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Jewish World Review Oct. 30, 2000 / 1 Mar-Cheshvan, 5761

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter
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Consumer Reports


Clinton sure can pick 'em

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- So Paula Jones has decided to pose for nudie pictures. I, for one, am deeply, pathetically despondent over it. I really did think, when I was spending weekends and evenings working on her behalf, that I was not only trying to expose a lying, felonious creep, but also was defending the honor of a good, sweet, innocent -- if somewhat naive -- girl.

I'm fairly confident that President Clinton's legacy is secure; it's Paula's that shot. This will cause no one to doubt Paula's credibility, but it does put a new spin on the kind of girl she is.

Of the three "elves" who worked on Paula's case secretly and entirely pro bono, I'm the only one ever who talked to her, and talked to her for hours and hours in order to help draft her responses to interrogatories. I completely believed she was the good Christian girl she made herself out to be in the press. I was doing this not just to expose Clinton, but for her.

Paula was my Rosa Parks. Here was this totally powerless nothing -- no money, no status, no family connections, no Ivy League education, no important friends, no fabulous great looks, no worldly accomplishments. Just a nobody who had dignity and self-respect taking on the most powerful man in the universe.

You may not recall -- Paula's new friends at Penthouse and other liberal media used to continually brush over this point -- but the catalyst for her suit was an Arkansas state trooper's claim in a national magazine that Paula had performed a sexual act on then-governor Clinton in a hotel suite. When this appeared, she quickly declared that the governor had in fact asked, but she had declined. She demanded an apology from Clinton to prove it. When he refused to apologize, she filed suit to get her reputation back.

That's what she said anyway, to the entire world, over and over again, in numerous interviews and press statements. Indeed, she was unwavering on this point. Paula may not remember that once her reputation mattered more to her than money, but there are hundreds of articles and television transcripts in the public record confirming this fact.

Her interview with ABC's Sam Donaldson soon after her suit was filed in 1994 is typical. She said: "The reason I filed a complaint is because I asked for an apology and I didn't get an apology, and instead he called me pathetic and a liar. And I felt that to get my reputation back and to do what's right, and to get my good name back, I had to file a suit against him."

Not only that, but she insisted money was not the point, telling Donaldson (among others): "(I)f there's any money whatsoever left over after the legal expenses are paid, that will go to a charity."

So I don't know. It's crazy, but, along with a lot of people, her lawyers might well have misunderstood the fact that she doesn't give a damn about her reputation and just wanted the money. That's what she's recently taken to the airwaves to proclaim, anyway.

She says she had to throw her reputation away because she needs the money to pay for her children's college education. (They are now 4 and 8 years old.) Perhaps someday that will compensate them for having a mother who's a Penthouse centerfold.

Not only that, but she is denouncing her lawyers for leaving her "only" $151,000 of an $850,000 settlement. Now I always thought it was idiotic for people to chide Paula for demanding money damages for what Clinton did to her. That's how we settle disputes in this country. No duels, no firstborn, no involuntary servitude -- you commit a civil wrong, you pay money. Still, it was Paula who repeatedly renounced any interest in the money.

So what happened to that charity?

Paula surely was given more than a million dollars in free legal assistance from an array of legal talent she will never again encounter in her life, much less have busily working on her behalf. Some of those lawyers never asked for or received a dime for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work performed at great professional, financial and personal cost to themselves. Others got partial payments out of the settlement. But at least they got her reputation back.

And now she's thrown it away.

Throughout the Clinton sex saga, everyone kept saying, "There are no heroes in this story," which was completely wrong -- if Paula had been what she claimed to be. She used to be a hero in a David and Goliath conflict. She used to have dignity and nobility and tremendous courage. Now she's just the trailer-park trash they said she was.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. You may visit the Ann Coulter Fan Club by clicking here.


Up

10/26/00: Gore's 'Nam flashbacks
10/23/00: Courting George Orwell
10/20/00: The three faces of Al
10/17/00: Must Christian conservatives be fascists?
10/13/00: Oil good; Dems bad
10/10/00: Al Gore: Serial fibber
10/06/00: Sigh of the crook
10/03/00: So who's the 'dumb guy' now?
09/29/00: Don't do drug legalization
09/26/00: I'd burn down my neighbor's house
09/22/00: Democrats worship the money shot
09/19/00: Other film footage we'd like to see
09/15/00: Bush can name the **^%*
09/12/00: The Supreme Court ratchet
09/08/00: Our mistake -- keep polluting
09/05/00: Bubba protects and serves
09/01/00: AlGore's 'going out of business!' tax plan
08/29/00: Bush's compassionate conservatism
08/25/00: Space alien tells funny jokes in bathtub
08/22/00: Dems view world only in black and white, not in color
08/18/00: Another Damascus Road conversion
08/15/00: The viagra cotillion
08/11/00: The hand-wringing Hamlet from Hartford
08/07/00: The Democratic party's white face
08/04/00: Hillary's potty mouth
08/01/00: The hole in the story
07/28/00: Cheney's detractors can't get their story straight
07/25/00: AlGore: Elmer Blandry
07/21/00: The tyranny of non-objectivity
07/18/00: The state's religion
07/14/00: Reform it back
07/11/00: Keating for veep
07/07/00: Gore invented 'Clueless'
07/04/00: The stupidity litmus test
06/30/00: O.J. was 'proved innocent' too
06/27/00: The last guys 'proved innocent'
06/23/00: Serious Republican candidates don't get serious press
06/19/00: They weren't overzealous this time
06/16/00: Evolution of the strumpet
06/13/00: Actual journalistic malpractice
06/09/00: I did not have sexual
relations with that ... man!
06/06/00: IRS turns Bubba's screw
05/30/00: Too corrupt to be an Arkansas lawyer
05/26/00: Choose liberalism
05/24/00: Violence against coherence
05/22/00: Developmentally disabled Republicans
05/16/00: For womb the bell tolls
05/12/00: Asylum from Georgetown
05/10/00: The truth is out there, even for the clueless
05/08/00: Barbie is a liberal Democrat
05/02/00: Moving the goalpost
04/28/00: The bastardization of justice
04/25/00: How Monica Lewinsky saved the constitution
04/24/00: It's sunny today, so we need gun control
04/19/00: No shadow of a doubt -- liberal women are worthless
04/14/00: It takes a Communist dictator to raise a child
04/11/00: The verdict is in on Hillary
04/07/00: Vast Concoctions III
04/04/00: 'Horrifying' free speech in New York
03/31/00: Check-Off Box For Pimp Suits
03/28/00: All the news that fits -- we print!
03/24/00: Net losses all around
03/20/00: To protect, serve --- and be spat on
03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere
03/13/00: Vast concoctions II
03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you
03/07/00: The Tower of Babble
03/03/00: Vast concoction
03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies
02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke
02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion
02/18/00: A liberal lynching
02/15/00: McCain and the flag
02/11/00: The Shakedown Express
02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear
01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient?
01/21/00: Numismadness
01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife!
01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut
01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law

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