Looking back on how Maureen Dowd painted Monica Lewinsky as a crazy bimbo—and won a Pulitzer for it.
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It didn’t take long for Dowd to buckle under the power of the Clinton narrative and join the pile-on herself. By February, she was calling Lewinsky “a ditsy, predatory White House intern who might have lied under oath for a job at Revlon” and “the girl who was too tubby to be in the high school ‘in’ crowd.” At first, Dowd attempted to pass this nastiness off as a sly, satirical commentary on the caricature of Lewinsky that the Clinton administration had painted in the press. But soon, the artifice disappeared, and Dowd devoted her column to arguing that, come to think of it, Lewinsky was both nutty and slutty.
In May, Lewinsky was asked to submit a handwriting sample to the FBI, and Dowd wrote a satirical column imagining the scene. “Her stream-of-consciousness ramblings are on F.B.I. letterhead—in a girlish scrawl, with loopy letters, little hearts and breathless punctuation,” Dowd said. “Here's what she wrote: Monica Clinton. Monica Lewinsky Clinton. Monica Lewinsky Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Big Creep. (Frowny face.) First Lady Monica. (Smiley face.) Menu for MY Italian State Dinner: Spaghetti Carbonara. Tiramisu. Spumoni. Table placement: Me between Leonardo DiCaprio & John Travolta. Also, cannoli.”
By June, no level of Lewinsky news was beneath Dowd’s scorn. She wrote that Lewinsky’s Vanity Fair photo shoot had “shades of JonBenet Ramsey” and that “It appears that there's one thing Monica has immunity from: brains.” That same month, Dowd happened to run into Lewinsky while both were dining at Washington’s Bombay Club, so she transcribed the contents of Lewinsky’s dinner plate (“veggie appetizers and chicken tandoori”) and claimed that her presence at the White House–adjacent restaurant “suggested the former intern was still trying to grab the President's attention, like some love-struck teen-ager, loitering outside Billy Clinton's biology class.”
Nearing the end of the summer, Dowd had tired of her characterization of Lewinsky as a naïve Valley Girl and advanced her argument to claim that Lewinsky was the real harasser. In August, Dowd compared Lewinsky to Glenn Close’s bunny-stewing murderess in Fatal Attraction and wrote that “Monica has at least one special talent: she is relentless. It was the quality that got her noticed by Bill Clinton, and it is the quality that will prevent him from ever escaping her.” The occasion for this observation was Lewinsky’s agreement to appear in front of a grand jury as requested—how tastelessly aggressive. In September, Dowd penned Lewinsky’s book proposal for her: “Preface: Powerful men who are busy running things aren't as hard to get as you think. It's really, really easy if you show a little gumption and a lot of cleavage.” Later that month, she wrote, “It is Ms. Lewinsky who comes across as the red-blooded predator, wailing to her girl friends that the President wouldn't go all the way.” And, “It is Mr. Clinton who behaves more like a teen-age girl trying to protect her virginity. … Ms. Lewinsky is the one who bristles with testosterone.”
In October, Dowd called Lewinsky a dingbat. Then, in November, she decreed that Lewinsky’s 15 minutes were up. “Her commercial window of opportunity is slamming shut,” Dowd wrote. “The nation, once glued to the soap opera of Monica and Bill, has canceled the show. … Monica must be in a panic to squeeze the last drop of profit from this sordid tale.” Nevertheless, it was Dowd who kept writing about Lewinsky week after week, capitalizing on her crazed bimbo character for the better part of 1999.
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While Lewinsky expresses regret for her ill-fated relationship with Clinton—and many Americans have come to realize that Lewinsky got a raw deal—Dowd is not yet ready to assume responsibility for her own role. On the occasion of Lewinsky’s reappearance, Dowd has this to say: “It was like a Golden Oldie tour of a band you didn’t want to hear in the first place.” What Dowd doesn’t seem to get: She was the one beating the drum.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/monica_lewinsky_returns_how_maureen_dowd_caricatured_bill_clinton_s_mistress |
