance in the
drama of the day; and, shedding outdated attitudes of keeping one's head down (shande in front of the goyim), they can boast of the fact
tha Monica makes delicious Jewish girls look like the fruit of the month. If the President wants one, won't everyone else follow suit? The Jews of
older generations who cringed when the local newspaper ran the Jewish
name of a small-time bookie won't understand how younger Jews will now
rejoice. At last they have a Wallis Simpson wannabe of their own. The
glory days, before the recent Asian wave of immigration, when the
Westinghouse scholars were all Jewish have gone the way of Milton Berle, but here we have a Jewish girl with tabloid potential, a rival to
Princess Di and Jackie O.
I don't believe in Jewish princesses. I think they exist only in the
heads of frightened Jewish boys and envious gentiles. Two contradictory
stories have always been told about Jewish women. They are frigid; so
say the tellers of Jewish princess jokes. They are really hot; so say
the rumors in outerborough neighborhoods, in the small towns across
America. Frigid is not what comes to mind about Monica Lewinsky. She s
no queen of cool. But in an America hooked on sex, it s far better to be considered cooking than cold. Finally, we have a Jewish girl who really
needs a good lawyer like Johnnie Cochran. If she hires him, it would not only be good for the Jews (everyone would think we were smart), but it
would be an effective balm for our notorious black-Jewish troubles. Also on the positive side, if Jews can produce a witness in support of Paula
Jones, can a flock of Jewish quarterbacks be far behind?
As for Linda Tripp: Betrayer, battle-ax, dried apricot, witch hunter and busybody, she is very bad for the